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REF Highlight Report #10

Research assessment

REF logoThe latest REF Highlight Report is now available from the Research Blog.

Key points include updates on:

  • progress towards the Winter 2011 REF preparation exercise
  • publication of the final REF guidance on submissions in July 2011
  • the consultation on the panel working methods and criteria
  • the appointment of Sally Gates as the REF Communications Manager
  • the RASG and RALT meetings held between May and October

You can access the full document from the I-drive via this link: REF Highlight Report #10

If you are accessing the report from off-campus then you will need to locate the following folder on the I-drive: CRKT\Public\RDU\REF\REF preparations\REF highlight reports\#10

Permaculture – towards sustainable living?

Permaculture: presentation by Theresa McManus
23rd November, 13.00-14.00, Shelley LT
Permaculture is about designing human settlements and agricultural systems modelled on relationships found in nature. It is about self-sufficiency, farming, gardening, smallholding and sustainable living. But more than that it is an ecological design system for sustainability that teaches us how to build natural homes, grow our own food, restore diminished landscapes and ecosystems, harvest rainwater, build communities and much more.
Theresa McManus, Sustainability Manager for DEAC (Dorset’s Energy Advice Centre) is a committed environmentalist, community activist and permaculturalist. She is focussed on promoting sustainability, increasing biodiversity, reducing carbon emissions and saving the planet. On 23rd November between 13.00 and 14.00 she will give a talk on permaculture.
So if you are interested please come along.

Studying Green – a film to inspire learning and debate

Green is a film worth watching. As the website suggests http://studyinggreen.wordpress.com/ It is both a hard hitting portrayal of the causes and consequences of deforestation in Indonesia, and a film which captures the tranquillity and calm of wild nature. It contains no narrative or dialogue and yet helps us understand complex commodity chains. It was made with a small camera by a single person on a tourist visa, and has beaten much larger production teams, and healthily funded groups to the most prestigious prizes in environmental film-making. And if that is not enough Green was not made for sale or profit, instead you can watch and download it for free at the film’s website (or see below for how to get a DVD of it). The website also contains a series of short essays put forward by academics, who have seen the film,

Share files easily with the new BU Transfer service!

Guidance

As part of the Collaborative Tools for Academics project, we have been looking at ways of enhancing the support available to academics to share information both internally and externally. Feedback from colleagues indicated that the University’s file transfer service was not adequate and required improvement. I am delighted today to launch the new file transfer service – BU Transfer.

BU Transfer will enable you to quickly and easily share large files with colleagues internally and externally via a web browser.

You can access BU Transfer from the Staff Portal, the Research Blog and MyBU via this icon.

We are very interested in your feedback regarding the service. Please could you forward all comments to Amina Uddin.

Best wishes

Matthew

Partner sought for Green Materials FP7 Project

The School of Applied Sciences at Cranfield University in the UK is looking for partners to develop innovative advanced lightweight materials for the next generation of environmentally-friendly electric vehicles. This would include materials using thermoplastics, polymer nanocomposites and fibre-reinforced polymers, composites, and deploy them into the body parts, chassis and heavier interior systems. The project would also look at reducing the structural weight of materials, exploiting new material characteristics, developing related production processes, and carrying out life-cycle and cost-model analyses.You can read more details on the project here.

The CORDIS Partners Service helps you to find research collaborators in order to benefit from EU or other funding. You can also search by profile type, programme and/or country to find project partners.

Technology Strategy Board – Updates

Funding opportunities, Guidance

The Technology Strategy Board, which delivers the Knowledge Transfer Partnership scheme, has announced:

  • New funding criteria from the ESRC and BBSRC – ESRC Criteria for KTP support 2011 and  BBSRC Criteria for KTP Support 2011
  • Updated financial procedures for timely claiming and payment of awards
  • Applications for Shorter KTPs are now re-opened during the migration of KTPs to a streamlined 6 to 36 month scheme
  • A new version of Guidance Notes for Grant Application and Proposal Forms has been issued
  • An updated Management Handbook for KTPs – for Supervisors was released in October 2011
  • There is a competition for KTPs in Multicore and Parallel Processing  – closing date 24/11/11
  • Ashorne Hill have been selected to provide the new training package for Associates

As the TSB releases more information on KTP scheme, I will be posting this on the blog, so watch out for more news.

Please contact me if you have any queries about current or future KTPs, in the first instance. Further information is also available on the KTP website. For those interested in developing KTPs and networking with others with the same interests, the TSB recommends that you join the Knowledge Transfer Network.

Emily Cieciura (Research & Knowledge Exchange Operations)

ecieciura@bournemouth.ac.uk or 01202 968241

In search of a friendly physicist…

Guidance

Recently I have been doing some work looking at Ontology and the nature of Truth and have become interested in some of the ideas discussed in theoretical physics, such as multiple dimensions, space time, unified theories, observer effects, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle……….

My work relates to the authenticity of food.  A big gap I know, but I would like to have a chat with someone so that I can ask some naive questions such as, how can you have a very small dimension?

I will buy lunch or coffee.

Yours expectantly

Sean Beer

School of Tourism

(Sorry if this sounds like an add from the personal columns)

Want more funding for Social Sciences and Humanities Research? Then you should sign this petition to the EC!

A consortium called ‘Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities for the Future of Europe’ is seeking signatures to an open letter addressed to the EC which advocates the inclusion of a socio-economic sciences and humanities(SSH) research programme in Horizon 2020 (FP7’s replacement).   

The group comprises a number of organisations including Net4Society, the network of National Contact Points for SSH, ALLEA, the European Federation of National Academies of Sciences and Humanities, and ECHIC, the European Consortium of Humanities Institutes and Centres. 

The letter outlines the crucial role to be played by social sciences and humanities research in addressing societal challenges and informing EU policy, and makes a number of specific requests:
1. that a ‘substantial and independent’ SSH programme (called ‘Understanding Europe’), with a ring-fenced budget of €5 billion, be included in Horizon 2020;
2. that there are opportunities for SSH research to contribute to other challenges relating to climate change, energy, food, health, security and transport;
3. that a diversity of approaches are encouraged; and
4.that the research supported should include ‘perspectives from different cultures, backgrounds and schools of thought to stimulate critical reflections and to better anticipate future societal challenges’.

In a week since its issue, the open letter has collected a staggering 3, 700 signatures from a wide range of countries. It takes only a few seconds to sign and I did mine this morning. If you’re involved in social sciences or humanities research, make your signature count so future EC funds for your area are fair and sign today!

ResearcherID – an online tool for building a publications profile

What is ResearcherID?

ResearcherID is a facility provided via the Thomson Reuters ISI Web of Knowledge database. You can register for a unique researcher identification number which enables you to link directly to your published outputs and avoid the common problem of author misidentification. Users can update their profile information, build their publication list by using the Thomson Reuters Web of Science search facilities or by uploading files, and opt to make their profile public or private. Registered as well as non-registered users can search the ResearcherID registry to view profiles and find potential collaborators. You can also now search ResearcherID from within the Web of Science.

A ResearcherID number is a unique identifier that consists of alphanumeric characters. Each number contains the year you registered.

The benefits of registering for ResearcherID

The main benefit is the ability to build your own custom profile and correctly identify you as the author of your publications. Once registered, you will be provided with the tools to build your publication list by searching ISI Web of Knowledge and Web of Science, or by uploading your own list. You can choose whether or not to make your profile public.

ResearcherID is also integrated with EndNote Web, so you can build your online publication list either by searching Web of Science or uploading RIS files, or by using the EndNote Web online search. You can also manage your publication list via EndNote Web. For a tutorial on using EndNote Web, click here.

Once you’ve put together your publications list, you can then generate the following citation metrics for items available in the Web of Science:

  • H-index
  • Citation distribution per year
  • Total Times Cited count
  • Average Times Cited count

These metrics will be automatically updated in ResearcherID from the Web of Science as new data is added to the Web of Science.

ResearcherID can also help you find potential research collaborators by enabling you to search the ResearcherID registry. You can also explore an interactive map that can help you locate researchers by country and topic, or you can use the new country ‘tag cloud’.

Registering for ResearcherID

Go to the ResearcherID homepage then click on ‘Register’ and complete the short online form. You will be sent an email with a link to ResearcherID and a more detailed form appears for you to complete. Once you have completed this, and accepted the terms and conditions, you will receive your unique ResearcherID. Note that you will be sent these details in an email.

When you log in using your ResearcherID and password, you will be taken to your own publications web page with a unique URL. You can include this link on your email signatures so that others can easily access your publications.

Managing your publications

Under ‘MyPublications’ you will have an option to ‘Add’. Alternatively there is an ‘Add Publications’ button on the right hand side of the screen that will take you to the same location. This will give you the three options of searching for or adding a file:

  • ISI Web of Science
  • EndNote Web
  • RIS text file

Clicking on the publications database will bring up a search screen. Ensure that your surname and initials are correctly entered and click search. Any publications that are already included on your ResearcherID web page will appear in the list and be ticked already. If you wish to add others, tick the relevant box and click ‘Add selections to MyPublications’. The process works the same for all databases. Please note that you need to have an EndNote Web account.

To delete publications, simply click on the ‘Manage’ button under MyPublications.

For a ResearcherID factsheet, click here.

ST research methods seminars – exploding beans, quantitative data collection, Hamlet and Brian Cox…

Guidance

As previously mentioned, the School of Tourism has launched a programme of seminars on research methods for its research students.  The 12 seminars over the next 4 months provide an introduction to the broad range of research methods used by our PhD students, and I thought that  you  might like an update, now that we are three seminars into the programme. 

I led the first seminar on Initial Considerations in Research, where we examined issues relating to ontology, epistemology and axiology.  This time, the can of beans did not explode (a long story) and the interest (or was it confusion) has given rise to a series of potential parallel seminars looking at Philosophy.  The first two titles in this sub-series are: Towards a true understanding of reality. Ha, ha, ha! and The definitive guide to post modernism. Ha, ha, ha! (or alternatively, a spurious siren from the pre-ancient. Tears, crying and woe?).

The second session brought us back down to earth when Professor Roger Vaughan looked at the Quantitative Data Collection Process.  Roger has a fantastic ability to produce a coherent structure on which to hang complex ideas.  His emphasis on preparing well in order to make data collection easy (ier) was an object lesson for those tempted to charge headlong into gathering data without some deep reflection, as were his insights into the way that elements of what you do at the start of a PhD reappear and eventually come full circle.

The third session, led by Dr Lorraine Brown, looked at The Features of Qualitative Research.  I think that Lorraine exhibits a really embodied understanding of the qualitative research process and this came across in the seminar.  Naively some think that qualitative research is easy, possibly because they haven’t done it -“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy” Hamlet 1:5.  Student and staff jaws did drop when she mentioned that she had managed to realize 10 research papers from her PhD.  Another object lesson to us all.  As was the quote from the Physicist Professor Brian Cox on Radio 4….”Science makes no claim to be right. Quantum mechanics requires you to jettison your perceptions of the world………..”

 

Sean Beer

BSc. (Hons.), PGDip. AgSci., PGCert. RDS., Cert. Ed., NSch.

Winston Churchill Fellow. Rotary Foundation Scholar.

Senior Lecturer, School of Tourism, Bournemouth University.

Profile: http://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/about/people_at_bu/our_academic_staff/SM/profiles/sbeer.html

Publications: http://eprints.bournemouth.ac.uk/view/author/0de16b19f785821dc6cc6c5e2af05d37.html

This free dataset will really help your EU funding proposal!

Downloading the FREE European Social Survey’s (ESS) latest dataset will be invaluable for the majority of you thinking of applying for EU funding. The ESS is a high standard survey in which 28 countries took part (with 2400 responses from the UK).  

The ESS covers topics such as political engagement; trust in institutions; moral and social values; social capital; social exclusion; national, ethnic and religious identity; well-being, health and security and you can carry out a simple analysis online of archived data. In the latest round information the questionnaire included questions on:

1) Work, family and well-being. Areas covered include: the impact of the recession on households and work; job security; housework; wellbeing; unemployment; work-life balance.

2) Trust in criminal justice. Areas covered include: confidence in the police and the courts; cooperation with the police and the courts; contact with the police; attitudes towards punishment.

Southern Universities REF event at BU – 22 February 2012 – book your place NOW!

Research assessment

BU will be hosting a half day Research Excellence Framework (REF) event, supported by the REF team, on 22 February 2012 to which all staff are invited to attend.

Book your place now by completing the online registration form 

This event follows hot on the heels of the first REF event held at BU on 19 May 2011, to which over 150 delegates from 39 institutions attended (see our previous blog post – The excellent REF event at BU!).

The sector-wide consultation on the proposed REF panel criteria closed earlier this month and the final documents are due to be published in January 2012. This event will provide an update on the current developments with the REF and the confirmed REF panel documentation, focusing specifically on the assessment of impact within each of the four Main Panels.

The event will be open to BU staff and external delegates and the provisional programme is shown below.

Time Activity
09:30 – 10:00 Coffee and registration
10:00 – 10:30  REF Team overview of the assessment framework
Chris Taylor, Deputy REF Project Manager, REF Team
10:30 – 11:00 Similarities between the four Main Panel working methods and criteria
Professor Stephen Holgate, Chair of Main Panel A
11:00 – 11:30 Morning break
11:30 – 12:15 Panel specifics, differences and impact assessment
There will be concurrent sessions, one for each of the four Main Panels. Attendees choose which one to attend.

  • Main Panel A:   Professor Stephen Holgate, Chair of Main Panel A
  • Main Panel B:   Professor Philip Nelson, Chair of sub-panel 15 (General Engineering)
  • Main Panel C:   Professor John Scott, Chair of sub-panel 23 (Sociology)
  • Main Panel D:   Professor Bruce Brown, Chair of Main Panel D
12:15 – 13:00 Panel Q&A session with all participants
13:00 – 14:00 Lunch, networking and close

The event is free to attend but booking is essential.

Book your place now by completing the online registration form 

Brand Spanking New Marie Curie Alumni Portal

The Marie Curie Alumni Portal is offering free membership services to anyone who has won Marie Curie funding; and with over 50, 000 researchers who have been funded through this scheme, it is bound to be a hive of activity! The portal currently offers a number of membership services such as: 

  • an automated alert about new Marie Curie calls for proposals or meeting;
  • a discussion board to promote the exchange of knowledge between alumni on areas of expertise, career opportunities or events and conferences;
  • an events calendar with important meetings and events of interest to alumni; and
  • personalised alerts to news and content from the portal.

Following on from the launch of the Alumni portal, in 2012 a Marie Curie Alumni Association will be created which will merge with the existing Marie Curie Fellows Association.

If you have won Marie Curie funding, then please do register on this prital . And if you are thinking of applying in the future for a grant, then this shows what a great support network exists for Marie Curie Fellows, leading to future collaborations.

 

It takes two to tango…

Guidance

Having only recently completed a grant application for the ESRC’s Knowledge Exchange programme, the challenges of finding and then keeping suitable partners with whom to “tango” is fresh in my mind. One of the primary challenges is the ability to explain in plain English to prospective business partners what Funder terminology actually means. There then follows the need to explain what lies behind the potential award of funding, before then having to clarify full economic costing (never an easy task at the best of times) and associated acronyms that mystify all those outside (and some inside) academia. Thereafter comes the rigour and intimate detail of the application form which baffles most businesses (especially those seeking KTPs) followed by an explanation of the demands of the post-award reporting requirements.

All in all, much of this is straightforward …. to us!! For business partners, however, it often represents a whole new and somewhat mysterious world that if not careful in your articulation of what it all means, may result in the loss of your partner at any time throughout the completion of the application. In addition to a very clear explanation of what the process of bidding entails, those businesses most likely to dance with you are those that you know very well. Very few businesses (probably understandably) enter into such bids from a cold call so building long-term, sustainable two-way partnerships early in your career is pivotal to bidding in later years when you are less nervous about asking for that dance…

Viewing the snazzy pictures on the Daily Digest email!

Guidance

Subscribers to the Blog may have noticed this week that the pictures no longer appear automatically on the snazzy Daily Digest email 🙂

If you have received the Daily Digest email but cannot see all of the images then you may need to unblock image downloads from the Blog. To do this follow these  simple steps:

1. Open the Daily Digest email

2. Click the infobar at the top of the message, and then click ‘Add Sender to the Safe Senders List’ (as per the picture below)

3. Marvel at the beauty of all future Daily Digests which should make accessing current research information at BU a doddle 😀

The Daily Digest is sent to all Blog subscribers every day at 10am and provides an easy to read overview of all of the posts added to the Blog in the past 24 hours.

For details on how to subscribe to the Blog read our previous blog post on subscribing.

REF week on the Blog! REF Frequently Asked Questions

Research assessment

This week is REF Week on the Blog! Each day we will be explaining a different element of the Research Excellence Framework (REF) as a quick reference guide to help you prepare for the forthcoming REF exercise – REF2014.

Today’s post covers the frequently asked questions Matthew, Anita and I are asked about the REF.

If you have a question which isn’t covered in this list, add it as a comment or email it to me and I will add it to the FAQs!

open access logo, Public Library of ScienceI need an extra publication and all the normal journals I submit to have very long waiting lists. What can I do? – You could consider open access publishing as a route to getting your work published and in the public domain. Open access publishing typically has much shorted publication times, often only 2-3 months between submission and publication. Open access journals are eligible output types for the REF and are usually peer-reviewed to the same level of quality and scrutiny as traditional subscription journals. Open access publishing also has the addition benefit of sharing your research with the whole world, rather than only those who have access via paid subscriptions. This increases the visability and potentially the impact of your research. BU has a dedicated central budget to support open access publishing – read more here – Launch of the BU Open Access Publication Fund.

How can I increase the visibility of my published work and maybe increase the number of citations? – As above, one of the best ways of increasing the visibility of your work is to make it freely available, either by publishing in open access outlets or adding a full-text copy of your publication to our institutional repository, BURO. You can use the Sherpa RoMEO database to check whether your publisher supports open access archiving in repositories – the majority of them do! Don’t worry too much about the copyright as this will be checked for your by the BURO team prior to your output being added to the live repository. You can also blog about your research findings and outputs on this Research Blog! The blog is visable externally and well optimised to be picked up by search engines, such as Google. We always want to hear about the excellent research you’re doing, and anyone at BU can have access to add their own posts. Just email Susan Dowdle and she’ll get you blogging in no time 🙂

I need to win some research grant funding to strengthen our REF submission. How can I increase my chances? – My main advice here would be to choose your potential funder wisely; research proposals take considerable time and effort to put together and there is little point spending your time writing a proposal which a funder is unlikely to fund, e.g. if your research idea doesn’t fit the funder’s strategic aims. Make use of our internal peer review scheme, the RPRS, to ensure your research proposal is submitted to the most appropriate funder and to strengthen and add value to your proposal prior to submission. We can also advise you of which funders have shorter turnaround times so you can get started quickly and bring in some funding during the REF period.

I am unlikely to have four outputs to submit to the REF. Can I still be entered? – Possibly. The REF team acknowledge there are a number of reasons as to why a researcher may not be able to produce four outputs during the REF period. Clearly defined circumstances include qualifying as an early career researcher, part-time working, maternity, paternity or adoption leave, and secondments or career breaks outside of the HE sector. The REF team also recognise that there are a number complex circumstances which may result in a researcher not being able to produce four outputs – these include disability, ill-health or injury, mental health conditions, constraints relating to pregnancy o maternity, childcare or other caring responsibilities, gender reassignment, etc. Further details on how BU will be dealing with circumstances such as these will be released in the BU REF Code of Practice. In the meantime if you would like to discuss your personal circumstances with someone, you should contact your REF UOA Leader, Anita Somner or myself, or Judith Wilson in HR. All queries will be dealt with on a confidential basis.

I work at the University on a part-time basis. Can I still be submitted to the REF? – As above, the REF recognises part-time working as a clearly defined circumstance which can result in a researcher being unable to produce four outputs during the REF assessment period. It is likely this will be dealt with on a pro-rata basis, e.g. a researcher who has been on a 0.5 FTE contract throughout the REF period is likely to be required to submit 2 outputs. Further details will be included in the BU REF Code of Practice.

I’m not sure which of my outputs to submit to the REF. Will there be an opportunity for them to be reviewed externally before the submission? – Yes! We will be holding at least two more mock exercises reviewing outputs, one in spring 2012 and the other in spring 2013. Further details will be communicated via the blog in due course.

Remember – if you have a question which isn’t covered in this list, please add it as a comment or email it to me and I will add it to the FAQs!

Check out the posts appearing on the Blog every day this week as part of REF Week!

Upcoming Missenden Centre workshops – funding available for BU staff to attend

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.

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

 

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

 

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!

Green economy – big research questions?

As you will have gathered from other posts on this blog, we have an opportunity to discuss the development of BU’s research themes at a launch event on 14th December. As a prelude to that, I thought that it might be helpful to start to discuss what the big research questions might be, in the theme of  ‘Green economy and sustainability’. I’ve been giving this a bit of thought over the past few weeks, while ploughing through leading journals looking for materials for our new Green Economy MSc. This is definitely one of those occasions when teaching and research can definitely be mutually beneficial! So, for starters, here are some initial ideas on big research questions that we might consider addressing in future. Comments and further suggestions on these would be most welcome.

1. How should the green economy be defined? It is striking how many different definitions have been proposed in the literature, with little consensus emerging as yet – rather, it is the subject of active debate. A key question, for example, is whether or not a green economy should include economic growth or not. Some commentators have argued strongly that a green economy is a zero growth economy, by definition, coming out of the ‘environmental limits to growth’ argument that began in the 1970’s. But there is very little evidence for such environmental limits restricting economic growth – rather, the global economy has adapted and continued to grow, acting like the complex adaptive system that it undoubtedly is. So, how should we define the green economy? Might it be defined simply in terms of one that prevents biodiversity loss and environmental degradation? Or must there be more to it than that, such as an element of social justice?

2. How might the transition to a green economy occur? What are the key elements of the socio-economic, cultural, political, institutional, technological and environmental context for this transition to be brought about? At the root of the sustainability transition, I think, lies human behaviour – ultimately, it is about understanding how people make decisions in response to external factors. This is an active area of research in social science, psychology, environmental science, and in economic geography, but these communities seem to be rather disconnected at present. There may be scope for a more integrated, multi-disciplinary approach to addressing this question, perhaps employing state-of-the-art tools such as agent based modelling of the behaviour of individual people, communities, institutions, companies etc. As the whole issue is surrounded by complexity and uncertainty, there may also be scope for deploying ‘softer’ tools such as scenario building.

3. How might resilient social-ecological systems be developed? One of the key principles of the green economy is that it links economic activity with its environmental impacts. The concept of social-ecological systems can be helpful in achieving this, by considering human communities and their local environments as part of a coupled system. It is important to understand the factors underpinning the resilience of such systems, particularly in the current era of rapid environmental, economic, technological and cultural change. This understanding is in its infancy. A corollary of this question is: how do social-ecological systems avoid collapse?

Please feel free to add to this list!

Adrian