Tagged / experts directory

Call for Gender Experts for Horizon 2020

EU, Research communication, Research news, Women's Academic Network

We have received the following  invitation to join the Database of Gender Experts for European Research and Innovation.

Dr. Ineke Klinge, Chair H2020 Advisory Group on Gender, invites GenPORT members (free to register) to join the H2020 database as gender experts.

Horizon 2020 considers gender as a cross-cutting issue and it shall be adequately integrated in research and innovation content at the level of Work Programmes and projects. Applicants to Horizon 2020 calls are encouraged to include the gender dimension in their proposals. The European Commission is continuously looking for experts with gender expertise in all areas of Horizon 2020 calls to evaluate submitted research proposals.

To find experts with relevant expertise who are willing to evaluate research proposals, the Commission uses an online database. You can register your expertise for gender, and other areas in which you wish to be considered as an expert, in this database on the Participant Portal.

It is very important that you indicate your gender expertise next to your original / main area of training and this has now become much easier than in the past. The Commission therefore encourages you to signal your gender expertise, whether you register for the first time or would like to update your expertise. In the following links you will find:

1) Criteria for gender expertise, as established by the Horizon 2020 Advisory Group on Gender, and

2) Guidance on how to signal your gender expertise in the database prepared by the Gender Sector of DG Research and Innovation.

The European Commission will greatly appreciate your cooperation in increasing the number of experts with gender expertise in its expert database.

If you are keen to know more about gender in funding and participate in this group, please register on GenPORT.

BU’s keywords for research – is everything included? Part 2

Guidance

A couple of weeks ago I added version 3 of the BU research ontology to the blog and asked for your advice as to whether this adequately reflected the breadth of your disciplines and expertise (see BU’s keywords for research – is everything included?). Thank you to everyone who responded to this – all of your comments and suggestions have been incorporated into version 4.

Rather than using the rigid 3-level structure, Version 4 includes the first attempt of mapping the keywords to the four broad areas of:

  • Business & Management
  • Media & Culture
  • Health & Society
  • Science & Technology

These areas will then map to the 8 emerging BU research themes. The aim of this is to provide a more flexible ontology that is adaptable to the complexities of inter- and multi-disciplinary research and that can be used to make relationships between people and disciplines (and therefore news stories, projects, outputs, etc) internally and also via the new external research webpages.

You can access Version 4 here: Research ontology v4

We’re very interested in your feedback as to whether the mapping in Version 4 is fit for purpose or whether any changes need to be made. Please add your comments to this post by Friday 2 September 🙂

Thanks to Katarzyna Musial for her help in visualising how this could work.

BU’s keywords for research – is everything included?

Guidance

In May/June there was some discussion on the blog about developing keywords for research (research ontology/vocabulary/taxonomy) which would be used to classify BU research in future.

See previous blog posts here:

Looking to the future the finalised ontology will be extremely important in structuring how research at BU is presented, internally and externally, particularly on the external research webpages and the directory of expertise.

Responses received via the Blog indicated that the Science-Metrix ontology was too broad and that the Library of Congress ontology was too granular, so it seems that neither is a perfect fit for BU.

Using the Library of Congress ontology as a starting point we have worked with the Deputy Deans (R&E)/equivalent, Research Centre Directors and UOA Leaders to list the key specialisms applicable to BU. The resulting list is now available – you can read this by following the link below:

BU research ontology v3

We need to finalise the list by 19 August 2011. But before we finalise the list we’d very much appreciate your advice as to whether these keywords adequately cover your disciplines. If you’d like to suggest any changes to the list please could you add a comment to this post by 19 August?

In addition we are interested to know whether the proposed level structure is useful or whether one list of keywords would be preferable? Let us know your views by commenting on this post!

Keywords for Research

Guidance

Matthew’s previous blog post (Research Ontology of Find an Expert!) introduced the concept of using the Science-Metrix ontology as the starting point for how BU will classify research in the future.

To date we have not received any responses from BU staff as to whether you think these keywords are suitable, or any suggestions for alternative keywords.

These keywords will be extremely important going forwards as they will be the words used to classify your research expertise in the future, both internally and externally.

The ontology is based on 176 discipline sub-fields which can be viewed here. We are aware these might not be a finished product for BU’s needs but we need your input to further refine them for our use.

Your comments and ideas are very welcome and should be added as comments to the blog post.

Research Ontology or Find an Expert!

Guidance

The new publication management system will be introduced over the summer and become the single user interface for academics with their web profiles and such things as BURO.  This project is in syncs with the introduction of the new content management system within BU which will transform our web presence.  As part of both these projects we plan to introduce a ‘find an expert’ function both for internal and external use.  We need to liberate academics to collaborate openly and freely within BU.  One of the inhibitors at the moment is actually finding someone to collaborate with!  So the find an expert function will have real power to help staff find potential expertise within BU with which to work.

The problem is that any such system is only as good as the keywords used to describe each individual’s research; we all refer to ourselves and our work via a plethora of different terms.  A basic ontology of subjects and research fields provides on solution.  Staff pick the words within the ontology which best fits their expertise.  There are lots of research ontology’s we could use as the starting point.  For example the Library of Congress Subject Headings is one of the best with good coverage of all subjects but is very granular for BU.  There are 150 different types of sociology for example!  Another option is the Science-Metrix which has three levels and 176 sub-fields.  This is much more manageable and could be modified to incorporate our own terms such as the ten BU Research Themes.

I would be interested to have your thoughts on this matter.  A list of the 176 sub-fields from the Science-Metrix ontology is shown below.  How would you describe your own research via such a system?  Are there alternative ontology’s we could use?  Your comments and ideas would be very welcome, but soon please since we have to take a decision on this shortly!