Yearly Archives / 2016

Lord Stern’s REF Review- the outcome

The outcome of Lord Stern’s independent review of the REF has been published. You can view the report here. The recommendations from the report are as follows.

1.       All research active staff should be returned in the REF (and allocated to a unit of assessment).

2.       Outputs should be submitted at Unit of Assessment level with a set average number per FTE but with flexibility for some faculty members to submit more and others less than the average (this hopes to shift the spotlight from the individual to the Unit of Assessment).

3.       Outputs should not be portable (to encourage a long- term approach to investment).

4.       Panels should continue to assess on the basis of peer review. However, metrics should be provided to support panel members in their assessment, and panels should be transparent about their use.

5.       Institutions should be given more flexibility to showcase their interdisciplinary and collaborative impacts by submitting ‘institutional’ level impact case studies, part of a new institutional level assessment(for a more strategic approach).

6.       Impact should be based on research of demonstrable quality. However, case studies could be linked to a research activity and a body of work as well as to a broad range of research outputs.

7.       Guidance on the REF should make it clear that impact case studies should not be narrowly interpreted, need not solely focus on socioeconomic impacts but should also include impact on government policy, on public engagement and understanding, on cultural life, on academic impacts outside the field, and impacts on teaching (the report recommends that research leading to impact on curricula and/ or pedagogy should be included).

8.       A new, institutional level Environment assessment should include an account of the institution’s future research environment strategy, a statement of how it supports high quality research and research-related activities, including its support for interdisciplinary and cross-institutional initiatives and impact. It should form part of the institutional assessment and should be assessed by a specialist, cross-disciplinary panel. (Institutional-level environment statement will allow for a more holistic view of the HEI).

9.       That individual Unit of Assessment environment statements are condensed, made complementary to the institutional level environment statement and include those key metrics on research intensity specific to the Unit of Assessment.

10.   Where possible, REF data and metrics should be open, standardised and combinable with other research funders’ data collection processes in order to streamline data collection requirements and reduce the cost of compiling and submitting information (to reduce burden and improve transparency).

11.   That Government, and UKRI, could make more strategic use of REF, to better understand the health of the UK research base, our research resources and areas of high potential for future development, and to build the case for strong investment in research in the UK (to help with the UKRI’s aim of being the strategic voice for research in the UK).

12.   Government should ensure that there is no increased administrative burden to Higher Education Institutions from interactions between the TEF and REF, and that they together strengthen the vital relationship between teaching and research in HEIs (the report notes that successful institutions do not separate teaching and research missions, a common dataset that can describe university research and teaching staff is recommended).

Making the Most of Writing Week Part 7: BUCRU – not just for Writing Week!

Guidance, writing

We’re coming to the end of Writing Week in the Faculty of Health and Social Sciences and by now you will have made a good start or have put the finishing touches to your academic writing projects. Over the last week, we have given you some tips on writing grant applications and highlighted some of the expertise within BUCRU. If you didn’t get the chance to pop in and see us we thought it would be useful to remind you what we’re about and how we can help.

Bournemouth University Clinical Research Unit (BUCRU) supports researchers in improving the quality, quantity and efficiency of research across the University and local National Health Service (NHS) Trusts. We do this by:

  • Helping researchers develop high quality applications for external research funding (including small grants)
  • Ongoing involvement in funded research projects
  • A “pay-as-you-go” consultation service for other work.

How can we help?

BUCRU can provide help in the following areas:

  • Study design
  • Quantitative and qualitative research methods
  • Statistics, data management and data analysis
  • Patient and public involvement in research
  • Trial management
  • Ethics, governance and other regulatory issues
  • Linking University and NHS researchers

Our support is available to Bournemouth University staff and people working locally in the NHS, and depending on the support you require, is mostly free of charge. There are no general restrictions on topic area or professional background of the researcher.

If you would like support in developing your research please get in touch through bucru@bournemouth.ac.uk or by calling us on 01202 961939. Please see our website for further information, details of our current and previous projects and a link to our recent newsletter.

Research in the news: one hour of activity needed to offset harmful effects of sitting at a desk

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BU’s Dr Erika Borkoles has provided expert assessment of research recently published in the Lancet, exploring the links between a sedentary lifestyle and moderate exercise.  This has been widely picked up by the media, including the New Scientist and the Guardian.  Below, she explains the research and its significance.

 

Many scientist in the field of sport, exercise and physical activity have been frustrated for years about why people don’t exercise, play sport, or enjoy daily physical activity, such as moderate intensity walking, even though those who are regularly active they feel the physical, social, and mental benefits.

One of the main problems was providing strong scientific evidence base for showing health benefits of being active. Research has been fraught with trying to work out, the frequency, intensity, lengths of time and the type of activity, whether it is aerobic, strengths based or a combination of the two. Then there was the issue of how the activity of daily living contributes to the structured physical activity’s effect on health.

More recently, research has shown that sedentariness is a separate consideration from being physical active. Sedentariness is now associated with sitting time, and prolonged sitting has been deemed to have significant health risk regardless of physical activity pattern.

The scientific data available is still contradictory, but the recent harmonised meta-analysis by Professor Ulf Ekelund and his colleagues published in the Lancet is providing a reasonably robust evidence that moderate physical activity of 60-75 minutes a day, every day can significantly reduce all-cause mortality risks. The unique point of this meta-analysis is that the authors acknowledge that sedentariness and being active co-exists in one’s life. It might be that someone has a very sedentary job (e.g. truck driver who will perhaps sit more than 8 hours a day) but if they can fit in regularly moderate intensity activity, their risk of dying is significantly reduced.

Interestingly, when the data was scrutinised, those who watched TV for 3 hours a day or more, being active only provided health benefits in the highest activity bands. If TV viewing exceeded more than 5 hours per day, moderate physical activity was not protective.

The good news is that Ekelund et al’s research is providing reasonable scientific evidence for being active is something we should all practice and would benefit from. The main message is from current research findings are: if you job requires prolonged sitting, try to break it up at least once an hour by walking about, making a cup of tea or walk outside for a couple of minutes, but also continue to build in at least 60 minutes of daily moderate activity in your life.

Dr Borkoles provided expert assessment of the Eklund et al’s research, which can be read here.

Nominations for the 2016 John Maddox Prize and London Media Workshop

2016 John Maddox Prize for Standing up for Science
Nominations for the 2016 John Maddox Prize close on Monday, 1st August. 

Now in its fifth year, the prize recognises the work of an individual anywhere in the world who promotes sound science and evidence on a matter of public interest, facing difficulty or hostility in doing so. Details on how to nominate are online here: bit.ly/Maddox2016

The prize is a joint initiative of Nature, where Sir John was editor for 22 years; the Kohn Foundation, whose founder Sir Ralph Kohn was a personal friend of Sir John’s, particularly through their Fellowship of the Royal Society; and Sense About Science, where Sir John served as a trustee until his death in 2009. A passionate and tireless communicator and defender of science, Maddox engaged with difficult debates, inspiring others to do the same. As a writer and editor, he changed attitudes and perceptions, and strove for better understanding and appreciation of science throughout his long working life.

London media workshop

I also wanted to send a reminder that applications for the next Standing up for Science media workshop are now open. The workshop will be at the Francis Crick Institute, central London on Friday 16th September. This full day event is free and for early career researchers and scientists in all sciences, engineering and medicine (PhD students, post-docs or equivalent in first job). Here is the flyer and application form. 

 

Making the Most of Writing Week Part 6: What to do with your data

writing

You don’t have to spend Writing Week working on grant applications. You may already have a dataset and now you finally have some time to do something with it. But where to start? It’s often a good idea to go back to your original research questions/aims/objectives. As we said yesterday, a well thought out research question can help shape your analysis strategy.
Hopefully you will have a record of which variables you were measuring and how data were coded. Were any calculations performed using the raw data to create new variables? How were these done? This is all part of good data management. To find out more visit the information pages created by the Library and Learning Support Team.
Once you are reacquainted with your data, it’s often a good idea (in the case of quantitative data) to start plotting graphs to find out more. Always keep in mind the original aims of the study, it’s easy to wander down a path of distraction. If you are feeling confused by all of this or, have got yourself lost down a data track, the BUCRU team are at hand to help.
Peter Thomas is available on Tuesday and Wednesday while Sharon Docherty is available Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday this week. Why not drop us an email or pop by to see us in R505?

New business and university collaboration platform

Business Engagement, innovation, Knowledge Exchange

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konfer has been developed to faciliate easier access to the university sector for the business community, by collating a large amount of information all on one platform. UK universities are bursting with innovation  and  world-class academics who are keen to collaborate with industry, charities and the public sector.

konfer was created by the National Centre for Universities and Business (NCUB) to make this astonishing wealth of expertise and resources more accessible. Working in partnership with the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and Research Councils UK (RCUK), konfer brings knowledge and growth to businesses, valuable exposure for university talent, and future prosperity for the UK.

 

When a business owner spots an opportunity, konfer supports the journey from finding a research partner and funding to planning and co-creation. It does this by giving direct access to:

  • 8000 academics
  • 11,000 facility and equipment listings
  • 800,000 web pages from university sites and social media
  • 22,000 YouTube videos from university channels
  • 10,000 news, funding and events articles from curated feeds
  • 50,000 publicly funded research projects

konfer brings knowledge and growth to businesses, valuable exposure for university talent, and future strength for the UK economy.

Learn more

 

NCUB want  konfer to be as useful as possible, so  access to the  Alpha version of the site is available. No need for passwords or user names – just dive straight in. https://konfer.online

This means things may be a little rough around the edges and there may be some bugs to be  squished ! But,  hope  by sharing the site early,  hope to consider suggestions fro improvements. Planned live date is erly in the New Year.  Feedback can be emailed  konfer@ncub.co.uk . For more information on this platform and NCUB in general contact Jayne Codling within RKEO.

Knowledge mobilisation research fellowships – NIHR

Funding opportunities

NIHR

The National Institute of Health Research invites applications for its knowledge mobilisation research fellowships. These fellowships support innovative and creative proposals that seek to improve the effective use of health research knowledge within NHS or other public healthcare settings and simultaneously study implementation processes and impacts.

Proposals must be grounded in knowledge mobilisation theory. Fellowships should be used to:

•develop and enhance the understanding of knowledge mobilisation in healthcare;

•develop new ways of sharing existing research findings;

•enhance existing knowledge mobilisation mechanisms;

•shape new research questions of particular and timely relevance to the NHS;

•enhance the capability of the fellow to facilitate networking between researchers and potential research users.

Individual researchers working in healthcare or academic organisations may apply.

Further details, including full eligibility criteria, can be found in the relevant guidance notes for applicants.

Full details of this programme can be found here.

If you are interested in submitting to  this call  you must contact your  RKEO Funding Development Officer with adequate notice before the deadline.

For more funding opportunities that are most relevant to you, you can set up your own personalised alerts on Research Professional. If you need help setting these up, just ask your School’s/Faculty’s Funding Development Officer in  RKEO or view the recent blog post here.

If thinking of applying, why not add notification of your interest on Research Professional’s record of the bid so that BU colleagues can see your intention to bid and contact you to collaborate.

International collaboration awards for research professors

Funding opportunities, international

Royal Society

The Royal Society, under the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF), invites applications for its international collaboration awards for research professors. These enable outstanding UK research leaders to develop international collaborations with the best research professors from around the world, to work on some of the global challenges and problems facing developing countries.

The objectives of the challenge awards are to:

•support the best UK scientists in establishing sustainable collaborations with internationally leading scientists based overseas;

•promote collaboration and sharing of knowledge through reciprocal visits between the visiting research professors and their research groups;

•support outstanding research through collaboration with the aim of addressing global challenges facing developing countries and benefiting people in these countries;

•facilitate the development of multidisciplinary collaborations and approaches that could help address the complex research questions posed by global challenges;

•attract outstanding international scientists and their teams to the UK’s best universities and research institutions;

•strengthen UK science and open up new opportunities to exploit and translate research for economic benefit.

Global challenge themes include: sustainable health and well-being; sustainable resources; sustainable growth; sustainable local research and innovation capacity.

Click here for further information including eligibility and the application process.

If you are interested in submitting to this call you must contact your  RKEO Funding Development Officer with adequate notice before the deadline.

For more funding opportunities that are most relevant to you, you can set up your own personalised alerts on Research Professional. If you need help setting these up, just ask your School’s/Faculty’s Funding Development Officer in  RKEO or view the recent blog post here.

If thinking of applying, why not add notification of your interest on Research Professional’s record of the bid so that BU colleagues can see your intention to bid and contact you to collaborate.

Making the Most of Writing Week Part 5: Designing your study

writing

So you have formed a strong team, chosen a funder and involved some service users to help develop a research idea with impact. What’s next?
Step 5 is designing your study. The heart of a good piece of research is a strong research question with clear aims and achievable objectives. Sounds easy, right? This is often one of the most difficult aspects of any research project. If you then add having to align your ideas with the priorities of your chosen funder, this task becomes a bit more difficult. However, it is worth the effort. Spending time putting together well constructed research questions will make designing the rest of the study much easier and will even help you formulate your data analysis strategy.
If all of this sounds a bit daunting, never fear because BUCRU are at hand to help. Did you know that some of the members of BUCRU form the Bournemouth branch of NIHR Research Design Service (RDS)? The RDS is here to advise and provide practical support for anyone developing a research grant application to a national, peer reviewed funding competition in the fields of applied health or social care. You can find the Bournemouth team in Royal London House.
If you need help with the design of your study (particularly if it is quantitative) Peter Thomas is available on Tuesday and Wednesday while Sharon Docherty is available Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday this week. Why not drop us an email or pop by to see us in R505?

DfT Transport Technology Research Innovation Grants now open

Business Engagement, Funding opportunities, innovation, Knowledge Exchange

transport

The Department for Transport (DfT) opened on  Monday (25 July)  the latest round of its Transport Technology Research Innovation Grant (T-TRIG) to support technology innovation in the transport sector.

The grant offers 100% funding for projects in three separate calls:

  • An open call for new transport ideas
  • A targeted call for solutions to challenges in aviation security
  • A targeted call for Intelligent Transport Systems

T-TRIG provides seed funding to early-stage science, engineering or technology innovations that have potential for advancing the UK transport system.

The funding scheme is open to anyone, typically micro, small and medium-sized businesses or academia, to support research projects that could lead to the development of successful new transport products, processes or services.

KTN is supporting these calls, including a series of webinars, led by DfT officials that will provide details of the opportunities, answer questions and help guide potential applicants on how best to present their ideas.

Successful applicants will be awarded fully-funded grants of up to £25,000 for the open call. For the targeted calls, there’s a budget of £150,000 to fund three to six projects in Intelligent Transport Systems targeted call and £300,000 for the Aviation projects.

On the other hand, are you buying or selling an aviation company? You can then even find aviation businesses that are for sale, there are several pages online that list them like https://trufortebusinessgroup.com/aviation-businesses-for-sale/ so have a look.

Schedule of the Competitions

This next round of T-TRIG will be launched on Monday 25 July 2016.

The entry deadline for all three calls will be Monday 22 August, with projects running between 19 September 2016 and 9 January 2017.

Webinars this week for direct access to Department for Transport

To find out the full details of these grants and for the opportunity to ask questions to DfT officials, please register for one or more of the following webinars:

The schedule for these competitions requires a relatively short time to prepare applications, so early registration and preparation of questions is recommended.

For further details see the Department for Transport’s Competition page Transport-Technology Research Innovation Grant (T-TRIG)

If you are interested in submitting to any of the above calls you must contact your  RKEO Funding Development Officer with adequate notice before the deadline.

For more funding opportunities that are most relevant to you, you can set up your own personalised alerts on Research Professional. If you need help setting these up, just ask your School’s/Faculty’s Funding Development Officer in  RKEO or view the recent blog post here.

If thinking of applying, why not add notification of your interest on Research Professional’s record of the bid so that BU colleagues can see your intention to bid and contact you to collaborate.

Innovation Vouchers – scheme closing shortly

Funding opportunities, innovation, Knowledge Exchange

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The deadline for Round 14 claims is 31 July 2016.

In accordance with the terms and conditions of the voucher offer, there will not be any extensions to the claim deadline and any claims submitted after the 31 July 2016 deadline will not be processed for payment. (All Round 14 voucher holders have been sent an information pack providing detailed information on the claim process.)

Any queries should be directed to our Customer Support Service at support@innovateuk.gov.uk or 0300 321 4357.

 Future of Innovation Vouchers

This dedicated website will close shortly.

While Innovation Vouchers will remain part of Innovate UK’s suite of business support products and may be used in future, there are no current plans for future rounds.

Further details on current funding available from Innovate UK is available on  the website, www.innovateuk.gov.uk

Check out Innovate UK – Delivery Plan 2016 – 2017 for more details on sectors and funding opportuntites.

Making the Most of Writing Week Part 4: Research grant applications – not THAT PPI

Guidance, writing

With the start of FHSS writing week, we are continuing our series of blogs providing you with some (hopefully) useful advice on how to make the best of this dedicated time. Remember, there are members of the BUCRU team available during this week to help you (i.e. anyone interested in health research) along the way.

Once you have decided on a funder, an important (but sometimes overlooked) aspect of working up a grant application is the planning and documenting of the involvement of service users/patients/relevant groups or organisations (Public Patient Involvement or PPI) ie the people most likely to have a vested interest in the research you are intending to do. Indeed, many major national funders, including the NIHR, require detailed evidence of how service users have been involved. But do you know who to approach? When? How? What can service users be involved with? What can they add? Sometimes it’s relatively straightforward to identify appropriate individuals and organisations. Other occasions can call for more creativity. Hot tip: everything takes longer to arrange than you might think. Allow a minimum of 6 weeks to plan, consult service users and feedback from the PPI consultation to your colleagues.

If you’d like some advice about planning PPI and conducting service user consultations for a project Helen Allen (helena@bournemouth.ac.uk) will be pleased to advise you. Helen is available on Tuesday 26th.

Research Data Management and you!

Publishing

Research Data Management is a hot topic, especially when applying for grants. We all have our own strategies for managing our data as a product of research. Sometimes data management is in the form of a box or filing cabinet in a locked office, an external hard drive, purchased cloud storage or a hard drive. Whilst this approach is comfortable and familiar, it’s unlikely to comply with funder requirements neither currently nor in the future.

The Library has a created a guide that will help with navigating the diverse requirements of grant funding councils, writing data management plans and all its intricacies. The guide, ‘Research Data Management’ is available here .

We welcome your feedback about this resource, please contact rdm@bournemouth.ac.uk.

There is also a very informative youtube video Data Sharing and Management posted by NYU Health Sciences Library.

Innovate UK – emerging & enabling technologies – funding opportuntites

Funding opportunities, innovation, Knowledge Exchange

space SBRI

The Emerging and Enabling Technologies sector group is the new home for  support for early stage (emerging), cross-cutting (enabling) and broad scope (open) innovation across whole economy. (See the Delivery Plan 2016 to 2017 for more information on all the sector groups .)

Although this sector group contains the word technologies in its title, Innovate UK’s actions are guided by the principle that: “no-one buys technology; they buy what technology does for them.”    

The focus here is very early stage technologies, those still emerging, or only recently emerged, from the research base.

By ‘emerging’,  recognise  those technologies, methods and approaches developed in the UK’s scientific research base – primarily in universities – that allow us  to do things that simply couldn’t be done before (or could only be done in theory).

What these emerging technologies have in common is the potential to create totally new value propositions (and so to disrupt markets). Examples include graphene and quantum technologies.

Whilst sectors like Manufacturing and Materials or Health and Life Sciences turnover several hundreds of billions of pounds globally per year, by contrast, many of these early-stage, emerging technology sectors have very low, or even zero turnovers, typically below £10 million pa when we pick them up.

Examples of other high impact technologies include:

  • space and satellites
  • electronics, photonics and sensors
  • robotics and autonomous systems

It has now been admirably demonstrated that:

  • satellite technologies can be used in the fight against illegal fishing
  • advanced sensors can help in the earlier diagnosis of disease
  • compound semi-conductors can manage electrical power more effectively
  • robots can perform tasks in environments too dangerous for people to work in

You can follow Innovate UK on:

     

Workshop on Fear of Missing Out (FoMO) in Events & Festivals

What is FoMO and how does it shape event decision-making and event experience?

The Department of Events & Leisure within the Faculty of Management is at the forefront of research on FoMO (Fear of Missing Out) in events and it has recently held the first workshop on the topic. The project was developed under BU’s Undergraduate Research Assistantship (URA) scheme.

Helena Jarman, a final year BA Events Management student, spent 6 weeks researching the topic under the supervision of Dr. Miguel Moital. Besides researching the topic, Helena helped prepare and deliver the one-day workshop, which was attended by event managers from local Charities.

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As part of the legacy of her research assistanship, they recorded two videos:

  • In this video, Dr. Miguel Moital interviews Helena about the findings of their research.
  • In this second video, Helena talks about her 6 week research assistanship

The workshop was a success, with participants providing very positive feedback:

“This workshop helped me to understand how people use social media and the thought processes and emotions behind it. It’s a lot more complex than I realised. The information was clear and examples useful / relevant. I thought the workshop was really well put together, just the right balance of information and opportunity for discussion. It was good to have the opportunity to discuss events and share our marketing materials with other participants in a supportive environment. Thank you very much for an enjoyable and informative day. I would certainly recommend the training to others.”

Events & Fundraising Coordinator, Bournemouth

 

“The course has encouraged me to look at our events and establish ways to make them prestigious. It has also re-enforced the concept of providing the right tools to the potential attendees to enable the creation of FoMO. I have left the course understanding the language needed and the moral implications of FoMO. I would say therefore that the course has significantly increased my confidence in using FoMO as a marketing tool.”

Digital Projects Co-ordinator, Bournemouth

 

Helena also participated in the 1st Global Festival of Learning organised by Bournemouth University at Sunway University, Malaysia, where she co-presented with Miguel the results of their research.

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The department is planning to stage future workshops (in Bournemouth and London), so if you know any event managers/professionals who could be interested, ask them to register their interest by sending an email to Miguel (mmoital@bournemouth.ac.uk).