Yearly Archives / 2011

Launch of the BU Research Development Fund

Guidance

It’s a beautiful summer’s day and to celebrate the new academic year the Research Development Unit has some exciting news – the launch of the BU Research Development Fund!

The Research Development Fund (RDF) is open to BU academics and will provide selective support to research initiatives considered to be of strategic importance to BU. There are two strands to the RDF: i) Small Grants Scheme (up to £2k per application); and ii) Large Collaborative Grants Scheme (up to £25k per annum, must include two or more Schools). It is envisaged that each year approximately 20 small grants will be awarded and one large collaborative grant.

Awards will only cover direct costs (i.e. overheads and established staff costs will not be reimbursed). Applications need to include a precise breakdown of costs calculated using full economic costing (fEC) methodology – this will be calculated for you by the CRE Operations team.

All decisions on funding will be made by the University R&E Forum (UREF).

An overview of the two schemes is provided below. For further information please read the Research Development Fund Policy.

RDF – Small Grants Scheme (up to £2k per award) – There will be three competitions per annum. Academic staff wishing to apply must submit an application form to the PVC (Research, Enterprise and Internationalisation) via the RDU by the scheme deadlines:

  • 31 October 2011
  • 28 February 2012
  • 31 May 2012

Priority will be given to applications that involve staff from two or more Schools and/or those from early career researchers.

Examples of research activities covered by the RDF include:

  • Pilot projects
  • Pump-priming
  • Interview transcription
  • Fieldwork
  • Visiting major libraries, museums, other research institutions, etc.
  • Organisation of an academic conference at BU with external participants
  • Attendance at external networking events leading to collaborative research proposals
  • Meetings with external organisations to establish collaborations
  • Preparation of specialist material or data
  • Short-term Research Assistant support or replacement teaching
  • Research consumables and equipment (providing it is clear these would not normally be purchased by the School)

To apply for a Small Grant, please complete the RDF-SGS application form.

RDF – Large Collaborative Grants Scheme (up to £25k per award) – There will be one competition per annum. Academic staff wishing to apply must submit an application form to the PVC (Research, Enterprise and Internationalisation) via the RDU by the scheme deadline:

  • 1 December 2011

The RDF – Large Collaborative Grants Scheme aims to provide funding for the development of large-scale, complex, inter/multi-disciplinary collaborative research activities leading to external funding. Applications must involve academic staff from at least two BU Schools. Priority will be given to applications that meet the following criteria:

  • In line with BU’s emerging Research Themes
  • Include external organizations (particularly SMEs and/or international organizations)
  • In line with the strategic priorities of major funding bodies (such as the UK research councils, European Commission, etc)
  • Clearly beneficial to BU’s submission to REF2014

Examples of research activities covered by the RDF include:

  • Pilot projects
  • Pump-priming
  • Meeting expenses
  • Travel to proposed collaborators
  • Attendance at external networking events with the aim of expanding the network
  • Preparation of specialist material or data
  • Short-term Research Assistant support or replacement teaching
  • Consumables and equipment (providing it is clear these would not normally be purchased by the School)
  • Fees for external proposal support and review

To apply for a Large Collaborative Research Grant, please complete the RDF-LCGS application form.

Research Professional – Updates and Improvements

Funding opportunities

In order to add updates and improve their funding website, Research Professional will be unavailable on Tuesday 2nd August 2012 from 6 pm.  It is expected that the funding website will be unavailable for at least 4 hours.

The improvements will include:

  • updating the site to prevent your sessions from timing out
  • changing URLs to make them simpler and clearer (don’t worry – old bookmarks and links you have will still work)
  • standardising the behaviour of the ‘back’ button on your web browser
  • speeding up the performance of Research Professional

After this time, if anyone experiences problems accessing or using Research Professional, please contact Susan Dowdle in the first instance.

Google Scholar’s new citations tracking tool

As the demand for information about the performance of research outputs increases, Google Scholar’s latest online citations tracking tool could prove to be a useful resource. Google Scholar Citations is currently being launched with a small number of users before widespread dissemination, but the early signs are that it could provide a simple way for academics to calculate key metrics and monitor them over time.

According to Google Scholar, the tool will ‘use a statistical model based on author names, bibliographic data, and article content to group articles likely written by the same author’. You can then identify your articles using these groups and Google Scholar will then automatically produce the citation metrics. Three metrics will be available: the h-index, the i-10 index (which is the number of articles with at least ten citations), and the total number of citations to your articles. Each of these metrics will be available for all outputs as well as for articles published in the last five years, and will be automatically updated as new citations are available on the web.

You will be able to update your ‘profile’ of outputs by adding missing items, merging duplicates or correcting bibliographic errors. You’ll also have the choice to make your profile public, the idea being that you’ll make it easier for colleagues globally to follow your research because your outputs will appear in Google Scholar search results.

To get a glimpse of Google Scholar Citations in action, there are some sample profiles available via the Google Scholar blog. You can also register your email address so that you will be notified when the tool is finally available to everyone.

Launch of the BU Open Access Publication Fund

Guidance, Publishing

open access logo, Public Library of ScienceBack in April it was announced that BU would be launching an Open Access Publication Fund in August 2011 (see the previous blog post here: BU’s open access publication fund to go live!).

Therefore, as of today BU officially operates a dedicated central Open Access Publication Fund (OAPF), launched in response to, and in support of, developments in research communication and publication trends. The fund is also to support research in complying with some of the major funding bodies who have introduced open access publishing requirements as a condition of their grants.

The fund is available for use by any BU author ready to submit a completed article for publication who wishes to make their output freely and openly accessible.

If you are interested in applying to the fund then you need to email Julie Northam in the Research Development Unit with the following information:

  • Name of the open access publication
  • Confirmation this will be a peer reviewed paper
  • A short justification (1 paragraph) of why it is beneficial for your research to be published in this particular open access publication
  • The cost of the open access publication
  • Likely publication date
  • Likely REF Unit of Assessment (UOA)
  • A copy of the paper

If you have any questions about the new OAPF then please direct them to me via email.

Further information:

REF draft panel criteria is now available

Research assessment

Two important REF documents are now available on the REF website:

1. The draft panel criteria and working methods for consultation. A summary of this will be added to the blog next week.

2. The analysis of panel membership is now available.

Panel criteria and working methods consultation – the consultation runs from now until 5 October. BU will be submitting a single institutional response coordinated by the Research Development Unit. BU staff are invited to submit feedback for consideration as part of this response. Please email all comments to Anita Somner by 20 September 2011.

The REF Guidance on Submissions document was released on 14 June, a summary of which can be accessed on the I-drive from: I:\CRKT\Public\RDU\REF.

BU Santander Scholarships 2011-12 – apply now!!

PG research

Santander is offering five x £5,000 research and travel grants to BU staff and students

The funds must be used for a specific project to build on or develop links with at least one university from the Santander overseas network. Trips must be taken before February 2012.

Preference will be given to applications received from postgraduate research students and early career researchers.

Funds can only be used to cover direct costs (i.e. not salary costs or overheads).

To apply complete the Santander application form and submit it by email to: researchunit@bournemouth.ac.uk.

The closing date for applications is Friday 16 September 2011.

Good luck 🙂

Continuing importance of ‘Impact’ highlighted by HEFCE and RCUK

Research assessment

RCUK logoThe Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), Research Councils UK (RCUK) and Universities UK (UUK) have issued a joint statement highlighting the continuing importance of the impact of research and making a commitment to developing common frameworks.  Both the REF (undertaken by HEFCE) and the Research Councils place a strong emphasis on the impact of research.

Their key aims are:

  • ensuring that their approaches to supporting knowledge exchange are joined up
  • securing greater impact from publicly funded research whilst ensuring their funding policies are complementary and work coherently together
  • ensuring that their monitoring, assessment and evaluation as well as the collection of statistical data from HEIs is proportionate.
  • supporting the training of new researchers, at both PhD and post-doctoral level, to ensure that they acquire the skills and expertise needed to maximise the impact of their own research.

The full statement is available on the RCUK website.

€4.2M Healthy Ageing in the EU Research funds just released!

Europe’s first joint call for ageing research ‘ERA-AGE 2’ has been released with a whopping €4.2M available. Research Councils from across Europe have contributed to this fund which aims to increase healthy ageing and increase life expectancy by two years within the European Union by 2020.
This call enables researchers from all disciplines to put in applications addressing “Active and healthy ageing across the life course”. The research funded will aim to generate new insights on the factors that enable individuals to live actively and healthily into later life. Applications are invited from multidisciplinary research groups representing three to five funding countries. Stage-one pre-proposals can be submitted until 3 October 2011 under three areas:
1. Generate new knowledge on the biological, clinical, behavioural, social and environmental factors that enable individuals to live actively and healthily into later life.
2. Explore comparatively different models, methods, approaches and good practices in societal responses to increased longevity which emphasise both social inclusion and sustainability.
3. Engage in effective knowledge exchange activities that will assist European and other countries to achieve the goal of increasing healthy life expectancy by two years by 2020.

We’ve summarised the EU FP7 Work Programmes for you!

As you will be aware  the FP7 Calls for Proposals were released on July 20th. FP7 is the major Programme for European funding  with a budget of €7 billion for this year, so plenty of funds to dip into!  

The European Commission releases its Calls for Proposals in some rather long documents (196 pages in some cases) known as ‘Work Programmes’.

The RDU know you are all pushed for time in your research endeavours and that the Work Programmes make for very dull reading, so we have been working day and night to summarise all of the calls for you in easy to access PDF formats under different types of funding and different subject areas. This way, you can scan the opportunities faster and take a look at the aim and eligibility criteria more easily to see if you can apply.

These summaries along with a full outline of what FP7 is, how to find funders etc are all available at our staff-only access webpage on EU Funding.

BU Santander Scholarships 2011-12 – apply now!!

Funding opportunities

Santander is offering five x £5,000 research and travel grants to BU staff and students

The funds must be used for a specific project to build on or develop links with at least one university from the Santander overseas network. Trips must be taken before February 2012.

Preference will be given to applications received from postgraduate research students and early career researchers.

Funds can only be used to cover direct costs (i.e. not salary costs or overheads).

To apply complete the Santander application form and submit it by email to: researchunit@bournemouth.ac.uk.

The closing date for applications is Friday 16 September 2011.

Good luck 🙂

ESRC Knowledge Exchange Opportunities

Funding opportunities

ESRC logoThe ESRC has announced two new calls as part of its Knowledge Exchange Opportunities scheme

The scheme exists to enable researchers to work with individuals and organisations in the private, public and civil society sectors. Knowledge exchange can involve a range of methods but is ultimately about sharing and applying good ideas, research results, experiences and engagement skills. The ESRC fund and manage a range of schemes to support collaborative projects and create a dialogue between researchers and individuals/organisations that have the potential to benefit from social science research.

The two calls that have been announced are:

 – the Follow on Fund scheme

 – the Knowledge Exchange Opportunities scheme

The Knowledge Exchange call is open from 1 September until 27 October 2011 and is aimed at social science researchers at all stages of their career and at organisations in the business, public and civil society sectors, with the intention of encouraging dialogue and collaboration between these groups.

Future calls are scheduled as follows:

  • 12 December 2011 – 6 February 2012
  • 9 April 2012 – 4 June 2012
  • 20 August 2012 – 1 October 2012

Further information is available from the ESRC website: http://www.esrc.ac.uk/funding-and-guidance/collaboration/knowledge-exchange/opportunities/index.aspx

If you are interested in applying to one of these schemes, please contact CRE Operations who will happy to support your application.

New & improved UKRO website launched at last!

UK Research OfficeThe new and very much improved UKRO portal is now available , Not only is it easier on the eye, it is finally a fully integrated system and much more effective to search.

To access the extensive ‘UKRO Subscriber Services’ and your personal news page,  go to ‘Subscriber Login’ and enter your email address and the password ukro4web. This is a temporary password. Once you are logged in, please go to ‘Edit Profile’ to set a new, personalised password.

You have been set up with a default profile which means that your personal news page will cover all information types and categories, and you will receive a daily email alert. You can customise this at any time using the short guide to the new Portal (and FAQs) on the homepage.

If you haven’t ever set up an UKRO account; now is the perfect time! UKRO is sponsored by the UK research councils and provides information and advice on EU funding opportunities, and EU programmes and policies. Signing up for the alert service means you will be kept up to date on relevant funding opportunities, news and partner searches.

Internationalisation and the research process

Dr Sara Ashencaen Crabtree and Professor Jonathan Parker from the School of Health and Social Care discuss some of their recent research that explores the experiences of exchange students.

Although internationalisation is much wider in reach than student exchanges it is recognised that such exchanges can play a critical part in enhancing students’ appreciation and understanding of global issues.  In this blog we describe some of our research exploring the experiences and perceptions of students undertaking an exchange and their ensuing culture shock. Accordingly, a three-year British Council PM1 2 funded research study into student mobility has provided a wealth of data on student learning in international social work placements; although this also provides some important implications for other types of international student exchanges.

BU students at a dinner hosted by Universiti Sains Penang

In respect of these particular student opportunities, the sustainable development of the placements was created through the forging of Memoranda of Understanding with two participating universities: Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) in East Malaysia; and Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) in Penang. The history of the two universities differ; where like BU, UNIMAS is a new university, but with a lively social science faculty, which has been home to a thriving social work programme from the institution’s inception.  USM, by contrast, is a long established, APEX status, research-intensive university, boasting the oldest academic social work provision in the country, and where social work programmes are offered at undergraduate, masters and doctoral level.

Consequently, BU social work students on international placements were able to benefit from an international support network of experienced academics working in concert for the duration of the placements, as well as receiving day-to-day support from local agency staff at the placement settings. The research element of the placements focused on the process of student learning in an unfamiliar cultural context, in which the writing of a daily log and a critical incident analysis formed the raw data collected by the students.

An analysis of data indicates that the concept of liminality – a process of moving through experiences from a status-less position to one of becoming – is useful in understanding the transitions experienced by the students and their confrontation with professional and personal values, often markedly different from their own.  These are duly reflected on in terms of the mediation of the domains of familiar and unfamiliar ‘cultures’ and disciplinary practice. Liminality was also demonstrated by an awareness, new for some, of minority status and how this was perceived in the local context. Exposure to unfamiliar norms relating to gender, religion and culture, were also experienced, where, for example, previously unquestioned assumptions relating to Islam and women were re-examined upon encountering ‘strong’ Muslim feminists.

BU Student, Gatrine Muldoon, with the indigenous family who 'adopted' her.

Other aspects of liminality were constituted through the experience of encountering alternative ideological constructs, such as that of meritocracy as opposed to equal opportunities, ‘triage’ welfare provision as opposed to universal rights, or the strongly promoted Confucian values of family self-reliance wherever possible, even under the circumstances of absolute poverty. These experiences bring the students into sharp relief with their own, often, ethnocentric values, challenging notions of diversity, acceptance and cultural norms which, when worked through, can provide a depth of cultural sensitivity important in working in the contemporary global world.

While analysis of the data continues and the nexus of collaboration has widened over time to encompass other programmes in HSC, such as the new BA Sociology and Social Policy, dilemmas of how such partnerships may be fostered for mutual benefit in terms of expectation and reciprocation are raised. This has relevance for international partnerships between institutions where, for example, significant socio-economic differentials may exist, or where institutional research and resource capacity are unequal.

The outcome of this study, however, indicates a need to theorise teaching and learning in order to more comprehensively address global and internationalisation issues within and beyond the classroom setting. This also requires ways to address ethnocentricity effectively, so often implicit in the perspectives and assumptions of individuals, even those with insight into cultural relativity. Finally, the conclusion of this study will lead to practical outcomes in terms of follow-up research to examine whether international placements enhance employment opportunities for graduates.

Find EU Partners for the Lifelong Learning Programme, Ethics in Security or Health

Attending Information days and workshops held by the European Commission not only gives you a great opportunity to find out more about a call and ask any questions about it, but these events are also critical networking opportunities to meet others interested in building a consortium and applying for funding. An info day on the Lifelong Learning Programme will be held in October and a workshop on Ethical issues in Security Research in September.  If you are interested in applying to either of these calls, you should attend the info day.

To help find partners in Health funding, the details of participants who attended the recent partnering day on the 2012 Health Theme calls in Brussels are now available. A search page has been created where it is possible to look for participants of the recent partnering event by area of the work programme, type of organisation, country or through a free search. If you are planning on being involved in a proposal for the 2012 calls for the FP7 Co-operation Health Theme, then you should join look at this search page Health partnering day search page

Upcoming Missenden Centre workshops – book your place now!

The Missenden Centre still has places available on a number excellent workshops this autumn/winter.

The Research Development Unit has some funds available to support academics and research support staff to attend. If you are interested please contact Julie Northam in the first instance.

Ensuring PhD completions for REF 2014
15/16 September
With: John Wakeford, Head of Missenden Centre and Fiona Denney, Head of Postgraduate Development at King’s College London
Special session for academic, registry and graduate school staff
http://www.missendencentre.co.uk/s1

Successful bidding: third of our day clinics
18 November
With: John Wakeford
Bring a draft or previously unsuccessful application for advice on how to turn it into an award-winning form.
http://www.missendencentre.co.uk/s4

Bidding for research funding: pathways to success
9/10 November for academics
10/11 November for research support staff
With Sarah Andrew, Dean of Applied and Health Sciences, University of Chester
Robert Crawshaw, Faculty of Arts and Social Science, Lancaster University
‘The course was excellent. I think it will probably change my entire approach to writing grant proposals and will most wholeheartedly recommend it to my colleagues. So, once again, many thanks.’  Dr. Miriam V. Dwek, Senior Lecturer in Biochemistry, University of Westminster.
http://www.missendencentre.co.uk/s2

Effective supervision
12/13 January
Our unique preparation for supervisors and those with responsibilities for training them.
http://www.missendencentre.co.uk/s6

Speak to the Research Development Unit and book your place now!

Great events to launch the Digital Hub

We had two great events this week both hosted by the Digital Hub at Bournemouth University. The Digital Day on the 19th July took place at Kimmeridge House on Talbot Campus and the Digital Dinner at the Chewton Glen.

Both events were attended by the Vice Chancellor of the University, Professor John Vinney and by a range of businesses – large and small who had come to hear how Bournemouth University’s Digital Hub could provide them with knowledge and expertise to help them take advantage of the opportunities presented by the creative and digital economy.

There was a wide range of expertise on display – all of which you can find out more about on the Digital Hub website.

Delegates also had the pleasure of hearing an inspirational keynote speaker, Tiffany St James who, among a staggering array of roles, has advised the UK government on its social media and runs a series of workshops for The Guardian on digital media. Tiffany’s slides are available for download on this site. The event trended on Twitter (London) for 30 minutes #BUdigihub – testimony to the interest online and the live Twitter feed at the event.

Eating Cats & Top Journals

News from the PVC

I have a big paper out today on the Laetoli footprints in Tanzania.  I am not first author, but still very proud of the paper.  Laetoli is the oldest footprint site known at over 3.75 million years and was first discovered in the late 1970s by the Leakey’s.  It consists of a couple of trails each of a dozen prints or so preserved in volcanic ash and is a site that has been argued over ever since its discovery with different teams interpreting the prints in different ways often basisng their arguements on specific prints.  The likely print maker is Australopithecus afarensis which is perhaps better known by the famous skelton called Lucy.  Some say the prints represent a primitive foot anatomy, function and gait, while other claim a more modern form and foot function.  One of the challenges here has been the lack of an objective methodology to allow different hypothesis to be explored.  At the heart of my current NERC grant with Liverpool University is a new objective approach based on calculating a mean footprint from a trail, which can then be statistically compared to others.  This provides the first objective method with which to interpret ancient footprint trails.  The paper published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface today applies this method to the Laetoli prints to good effect resolving, in our view at least, over 30 years of argument!

The paper is based on data that I collected back in 2008 during a rapid visit to Nairobi to scan casts of the prints during the height the post election troubles that year.  I remember the visit quite well not just for the 16 hours of plane flights in two days there and back stolen out of a busy term, but for the political tension still evident on the streets.  The paper it self stems from 2009 when Robin Crompton (Liverpool) and I first started to collaborate and has taken a while to gestate and find a home.  I suppose it’s the latter aspect that is worth mentioning because this paper was first tried in the top three science journals – Nature, Science and PNAS – without success or review.  In each case there was something of a jaundiced view from the editor ‘not yet another paper on Lateoli!’  Yet in our view the paper is top-notch and the science within it ground-breaking and we were very disappointed not to get the paper even reviewed.  There are several things here worth drawing out.  One is keeping faith with a paper as it is rejected by different journals and keeping your nerve, as you try and aspire to each top journal in turn.  Because it will find a home eventually if it is good and in truth the Journal of the Royal Society Interface is a great journal since not only does it have a high impact factor but there is much more space to describe the science!  The paper will be part of my REF submission that is for sure.  It has also attracted a fair amount of publicity today and my colleagues in Liverpool have been stars of local TV this evening.  The other aspect that is worth drawing out is around the sheer luck in getting things published in a top journal.  When I got my Science paper in 2009 not only was it based on a new discovery but there had not been many recent footprint papers so it had additional novelty.  When our current paper was doing the rounds this autumn we discovered subsequently that another team had submitted a Laetoli paper, and in our view an inferior paper, unsuccessfully a few months earlier making our research seem just that bit less noteworthy.  Journals such as Nature and Science have their pick of the best stories so want something to excite interest as well as be good science.  I suppose a headline of ‘Cat eats boy’ stands out when it is a rare event, but when there has been a run of stories about domestic cats eating boys it does not!  (And if you are wondering where this came from, the connection is that my cat is currently licking my abandoned desert bowl.)

This idea that success is not just about the sheer merits of something but is about the circumstances and timing is an interesting concept and goes to the heart of a book I have been reading recently entitled Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.  He dissects a range of successful individuals – sports players, business men, billionaire etc – and shows how in most cases talent is not the sole reason for their success but the context and timing of their contribution is critical.  As is years of practice!  So in the context of trying to hit the top journals one could argue that it is all about timing and the current scientific context in vogue or considered to be novel.  If you talk to Ralph Clarke in ApSci who hit Science the same year I did he will tell you the same thing – you need a great a bit of research, but timing is also everything.  This cuts both ways in our case we did not know that other papers were hitting the editor’s desks at the same time, but if we had not tried then we would have been left always wondering if it could have made it.  But if you turn this around you also need to have an eye to what will hit the right buttons at any one moment and capitalise on it if you can.  Any way enough of this; time to do the washing up!

You can read the abstract here: 10.1098/rsif.2011.0258

And a review of the article here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110719194356.htm