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At an early stage in your research career? Then come to one of our ECR Forums!

Over the next six months we are running a series of forums for academic colleagues who are at an early stage in their research career.  The first forum, held in July was a success and you can find out more about this session here.

The forums will be open, informal sessions where you can meet with a group of experienced academics and Julie Northam and Julia Taylor from the R&KEO to discuss anything you like to do with research. From publications to projects to funding to research strategy we will be on hand to help and advise. Lunch / refreshments will be provided.

 The forums will be held at the following times and you will need to book to confirm your attendance (this is so we can order enough food and refreshments in advance)

17 September 12:30 – 15:00 The Octagon, Talbot Campus

19 November 12:30 – 15:00 EB702, The Executive Business Centre, Lansdowne

11 December 12:30 – 15:00 Casterbridge, Talbot Campus

BU Centre for Face Processing Disorders featured in the Independent

Fusion

Bournemouth University’s new Centre for Face Processing Disorders (supported by HEIF and Fusion funds) was recently featured in an article in the Independent newspaper,  together with quotes from BU’s Dr Sarah Bate.

Sarah’s work to date has explored the cognitive presentation and treatment of face processing deficits in adults and children with a range of neuropsychological conditions, such as developmental or acquired prosopagnosia (face blindness), autistic spectrum disorder, and Moebius syndrome.  The Face Centre was launched in response to the large amount of media attention generated by Sarah’s research.  After Sarah’s work was featured in The Guardian newspaper and in a BBC1 documentary last year, she has been contacted by over 700 people who believe they have prosopagnosia and would like to participate in her research.  Given that most investigations into prosopagnosia to date have examined relatively small numbers of cases, Sarah now has the unique opportunity to develop large-scale academic and societal impact by having the resources to test this large patient group.

You can read the full article in the Independent here.

Follow the events in the Centre on their webpage or via Twitter (@BUfacecentre).

External Profile Pages

Guidance

The external staff profile pages that existed before BRIAN will be removed from the BU web site on Monday, 3rd September.  These have only been available internally for the last two months.  External visitors to the web site have been directed to the new staff profile pages since the introduction of BRIAN.

To find out how to improve your external profile page, please visit the guidance available for using BRIAN and how this populates your external profile page.  You can find user guides and short videos here.

ESRC Knowledge Exchange Opportunities scheme

Funding opportunities

The scheme provides the opportunity to apply for funding for knowledge exchange activities at any stage of the research lifecycle, and is aimed at maximising the impact of social science research outside academia.

The flexibility built into the scheme is intended to encourage applicants to think creatively about knowledge exchange, and applications are welcomed for either a single activity or a combination of activities; be it setting up a network to help inform the development of a research proposal, arranging an academic placement with a voluntary or business organisation, or developing tools such as podcasts and videos aimed at communicating the results of research to the general public, or developing existing research to make it more applicable to policy or practice.

Important changes to the Knowledge Exchange Opportunities scheme

Following comments from the community on the difficulty of securing cash contributions from user stakeholders, we have changed the scheme’s co-funding requirement so that partner contributions can now consist of any combination of cash or in-kind resources. The scheme has also been broadened to allow applications for new applied research, provided this is user-led or in collaboration with a user partner. Further details regarding these changes are outlined in the guidance documents below.

The call opened on 20 August 2012 and closes at 16.00 on 2 October 2012.

Call documents, including the scheme guidance are provided below:

Fellowship opportunities

Within this round of the Knowledge Exchange Opportunities scheme there is also the opportunity to apply for two prespecified placement fellowship projects. The first placement is with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Environment Agency, and the second placement is with the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The specification for each placement, including details of how to apply, can be found below:

ESRC aim to inform applicants of a decision on all applications within 26 weeks of the closing date for the call. Funding decisions will then be advertised on this website.

The RKE Operations team can help you with your application. Please direct any enquiries to RKE Ops in the first instance. Alternatively, contact ESRC at knowledgeexchange@esrc.ac.uk.

Future calls

  • 3 December 2012 – 7 February 2013
  • 3 April 2013 – 6 June 2013
  • 5 August 2013 – 3 October 2013

ICT SMEs in Horizon 2020

As many of you will know from my previous blogposts, I am always emphasising the importance of enagaging SMEs for Horizon 2020. Last week the EC has funded a survey aimed at increasing the participation of innovative companies from the information and communications technologies (ICT) in future research programmes. The survey aims to identify and characterise highly innovative ICT companies that do not participate in Framework projects, and assess their reasons for non-involvement. This is expected to feed into recommendations to improve the participation of SMEs in Horizon 2020, in a final report due in February 2013.

This is further evidence that enagaging SMEs in your Horizon 2020 proposals will be essential, so start networking now 🙂

 

EPSRC UK-India partnership in smart energy grids and energy storage technologies

The EPSRC, under the Research Council UK’s energy programme, and the Department of Science and Technology, New Delhi, have launched a joint call for proposals for their UK-India partnership in smart energy grids and energy storage technologies. This seeks to strengthen collaboration between UK and Indian research institutions within an overarching focus on research relating to smart energy grids and energy storage technologies. Proposals must address one of the following areas:

•appropriate distributed storage technologies;

•on/off grid energy systems;

•DC networks;

•control and communications.

Projects must be joint activities involving research groups from both India and the UK, and must involve personnel exchange between the Indian and UK partners. All proposals must be for consortia, with equal or proportionate participation from UK and Indian researchers. UK applicants must be the principal investigator or co-investigator on a current Research Council award. Higher education institutions, some Research Council institutes and independent research organisations are eligible to apply.

The costs for UK institutions will be met by EPSRC, and those for Indian institutions will be met by DST. EPSRC will contribute up to £5 million for this call over a three-year period with matched resources from DST. The deadline is 15.11.12

Fusion Investment Fund: Strengthening Service Computing Research in Bournemouth University

Fusion

I was inspired to send a proposal to the fusion investment fund on a hint by Prof. Mark Hadfield. I was helping with DEC internationalisation affairs, and in a meeting Mark  mentioned that we would like to have more international visiting professors in DEC. As I have built up an extensive international network,  together with my co-investigator Dr. Paul de Vrieze, we asked a number of distinguished Professors in The Netherlands, Australia and China to apply for visiting professorships. Four full professors with world wide research reputations were willing to accept the offer.

Their visiting can strongly enhance research culture and postgraduate teaching especially in relation to our newly validated MSc. Enterprise Information Systems and PhD research in the area of service computing, e-government, computational intelligence and ubiquitous computing. 

As all four visiting professors hold rich research funding and experience, the project allows face-to-face opportunities to collaborate on project proposals, research papers and other research activities that can kick start discussions for collaboration and joined project proposals.

Based on our new MSc Enterprise Information Systems we have already received inquiries on professional practice. Prof. Keith Phalp, our third co-applicant has been contacted by Welsh Government Chief Information Officer Michael Eaton. We are going to organize public panels or other industrial engagement opportunities by our visiting professors.

To prepare the application I looked at the call for proposals for the FIF and attended one of the workshops about the fund. At the workshop I explained my ideas to Prof. Matthew Bennett, with the question which Fusion Investment Fund strand to follow. Matthew gave very clear direction that the appropriate strand would be to apply for (inward) study leave from the Fusion Investment Fund. In general, we saw that our proposal has a great opportunity to integrate education, research and professional practice. The project will run from Nov 2012 to May 2013, and we hope it will bring many further opportunities to Bournemouth University.

Good Luck and Congratulations!

Awarded & submitted bids

Congratulations to Dean Wright (Media School) for securing funding from both Air-site Ltd and Dorling Kindersley Ltd and Kathy Hodder (ApSci) for securing funding from Fieldwork Ecological Services Ltd.

Good luck to Jaqui Hewitt-Taylor (HSC) for her Nuffield Foundation Outline application, Heather Hartwell (School of Tourism), Barry Richards (Media School), Darren Lilleker (Media School), Anita Diaz (ApSci), Rob Britton (ApSci) and Elena Cantarello (ApSci) for their applications to EC – Marie Curie – IEF and Jian Chang (Media School) for his application to EC – Marie Curie – IIF.

Impact factors or further thoughts on where do I publish?

News from the PVC

I came across this brilliant paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) this weekend.  An elegantly written plea for research to be assessed on its quality not the impact factor of the journal in which it is published.  As the authors state ‘we must forego using impact factors as a proxy for excellence and replace them with in-depth analyses of the science produced.’  As the article outlines impact factors where developed by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) originally as an aid to librarians making decision about which journals to purchase.  Today it is part of the decision making process for many academics that surrounds where to publish being held as a proxy for journal prestige.  As the Eve and her colleagues point out ‘the least important paper published in a journal shares the impact factor with the most important papers in the same journal’, and therefore the impact factor of a journal may not accurately reflect the quality of all the work within it and as such is a flawed proxy.

You only have to go back a couple of years to find a fierce debate about the use of bibliometrics within REF2014, something which has been reduced in the final submission framework to a few select units of assessment where citation date will be used.  In fact the REF codes make an explicit statement that quality assessment of an output will be made on the basis of the quality of the research not any perceived journal ranking system whether it be impact factors or the ABS list (Association of Business Schools).  This is to be applauded, but can you take natural journal prejudices, based on things like the ABS list, impact factors or for that matter subject convention, out of the academics undertaking the reviews?  Having now chaired one of our mock assessment panels I am left wondering whether you can?  It will pose a serious challenge to the objectivity and veracity of the REF if one can’t.

Despite this reservation the plea made by Eve and her colleagues is to be welcomed; research should be published where it is best suited, will get read by the people who need to read it within ones discipline, where it will encourage debate and in turn drive further research.  It does not make the decision of where to publish any easier for early career academics, but I would encourage all those involved in providing advice to them, to read the impassioned plea made by Eve and her colleagues and move from default references to impact factors and ranking lists.

Work in labs? Got links in Africa? Then this will be good news for you!

A £15.3 million (US$24 million) fund to build links between African research laboratories and strengthen their research capacity through mentoring has been launched by the Royal Society (the UK’s science academy) and the UK Department for International Development (DFID). The aim is to provide equipment and training for African scientists, and to establish researcher exchange programmes between the United Kingdom and Sub-Saharan Africa. Start-up grants of up to US$39,000 will assist the formation of research consortia, and larger grants of almost US$2 million will then support specific research programmes over a five-year period. To qualify for the larger grants, projects must involve a consortium of one UK laboratory and three African laboratories. Calls for proposals will be launched in November, but keep an eye on the DFID website for more announcements.

De Hogeweyk: unique lifestyle housing for people with dementia

I (Marilyn Cash, HSC) recently had the opportunity to visit De Hogeweyk a nursing home in the Netherlands that provides care to 152 people in the later stages of dementia. Unlike traditional nursing homes, De Hogeweyk is designed as a small self contained village with 23 individual homes, a supermarket, a hair and beauty salon, restaurant, theatre and traditional Dutch ‘brown cafe’. The homes are designed to reflect seven different typical Dutch ‘lifestyles’, identified by Motivaction a social research agency:-
1. Traditional for residents whose identity came from carrying out a traditional profession
2. City for “urbanized” residents whose life had been spent in the centre of the city
3. “Het Gooi” for residents who attach importance to manners, etiquette, and external appearance
4. Cultural: for residents who appreciate art and fine culture
5. Christian: for residents for whom practicing their Christian religion is an important part of daily life
6. Indonesian: a lifestyle for residents with an Indonesian background
7. Homey: for residents who believe that caring for the family and household is important.

De Hogeweyk allows residents to experience life as if they were living in the community but from within a safe and secure environment. Residents are able to take part in everyday activities in their homes supported by a team of staff and volunteers. They are able to walk freely through the streets and gardens which are designed to reflect normal life with street signs, streetlights, benches and squares where people can congregate. Being able to move freely around not only contributes to their health but also gives a feeling of ‘being at home’. The feeling of normality is further supported by the fact that none of the staff wear uniforms. The scheme has been designed to integrate with the local community and the facilities are open to anyone, not just to residents and their families.
A total of 240 staff (equivalent to 170 full-time jobs) work at De Hogeweyk; this includes, nurses, nursing assistants, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, a full-time doctor and a Psychiatrist. They are supported by 120 volunteers, who are mostly retired people living in the local community. Many of the volunteers live alone and appreciate the social interaction that volunteering gives them. Residents are funded through the Dutch national insurance scheme for long-term care
De Hogeweyk has been criticised for being a deception; but I think that most people reading this would prefer this ‘lifestyle’ to that offered by a traditional nursing home.

Handing over the BU REF baton

Research assessment

Well, the day has finally come when I’m to hand over the BU REF baton to Peng Peng Ooi who is to take over as the BU Research Development Officer for the REF while I am on maternity leave. She’s had a crash course in all things REF since she began at the RDU in July and has very much landed in at the deep end because of the mock REF exercise on outputs that’s currently taking place!

This hasn’t put her off though, and she’s poised ready to take things forward in the coming months prior to the REF submission deadline in November 2013.

It just remains to wish you all the very best with your submissions and to thank you for your cooperation with the REF preparations so far. Don’t forget to keep an eye on the blog for all BU REF-related information. See you next year!

Anita Somner

Research Development Officer (REF)