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Journal Citation Reports® (JCR) 2013 now available

The 2013 Edition of Journal Citation Reports® (JCR) provides a combination of impact and influence metrics, and millions of cited and citing journal data points that comprise the complete journal citation network of Web of ScienceSM.

The 2013 Edition of JCR includes:

  • More than 10,800 of the world’s most highly cited, peer reviewed journals in 232 disciplines
  • Nearly 2,500 publishers and 83 countries represented
  • 379 journals receiving their first Journal Impact Factor

Data from the JCR can be used to provide a quantitative, systematic review of the world’s leading journals.

You can access  the JCR and Scopus’s corresponding Journal Analyzer tool via the Library A-Z List of Databases.

If you need any help researching and finding information, using library researcher tools, navigating reference management software or advice on depositing your open access materials in BURO via BRIAN please get in touch with your School Library Team.

British Society of Criminology Annual Conference 2013

Last week the University of Wolverhampton hosted the annual conference of the British Society of Criminology. The Parellel sessions covered a wide range of topics including policing, prisons, diversity, media and culture and gender. Highlights for me were papers on cyberstalking by Italian teenagers and the development of websites that sell illicit drugs with a specific focus on the techonology behind one site Silk Road.

For anyone with a specific interest in prisons and offender welfare some interesting prelimary findings from the largest UK survey of prisoners were presented and this research will be published over the next few months with the first pblication due out at the end of July.

There was also a fascinating paper on research into the experience of prisoners that was conducted by a group of prisoner officers who undertook training in ethnographic research  and were assigned to research prisons where their status as a prison officer was unknown. The paper focused on the impact that undertaking the research had upon the prison officer researchers.

My paper , Exploring female drug-taking during the First World War generated a lively discussion on the female role in drug dealing and law-breaking.

It was an excellent conference and I would like to thank Rosie Read for supporting my application to the Society and Social Welfare Community Budget which enabled me to attend.

Inventions and Intellectual Property Law comes alive at the Festival of Design and Innovation 2013

Fusion

The annual Festival of Design and Innovation (FoDI) opened on Thursday 20 June 2013.  It was an opportunity for students from the School of Design, Engineering and Computing (DEC) to exhibit their innovations and creations. “A cake icing pen, a computer game controlled by brain power and a glamping pod were just some of the ground-breaking ideas and inventions on display at this year’s FoDI.”

During the academic year, final year students from DEC are paired off with final year students from the Law Department studying Intellectual Property (IP) Law.  The law students are tasked with advising their DEC clients on the protection and exploitation of their innovative creations.  The DEC clients then incorporate the advice which they have received from the ‘lawyers’ into their final year projects.

The IP-DEC Project brings Intellectual Property law to life.  It gives an opportunity for law students to apply IP Law to real-life inventions and in turn it helps the DEC client to understand the importance of strong IP protection when preparing to protect, market and exploit their various creations.

The IP-DEC Project culminates with Awards for the Best DEC Student; Best IP Student and Best IP-DEC Group sponsored by Paul Turner, a retired Patent Attorney.

The Paul Turner Prize for the best IP-DEC Group was awarded at the opening night of the Festival.  The prize was awarded to Law Students Danielle Foster and Luke Trim and DEC Students Benjamen Armstrong, George Burge, Joseph Carter, Markko Reinberg, Nicholas Cron, Thomas Clements and Thomas Reynolds.

Paul Turner with two of the winning DEC students and law students Luke Trim and Danielle Foster.

The Paul Turner Individual Prize for the Best IP Student went to Gemma Jefferies whilst the Paul Turner Prize for the Best DEC Student was awarded to Coco Canessa.  The Individual Prize winners will officially receive their awards at the Graduation Ceremony in November 2013.

The opportunity to apply Intellectual Property Law to real-life scenarios and to real-life innovations together with helping the DEC clients to grasp the importance of IP law, makes this project truly unique.

The IP-DEC Project is co-ordinated by Dr. Dinusha Mendis (Law); Dr. Tania Humphries (DEC); and Dr. Reza Sahandi (DEC).

 

Looking to the Horizons

News from the PVC

One of the fundamental foundations of BU2018 is that we should take an outward looking perspective, a look beyond the campus boundary.  It is a significant feature within our commitment to societally led research and our commitment to Professional Practice as a core component of Fusion.  This practice is about engagement with external stake holders contributing via thought leadership and research but above all else listening and channelling that information inward to ensure that the research we do is relevant to the big issues our society faces and that the education we deliver also meets society’s needs.  It is the difference between a self-determined research and educational agenda – ‘we know best’ – to one that places listening and responding to societal need at its core.  It is this idea that lies behind our eight societal research themes which have been live now for over 18 months.  They act as shop windows for our research, as vehicles for inter-disciplinary and cross-university collaboration and as a rallying point for our different research communities. 

They were informed at inception by the key themes identified by funding councils and government strategy, filtered through our bespoke academic footprint.  It was always intended that there would be an element of Darwinian competition between them and that they would change over time to reflect emerging strengths within the organisation and changing external agenda. 

I launched a quick review of the research themes at the start of 2013 and after some discussion within the University Research and Knowledge Exchange (URKE) Committee some changes were recommended to strengthen our proposition and to ensure visibility of some of our core strengths.  The explicit recognition (and also control) of subthemes was one outcome, as was the recognition of Aging and Dementia as a separate theme in light of the fantastic work of BU Dementia Institute.  The total number of themes remains at eight and the list below provides confirmation of the changes agreed by the URKE Committee and will come into enforce from the September. 

1. Creative, Digital and Cognitive Science

  • NCCA
  • Big Data Centre
  • Creative Design
  • Software systems and security
  • Cognition in Action

2. Communities, Cultures and Conflicts NCPQSW

  • Crisis and conflict
  • Diversity and difference
  • Past peoples and societies

 3. Entrepreneurship and Economic Growth

  • Centre for Entrepreneurship

4. Biodiversity, Environmental Change and Green Economy

  • Biodiversity
  • Green economy and sustainability

5. Lifelong Health and wellbeing

  • Psychology, health and human fulfilment
  • Health and practice development

6. Leisure, Recreation and Tourism  

7. Ageing, Society and Dementia      

8. Technology and Design

  • Medical and robotic engineering
  • Renewable technology
  • SMART technology

NERC peer review college call for members 2013

I don’t need to sell you the benefit of sitting on a funder review panel as I know you are already aware of what a fantastic experience this is in terms of meeting potential collaborators, learning how the assessment process works and discovering what makes a great proposal. BU’s Dr Richard Shipway is a peer reviewer for the ESRC and recently wrote an excellent blog post on the benefits of being a peer reviewer. You can read Richard’s post here.

 

You may recall that NERC recently announced initiatives to increase confidence in peer review; these include measures to increase the status and performance of the NERC College. As a result they are currently recruiting for members of their Peer Review College with the nomination deadline of 5 August 2013.

BU is fully supportive of you becoming a reviewer, including helping with ensuring you have time to perform reviews for funding bodies. If you want to take up this opportunity, please email me and I can inform you of the BU process for this.

CEMP Conversation / Cluster

Funding opportunities, PG research, Publishing

Audio extracts of our CEMP conversation last week are here:

(1) Discussion of Marketa Zezulkova’s book chapter on a holistic approach to media literacy:

Marketa’s article: discussion

(2) Discussion of Richard Wallis’ journal article on media literacy and policy discourse: Richard’s article – discussion

And a reminder that the final CEMP Research & Innovation cluster meeting of the year is this Thursday the 11th July, 10-11am in the CEMP office, Iain MacRury is joining us to discuss a new AHRC call.  The latest version of the CEMP R&I bulletin is here: CEMP Cluster bulletin and agenda 4.7.13

 

 

How can we help you meet your research goals? (or things I wish I had known as an early career researcher) (Demystifying the research process part 2)

Research is difficult. And like the loneliness of the long distance runner it can be isolating too.  The aim of this post is demystify some of those early career uncertainties about what is expected, and to think about how we can work together in research as process (rather than content). It is underpinned by the questions: what should an early career researcher be aiming for? And how can we help those goals be identified, made manageable and achievable?  It is based on a session I recently ran with some of my early career research colleagues.

We set aside a morning to begin this conversation. We started with a discussion about some of the constraints and barriers to research, both across the sector and within BU.  Across the sector, government the Russell Group’s response to this (grr) all militate to pose greater challenges than perhaps 10 or 20 years ago.  Within BU there are also a set of strategic goals across the University, schools and groupings. And of course, colleagues also have their own personal research goals.

Having discussed this wider context, we then began to think and talk about what we would want to achieve with our own research and how these goals might align with the context we are in. We did this through a conversations around a set of questions about research as process:
e.g. what is research?
what  does a good research profile look like?
Where do you want your research to be at the end of the summer? After one year? Three years? (full set of discussion questions available from me hsavigny@bournemouth.ac.uk)

Through these conversations we then generated a series of outcomes:

  • Colleagues developed realistic research plans for over the summer (which included holiday away from research and work generally)
  • Shared practice on how to develop a research timeline for the forthcoming year and for three years
  • The request for both a bespoke grants academy session (in current discussion with the research office who offer some great support here) and a writing workshop (to be organised by me and held in the Autumn)
  • An agreement to run a series of research ‘brown bag’ sessions where we discuss the research we did over the summer (and we have just heard that we have now been able to get a one hour research session in to our timetable.  This is so that discussions about research content and as process can continue throughout the year)
  • A plan to hold a ‘meet the editors, publishers and grant reviewers’ session (again as part of the demystification process)
  • A plan to establish an electronic discussion forum on linkedin so that research plans, ideas and good practice can be shared

Why I think this will work:

  • I think sometimes in the midst of everything (exam boards and marking and reassessment and emails etc etc etc) we can forget that research is fun. Having a bespoke session where we think specifically about research and hear about each other’s projects is just good fun and can be quite energising
  • Colleagues have some amazing ideas and research projects
  • To have a space to talk about why research is difficult, and to understand that many researchers feel like that, can help with those feelings of isolation.  Working collaboratively is not only about working together on content.  The isolation and loneliness that can accompany research can also be tackled if we think of research as process; it doesn’t matter if someone works in my area or not, we can still engage in the exchange and challenging of ideas
  • We have set small, achievable goals, as well as having done some long term planning.

I am more than happy to share what we did. If you would like to know more about the above or the writing workshops, or think of doing something similar yourself, please do get in touch

 

 

‘Seen but Seldom Heard’ an on-going collaboration between BU academics and Victoria Education Centre, Poole, is taking to the stage again

Seen but Seldom Heard multi-media performance, July 8th, 7pm, West Lulworth Village Hall

 

West Lulworth Village Hall

Church Road, West Lulworth, Dorset BH20 5SG Monday 8 July 2013, 7pm (doors open).

 

‘Seen but Seldom Heard’, an on-going collaboration between BU academics and Victoria Education Centre, Poole, is taking to the stage again – this time in the seaside village of West Lulworth.

  The aim of Seen but Seldom Heard, a participatory research project using arts-based methods, is to offer a group of young disabled people a ‘voice’ to collectively question and challenge existing dominant perceptions and representations of disability by sharing their own personal stories through the medium of performance poetry.

   Next Monday’s event will celebrate the achievements of the current group of young poets before many of them leave school this summer. Compered by professional performance poets, Liv Torc and Johnny Fluffypunk, the evening will showcase work using multi-media performance including film, live poetry reading, comedy and song. Four students who received one-to-one mentoring from the professional poets, funded by BU AimHigher, will also perform their individual ‘sets’.

 Seen but Seldom Heard will continue in 2013/14 with a new group of young poets from Victoria Education Centre with further performances already being planned.

Major Funders – Update

Funding opportunities

The following opportunities have been announced. Please follow the links for more information:

You can set up your own personalised alerts on ResearchProfessional. If you need help setting these up, just ask your School’s RKE Officer in RKE Operations or see the recent post on this topic.

“BU ACADEMIC PARTICIPATES IN INTERNATIONAL ROUNDTABLE CONSULTATION TO DEVELOP ENTREPRENEURIAL LEADERSHIP INITIATIVE

“BU ACADEMIC PARTICIPATES IN INTERNATIONAL ROUNDTABLE CONSULTATION TO DEVELOP ENTREPRENEURIAL LEADERSHIP INITIATIVE

 Stephen Copp has recently participated by invitation in an international roundtable consultation at Oxford University for senior academics, business practitioners and religious leaders interested in the intersection of business, faith and development and its global implications. This opportunity arose as part of the development of the Entrepreneurial Leadership Initiative (“ELI”) launched earlier this year by the Oxford Centre for Christianity and Culture. “

Bringing industry and education together through the ‘F’ word…

Fusion

… Fusion, of course! Dan Jackson, Melanie Gray and Tasos Theofilou report on setting up a national competition for PR students.

This time last year we had just submitted a Fusion bid with the aim of setting up a national PR competition for final year UG and PG students. The idea was simple: we set up an intra-university and PR industry body; give it a catchy name – we chose ‘Amilla’, which is Greek for ‘healthy competition’; get a big-name PR agency to set a brief for students to respond to; teams of students from across UK PR education then submit a written pitch, with the best five being invited to the PR agency’s offices to pitch and a winner announced amid great fanfare.

We knew it was a good idea, we knew what we needed to do, but getting others to believe in it and commit to it was always going to be the biggest challenge. Thankfully, the Fusion committee believed in it and we received funding to support our endeavors. We set up a website, recruited and met with a coordinating committee, articulated a mission, set the competition rules – so far so good.

Looking back, this was the easy part. We had so far targeted those we knew would be most enthusiastic and able to contribute. The bigger challenge was persuading other colleagues in PR education to champion the competition and encourage their students to participate. Again, we knew the idea was strong – it’s about having greater ambition for our students and giving them a greater external platform, which can enhance their employability etc etc! – however, getting other PR lecturers to support the venture was a surprisingly big challenge, which stretched us to our limits.

In the end we got an adequate number of entries, and were able to shortlist five teams for the finals. The finals day was a genuine success, with strong representation from the PR industry and PR education from across the country. The quality of student work was outstanding and was highly praised by the PR agency that was judging. The feedback from participating students was overwhelmingly positive.

So it is onwards and upwards for next year’s competition, which will be hosted by the University of Central Lancashire. We will continue to grow the network of PR educators and industry, and have a sustainable model from which to move forwards.

Oh, and in case you were wondering who won the first Amilla competition, it was a team of BU students. And before you start thinking of the other ‘F’ word, it definitely was not a FIX!!

 

 

 

 

Keeping abreast of new research in infant feeding

PG research

The Nutrition and Nurture in Infancy and Childhood Conference, providing an international interdisciplinary arena, offered the ideal opportunity for us to present infant feeding research and teaching materials developed at BU. With a wide range of research studies presented over the course of three days, we were able to absorb new and innovative research enhancing our understanding of socio-cultural, political and economic influences upon infant and child feeding practices both in the UK and across the world.

Alison presented for the first time preliminary findings of her PhD research study, which is exploring women’s experience of breastfeeding using video diaries. She used video clips to illustrate the daily struggles some women faced and the roller coaster ride that inevitably ensued over the first few weeks following birth, which brought the audience close to tears. The novel research method and opportunity to see and hear women’s diaries generated good discussion and also identified links with findings from other research being presented at the conference.

Dr Catherine Angell sharing research with conference delegates

 

Catherine presented a poster of research which found that coverage of infant feeding in national newspapers in England over a one month period in 2011 was ‘bad news for breastfeeding’ because of the many negative connotations linked with breastfeeding compared to formula feeding. This created a good deal of interest and debate about the effects of media on the culture of infant feeding in the UK.

 

 

And we both presented a poster promoting BURP for infant feeding, an online resource that we have developed at BU to support student midwives and health practitioners in their professional practice to provide better care for mothers and babies. This poster provided the ideal opportunity for delegates to discuss the benefits and drawbacks of online distance learning as well as promoting the package itself.

Alison Taylor and Dr Catherine Angell promote 'BURP for infant feeding'

Running over three days, the conference enabled us to maximise networking opportunities with national and international colleagues in research, education and professional practice. These strong links will no doubt continue for some time providing us with opportunities for further collaboration.

Caught Somewhere in Time: Research takes Ages! (Demystifying the research process part 1)

Publishing

We got a book contract today. And what a herculean effort that feels; talk about delayed gratification.  My friend/co-editor and I first discussed the idea 2 years ago, when we saw a publisher’s call for proposals.  Yeah that sounds cool, we thought. So we worked out our broad ideas and the people that we wanted to contribute.  Our focus was mainly on early career scholars who are producing some real ‘cutting edge’ research and we invited them to submit work for review. My co-editor and I then worked on the narrative that would frame the book, as well as finding out that all important information that publishers want to know: who will buy it.  Probably around 6 or so months after our original conversation and discussion with series editors we were ready to submit our proposal.

And then we waited.

About six months later we got back in touch with the series editors, ‘any news from the publishers’….’we’ll get back to you’

And so we waited.

Then we got a reply to the effect that the proposal had been lost and then under a pile somewhere and then the person involved had been on holiday etc but they would get back to us with comments.

And so we waited.

This was now about 18 months after our original idea. And so we decided to approach another publisher. We did this in December last year.

As the contributors were mainly early career scholars,the publishers asked us to invite someone ‘famous’ to get involved. You can imagine our surprise, and delight, when not only did we get one of, if not THE  leading scholar in the discipline to write our foreword. And then it  just got a bit better. We invited one of the leading activists in the field to write an afterword. And she said yes 🙂

The publisher then  asked to provide a sample chapter. I wrote the first draft of this in January on the writing workshop that we held. By the end of January we had our ‘famous’ people in place, our sample chapter and what we thought was a good proposal in place.  Our editor at the publishers was set to go off on holiday in March, and so she assured us she would get back touch by the end of February.

And then we waited.

The reviewers were slow, one disappeared and a new one had to be found. We got reviewers comments back in May. We revised our introductory sample chapter in light of these comments and resubmitted to the publisher within about two weeks.

We then had a (relatively short wait)

The chapter and proposal went back out to review, and we were then asked, would we do the minor things the reviewers asked. Of course, we said (a pragmatic) YES!

And so, today, 2 years after we first chatted through our ideas, and then planned our book, we have a contract.  And of course it doesn’t end there. We now have to collect the chapters, get them reviewed. If we can get this done by next Easter, we are setting ourselves ambitious goals. From manuscript submission to holding the book in your hands includes copyediting, indexing, proofs to read, and of course the print run.  And of course, before all of that it has to go back out for review. This can take anything from 9-18 months.

Our book is therefore likely to have a 2015 publication date (if we are lucky) which given we acted upon our original idea in 2011, does feel rather a long time!

 

Gender in 21st Century Popular Culture:the Politics of being a woman in the 21st century, editors Heather Savigny & Helen Warner (Basingstoke:Palgrave) may well be coming eventually to a bookstore near you.

with thanks to my early career colleagues in CMC, the Media School and Iain MacRury