Category / REF Subjects

Latest BU REF Highlight Report now available

The latest BU REF Highlight Report (#13) is now available for BU staff to download. It covers the period from August to October 2012.

Features in this report include information about:

  • The Review Panel Meeting cycle for the Summer Mock 2012 and the feedback from it;
  • The dissemination of the BU REF Code of Practice, the BU REF FAQs and BU staff circumstances disclosure form, which is also closely linked to the staff circumstances disclosure exercise with an initial deadline of the 31 October 2012
  • The development of BRIAN in line with testing the REF Submission Pilot System;
  • Links to the latest official REF documents.                                                                                                                                                                                      

You can access your copy of the report from the following location on the I-drive (just copy and paste the following into Windows Explorer): I:\R&KEO\Public\RDU\REF\REF preparations\REF highlight reports

New wave of PhD students in the Psychology Research Centre

The postgraduate research community in Psychology has been growing over recent years in line with our expansion of staff and undergraduate students. We now have 17 PhD students in the research centre as we recently welcomed seven new students. We are pleased that our new PhD students have all received either studentships or scholarships to fund their work. These new research projects represent the disciplines of the psychology of health, cognition, and education, and highlight the varied application of psychology to advance both science and issues encountered in everyday life. We are really pleased to have these students join us and add to the research going on in Psychology. We have listed the students and their research interests below in case other members of staff have interests in common. If you do, and would like to find out more, please do contact the students or their supervisors.

 

 

Student Supervisors Funding Title
Natalia Adamczewska Dr Samuel Nyman

Prof Jonathan Parker (HSC)

Prof Peter Coleman (University of Southampton)

 

BU Vice-Chancellor fee-waive scholarship Psychological adjustment to accidental falls.
Anna Bobak Dr Sarah Bate

Dr Ben Parris

BU fully-funded studentship Face facts: Why face processing skills should be improved in forensic and national security settings. 
Simon Ferneyhough Dr Jane Elsley

Dr Andy Johnson

BU fully-funded studentship How does our ability to integrate objects and events change as we age?  
Abbey Laishley  Dr Julie Kirkby

Prof Simon Liversedge

(UniversityofSouthampton)

 

BU fully-funded studentship Quantifying the role of working memory in efficient classroom performance 
Jessica Miller Dr Jan Wiener

Prof Siné McDougall

 

BU Vice-Chancellor fee-waive scholarship & funding from Army of Angels PTSD and Navigation.
Sophie Nicholls Dr Sarah Bate

Dr Ben Parris

BU Vice-Chancellor fee-waive scholarship Effects of Stochastic Sub-sensory Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation on Speed and Accuracy of Face Recognition: An Application to National Security and Forensic Settings. 
Michele Salvagno A/Prof Jacqui Taylor

Dr Milena Bobeva (BS)

Dr Maggie Hutchings (HSC)

BU fully-funded studentship (online education) The Highs and Lows of Ubiquitous Mobile Connectivity: towards a model for pedagogical delivery that supports the well-being of learners 

 

Make this month, your Royal Society month!

To celebrate the ‘Open Access Week’, the Royal Society Publishing content will be free for all to access until the 29th November 2012!!

So if there is an article you have been meaning to read, now is the time to read it; if you have recently published an article in a Royal Society journal, now is the time to share that research with your peers.

The Royal Society is a Fellowship of the world’s most eminent scientists and is the oldest scientific academy in continuous existence. Apart from promoting science and its benefits, recognising excellence in science and supporting outstanding science, their other priorities include providing scientific advice for policy, fostering international and global cooperation and education and public engagement, clearly spanning their collective scope wider than just science.

The Royal Society publishes nine journals covering the broad spectrum of the life sciences, physical sciences and cross-disciplinary sciences. These journals have great impact and are becoming increasingly powerful within the sector.

So make full use of this month and get as much as you can by visiting these journals.

1. Open Biology

2. Biology Letters

3. Journal of the Royal Society Interface

4. Interface Focus

5. Notes and Records

6. Proceedings A

7. Proceedings B

8. Philosophical Transactions A

9. Philosophical Transactions B

399 days to go …What are you doing about REF2014?

Yes, it is officially 399 days before the submission deadline of the 29 November 2013 for the REF2014 assessment.

If you are submitting to REF2014, what can you do between now and 23 November 2013 that can help boost your submission?

This useful article written by Dr. Andy Miah published in ‘The Guardian’ back in February might give you an idea of what your next step could be.

Ref2014: what should researchers be concentrating on?

Professor Andy Miah looks to the RAE2008 results for insights into where academics should be publishing – and wonders what the future looks like.

With Ref2014 deadlines approaching, where should researchers invest their time over the next year, if they are in need of one or two extra outputs before the cut off? Should you write for journals, edited books, or perhaps even attempt to complete that overdue monograph? More importantly, what should we be doing in the future? For many units of assessment, the results from RAE2008 show clear weightings in terms of what universities consider to be worth submitting in any given unit of assessment. So what should academics do in targeting their work for publication?

Much of this debate is subject specific. In RAE2008 the law submission showed little interest in edited books constituting less than 1% of the total submission and focusing much more on journal articles. Books are similarly ill considered for the life sciences, for which much of this debate is, for want of a better word, academic. In this case, authored books are mostly seen as textbooks, intended principally for student bodies to purchase, not for peers to read. The progress of science runs too quickly for an author to wait for their cutting edge contribution to come out in a book. Writing a textbook can have value, but not for the research assessment. All that matters are journals and the higher the impact factor, the better.

For the non-Stem subjects, there is much more variation. Impact factors are generally low – rarely getting over three – making comparisons across journals more difficult. As well, the submissions to RAE reflect ambiguity over which kinds of outlet matters most. In history, a whopping 29% of all submissions from RAE2008 were authored or co-authored books, while 34% where book chapters.

However, in sociology, only 17% were authored or co-authored books while 63% were journal articles. A similar tendency towards journal articles is apparent in education, while for media and communications 42% were journal articles and 27% were book chapters. This may also suggest that media subjects place more value on book chapters than sociologists.

It seems clear from all non-Stem subjects that edited books – as opposed to book chapters in edited books – are the biggest loser with only very few submitted. This will come as no surprise to many researchers, since it is generally the contents rather than the act of editing that is typically seen to have intellectual worth. However, this need not mean that edited books lack value, since they could be a very good way of contributing to the discipline, rather like being a journal editor. Yet, given the amount of time it takes to edit a book, some very careful thought is needed before entering into a contract.

The relative lack of book chapters in most of the non-Stem submissions also raises question about their perceived value. One reason for this may be the ambiguity over the peer review process that surrounds edited books. While a good publishing house and a strong editorial team may suggest integrity, their efforts will still stop short of a blind peer review process. Another problem with book chapters may be citations. Books are not entered into the same indices as journal articles, nor have the same kind of flexibility of journal articles. For instance, it is difficult for buyers to purchase just one chapter from a book, should they wish.

Yet, writing book chapters can be a great entry point for many early career researchers and for the advanced scholar, the appeal of the potential quick turn around may outweigh the frustration of sometimes tiresome peer review process of journals. After all, reviewing papers is another part of the economic black hole within HE, a volunteer labour force with little accountability.

Publishing in edited volumes generally involves a more flexible and supportive peer review process, while also more generous time scales. That said, many books can take forever to be published, so it might hinder progress to publish if the editors suddenly slack off. The worst I have encountered is six years from submission to publication. This is less likely to happen with journals, but some do have a remarkably long publication lead-time.

As for all our research, the importance of the contribution rather than its medium should matter most. There’s still a lot we don’t know about the relative quality profile of the output weightings. It also matters what one’s peers are doing, so identifying that peer community matters.

However, if seeking to advise scholars, then targeting journals rather than books may be smarter. On the other hand, writing one’s own book can be an important step towards establishing ones reputation beyond journal articles.

Of course, there is nothing like receiving a beautifully printed book that can sit on one’s shelf alongside its peers. Journal articles rarely offer the satisfaction of having completed something that also has an attractive, tactile quality. Some clever publishers are republishing collections of journal articles as edited volumes and this may be a very sensible way to go.

Personally, I would mourn the demise of the edited collection, but would certainly welcome the rise of the special journal edition that is republished as a paperback, especially if I can choose the cover. Whether there is a market for such publications remains to be seen, but new markets do seem to be emerging.

Just the other day, I searched my name in Amazon, just in case there was something I had published without my knowledge (it has happened). I noticed that there is a publisher – which will remain unnamed – creating new books drawing content from freely available content online, from such sources as Wikipedia. If this is the future of book publishing, I’m out!

Professor Andy Miah (@andymiah) directs the Creative Futures Research Centre at the University of the West of Scotland.

For a more details summary of the data described here, go here

This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. To get more articles like this direct to your inbox, sign up for free to become a member of the Higher Education Network.

 

Global Women’s (GLOW) Research Conference

The first Global Women’s (GLOW) Research Conference was held in Liverpool this week. The conference brought together 150 researchers and clinicians from across the globe to discuss women’s health in both low and high resource countries. Keynote speakers included France Donnay from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Beverly Winikoff from Gynuity Health Projects.

BU was well represented with poster presentations from Vanora Hundley, Professor of Midwifery, and Emma Pitchforth, Visiting Fellow.

Vanora’s presentation examined the Use of oral misoprostol to prevent postpartum haemorrhage in home birth settings in low resource countries; a topic that has been the subject of considerable controversy in recent weeks. Emma’s presentation looked at Evidence response mechanisms in reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health in Asia and the Pacific.

One of the unique features of this conference was the mix of presentations. Presenters came from a variety of disciplines and alongside the well known international speakers were oral presentations from undergraduate students and early career researchers. This was a great opportunity to share experiences and build collaborations, and I would recommend that both staff and students look out for next year’s call for abstracts.

Prof. Hundley Associate Editor BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth

Congratulations to BU Prof. Vanora Hundley who has been invited to become Associate Editor for BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth.  BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth is an international journal with Open Access and it has a good Impact Factor (currently 2.83) in its field.    More details of BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth can be found at http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcpregnancychildbirth/

 

Prof. Hundley joins Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen as Associate Editor, giving Bournemouth University a very good representation on the editorial team.

More about Prof. Hundley: http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/vanora-hundley/16/b40/39b

REF Updates

Are you new to REF?

If you are completely new to REF, or even if you know about REF but would like to find out more, we can recommend the ‘REF2014: A brief guide for research users’ document as a general introduction to what REF is and what it means.

You can find the document here.

BU Staff Circumstance Disclosure Form – DEADLINE 31 October 2012

For all REF eligible staff, it is really important that you read the BU REF Code of Practice (please click on the ‘REF’ tab from the menu bar at the top to access the document) in order to fully understand the processes and procedures employed by BU in preparing for the REF2014 assessment. The BU Staff Circumstances Disclosure process is especially important to you if you are an Early Career Researcher, you work part-time, you have been on leave or on a career break. For more information on how this applies to you, and also all other related documents, please click on the ‘REF’ tab on the menu at the top of the page. If you are still unsure after reading all the relevant documents and have questions you would like to ask, please send an email to: refcircumstances@bournemouth.ac.uk

REF Frequently Asked Questions Updated

The FAQs section of the REF official website has recently been updated. You can click on this link to see them.

 

 

 

 

Value of conference attendance?

October is the month of the annual Alzheimer Europe (www.alzheimer-europe.org) meeting. This year three BUDI team members attended the rather nice setting in Vienna a draw for everyone, although we all had very different agendas and expectations. Alzheimer Europe is one of my personal favourite conferences as I’ve been going for years and it creates the opportunity to meet with new and catch up with a range of international colleagues, and is actually the main reason I go to these kind of events; yes it is good to present the work, and as a team we had two posters and three oral presentations this year, which is not bad for an Institute only in existence for 6 months, but it is the networking aspect that provides inspiration and creates new ideas and new collaborations that motivates me to go to these kind of events.

Patricia McParland is BUDI’s project manager, she has presented at a few dementia conferences in the last 3 years but for this conference her main concern was to ensure her cutting edge work doctoral work, that she is in the final throes of writing up, on public awareness of dementia is getting out there as this is an area of increasing policy concern both in the UK and internationally and many are starting to work in this particular area. As well as presenting a poster on her doctoral work that received positive attention, she presented a paper reporting on one of BUDI’s project about Dementia Friendly Tourism. The concept of Dementia Friendly Tourism has caught the imagination of many we speak to about our dementia work and this proved to be the case again in Vienna. Colleagues from France, Spain and Jersey were particularly interested in this project and keen to explore how these ideas could be applied to their regions; we will see what transpires over the coming months in the way of collaboration but this is a nice example of the added value of going to a conference.

Clare Cutler is a research assistant in BUDI and has just started her PhD exploring experiences of war and dementia, as an Early Career Researcher Clare was thrilled to be attending her first interational conference, and her excitement was contagious! but she was also rather anxious about giving her first presentation on one of BUDI’s projects, GRIID, Gateway to Rural International Innovations in Dementia, on behalf of an international team. She needn’t have worried as she went down a storm; mainly because she said at the beginning that she was nervous, this was her first presentation and then let out a big sigh as she finished. This created a huge amount of goodwill to her personally as well as her giving a presentation on an innovative interational partnership project. We had received the support of Alzheimer Disease International (www.alz.co.uk) to conduct part of this study and the opportunity for further discussion about working together to target rural areas and developing countries is another of the added value benefits that being in Vienna brought for me this year.

I presented a paper on a recently completed evaluation of a telehealth project to diagnose and follow up people with dementia living on the Shetland Isles and Grampian, rural areas of Scotland. The added value of this work relates to the INTERDEM (www.interdem.org) meeting that was held the day before the conference. (This is another example of added value by the way, going to other meetings around a conference.) Interdem is an application/invite only pan European network of highly active psychosocial researchers in the dementia field; as a member I was also able to take my BUDI colleagues in their student roles, a new doctoral and just about to complete doctoral student, to this full day meeting and they found this an amazing experience as many of the ‘names’ of long established dementia academics are part of this group which is always a buzz to meet people you’ve quoted for the first time, who offered real warmth, enthusiasm and support for their work. The Interdem meeting this time round was a mix of presentations (including one from the task force on technology and dementia that I co-lead)  and working groups developing bid ideas, collaborative papers and general brain storming about how to take forward new work in the field. The technology task force has been working on a bid around exergaming and dementia and we used the lunchtime slot to meet to work up our ideas further  (more added value) as well as updating Interdem members about our progress with this bid during the meeting itself. But we also discussed new bid ideas and telehealth, the focus of my Alzheimer Europe paper, was one of the favoured topics; one of our jobs now is to see the details of a long-awaited funding call  (JPND) due out December 2012 and get writing another EU bid.  We also agreed to write a collaborative paper on technology and dementia, but a successful meeting is one that generates new work from my point of view!

My other bit of dissemination work was a poster about ongoing research evaluating dementia care in Maltese hopsital wards. The added value about this relates to the conference venue being in Malta next year and I am sure this has partly influenced the invitation, of the Maltese Dementia Society member who is a long standing collaborator of mine as well as being the local organisor for the 2013 meeting, for me to give a plenary there next year!

So in all, the value of going to conferences for new researchers, is undoubtedly to present their work, to meet esteemed colleagues and the resultant ‘buzz’ this brings, to learn about other research in the field and to start their own networks (a good example of this is Patricia joining a writing team for a methods related paper, more added value!). For me it is a chance to catch up with people and to discuss potential new collaborations. In previous years it has also been about keeping a profile of the work of my team, this year it was about starting to create a profile for a new BU team to an international audience. I am pleased to report that all boxes were ticked this time round!

Are we born to yawn?

Yawning consistently poses a conundrum to neurologists and neuroscientists. Increasingly, evidence is found to link neurological disorders through the commonality of yawning episodes and contagious yawning. Despite discrete incidences (such as parakinesia brachialis oscitans) in brain stem ischaemic stroke patients, there is considerable debate over the reasons for yawning, with the mechanism of yawning still not fully understood. Cortisol is implicated in the stress response and fatigue; repetitive yawning may be the link between neurological disorders and with a strong correlation between yawning and a rise in cortisol levels. Evidence has now been found in support of the Thompson Cortisol Hypothesis that proposes cortisol levels are elevated during yawning [1]. Additional data is in press, and further research is planned with longitudinal consideration to neurological disorders such as multiple sclerosis and stroke. Funding for such initiatives is currently being sought.

[1] Thompson, S.B.N., & Bishop, P., 2012. Born to yawn? Understanding yawning as a warning of the rise in cortisol levels: randomized trial. Interactive Journal of Medical Research, 1(5), e4:1-9. Doi: i-www.jmr.org/2012/e4/

FREE – Vitae Research Staff Conference, 8 November 2012

This conference will focus on the role of research staff and research staff associations in leading and supporting sector change. The plenary will have an international emphasis to reflect progress in setting up the International Consortium of Research Staff Associations (ICoRSA).

Research staff associations represent the interests of research staff and their colleagues by interacting with institutional management and administration, informing institutional policy, and facilitating the organisation of training activities and career development session for other researchers.  Research staff associations can be crucial agents in embedding the implementation of the principles of the Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers (‘Concordat’) and in the Research Excellence Framework (REF) Research Environment.

Research staff are well placed to inform, represent and develop the skills and knowledge base of research staff colleagues in the areas that matter most to them. Research staff associations are in a unique position to co-ordinate the responses of research staff to policy changes that affect their working conditions, professional development and career opportunities and to ensure that the provisions introduced and delivered by higher education institution employers are tailored to their needs and that research staff participate in their development.

For more information, please visit this link

http://www.vitae.ac.uk/policy-practice/916-532601/Vitae-Research-Staff-Conference-2012.html

 

Bournemouth University’s School of Tourism host International Week with new Erasmus partner universities:

Bournemouth University’s School of Tourism has recently signed three Erasmus agreements with three Universities in Europe to enhance international links to high quality international research and teaching institutions, especially in the area of sport business and events management.

To celebrate this recent agreement Dr Tim Breitbarth (Senior Lecturer in Sport Management) organised various guest lectures, presentations to staff and students as well as informal opportunities to meet and mingle as part of an International Week in Sport and Events Management.

Professor Dr Sebastian Kaiser, a professor in sport and events at the SRH Hochschule Heidelberg; Dr Stefan Walzel a senior lecturer at the German Sport University Cologne, Institute of Sport Economics and Sport Management; and Gerco Van Dalfsen, a program coordinator sport management at Hanze University of Applied Sciences in Groningen and Secretary General of the European Association of Sport Management all took part in international week and also represented their university.

On Wednesday Sebastian, Stefan and Gerco hosted a presentation as part of the School of Tourism Staff Development. A substantial number of colleagues from across School of Tourism, research students and university managers concerned with international development attended the session.

Dr Richard Shipway (Associate Dean International Engagement) framed the presentations by mentioning relevant aspects of BU’s strategy to create more and higher quality international opportunities for staff and students.

 

Gerco, Stefan, Sebastian each presented their respective universities and provided an overview of their study programmes. In particular, they showed how they integrate international student exchange, international competitions and workshops into their programs in order to enhance student abilities and networking. School of Tourism staff were, for example, impressed by the vast and modern sport and scientific infrastructure of the German Sport University Cologne, and the strong international and multidisciplinary focus of sport, events and health programmes at Hanze University. The presentations and opportunities to cooperate led to lively conversations and concrete projects/ideas to follow-up.

The second part of the Lecture on Wednesday saw Stefan and Sebastian present some of their high quality research. :

Stefan provided insights into the discussions around relevance and impacts of the Youth Olympics and the organisation of the first summer and winter Youth Olympics. The particular focus of his empirical investigation was on the use of ambush marketing despite clean venues and no commercial sponsorship allowed at the games. German Sport University Cologne also very successfully integrated student visits and volunteering at the games with both international teaching and study opportunities.

 

Sebastian outlined similarities and peculiarities of events management in sports and culture from socioeconomic theory. In his empirical study he explores the impact of the economic sectors by utilising regression analysis of a dataset from surveys amongst managers within the industry. His major conclusion was that events management may benefit not only from a dialogue between science and practice but particularly from an interdisciplinary perspective integrating theories and approaches from sports and culture management.

 

On Friday, Sebastian and Stefan helped kick off the weekly Research Seminar Series for, mainly, sport science and sport management students. Around 100 students attended and Dr Ian Jones (Associate Dean Sport) pointed out that those regular seminars are to widen student’s horizon and an opportunity to engage with relevant topics that may be beyond their core areas of interest.

The presentations from the international visitors provided the students with a glimpse of how/what their peers in other countries are taught;  an important experience since those universities no longer educate their students for national markets but acknowledge that they have to compete on an international labour market after graduation.

Stefan’s presentation introduced the students to the link between psychological, behavioural and economic dimensions behind corporate hospitality activities at sport events. Whereas the main conclusion from Sebastian’s presentation was that there are different ways to calculate the possible impacts of events based on the same numbers.

 

Students were invited to mingle with the presenters and amongst each other afterwards in Dylan’s Bar and a few students used this opportunity to discuss particular aspects of the respective topics in special and the international sport management in general.

Students that attended the Lectures and Seminars were given the opportunity to win quality merchandise from the new partner universities.

All three of the visiting Lecturers were in Bournemouth for 5 days and were very impressed with the Bournemouth University campus and its facilities, especially our eLearning opportunities / environment.

For further information about the International Week or our new Erasmus partner universities please contact Dr Tim Breitbarth on tbreitbarth@bournemouth.ac.uk or 01202 965113.

 

Intranasal inhalation of oxytocin improves eye-witness identification: RDF grant report

In 2011 myself and Ben Parris from the Psychology Research Centre were awarded a small RDF grant to investigate whether intranasal inhalation of the hormone oxytocin can improve eye-witness identification.  We designed an experiment where participants viewed a short video-clip of a perpetrator stealing a wallet from someone’s bag.  Participants then inhaled either an oxytocin or placebo nasal spray, and after a 45 minute interval to allow central oxytocin levels to plateau, were presented with a line-up of ten faces from which they had to either select the perpetrator or state that he was absent.  To date we have tested 70 participants and found a facilitation in the oxytocin condition.  In a second experiment, we asked participants to complete the ‘One-in-Ten’ task, a test of spontaneous eye-witness memory that has been well-used in previous work.  Again, we found a clear facilitation in performance in the oxytocin condition.

These findings follow recent work that has demonstrated that oxytocin can improve face recognition performance in standard cognitive tasks in lab-based settings.  In addition, work from our lab is currently under review for publication demonstrating that oxytocin can improve face recognition in individuals with prosopagnosia (face blindness).  This RDF grant has therefore given us the funding to carry out key investigations demonstrating novel applications of oxytocin inhalation in more applied settings.

I also presented findings from the oxytocin project at the April meeting of the Experimental Psychological Society, and was delighted to meet Dr Markus Bindemann from the University of Kent who is something of an expert in eye-witness identification.  We are now collaborating with Markus, and have plans to develop a bid to the Leverhulme Trust on the back of the publications that we hope will result from these investigations.  We are also about to welcome a new PhD student to our lab, who will be further developing the forensic aspect of this work in more real-world national security settings.

The pump-priming that was made available to us via the RDF scheme has provided us with the opportunity to collect the initial data and publication basis that we need to develop a large external bid, and we hope that this is the beginning of a fruitful line of research for our laboratory.

BU Centre for Face Processing Disorders featured in the Independent

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).

New STRC season seminar : “Introduction to System Testing” (22nd of August 16h at Lawrence Lecture Theatre)

It is my pleasure to kindly announce the new season of the Smart Technology Research Center Seminars.

Our first guest will be Mr. Aleksander Badura; which has extensive experience in Software System’s Testing in a wide range of projects within the international company Research & Engineering Center (REC-global).

The talk will take place next Wednesday, the 22nd of August at Lawrence Lecture Theatre at 16:00 h (please click here for a map)

I kindly encourage to researchers and PhD students interested on software systems to attend to this talk; where software systems testing will be analysed from an Industrial perspective.

The title of the talk is “Introduction to System Testing”:

“I will provide an introduction to Software Testing with focusing on Test level or System Test. We will discuss how testing within a project Life Cycle is planned and performed. To conclude I will provide an example of testing within INFER project”

Best Wishes, Emili

Emili Balaguer-Ballester, PhD

SMART Technology Research Center, School of Engineering & Computing, Bournemouth University

Center for Computational Neuroscience, University of Heidelberg

REF2014 – Dissemination of REF documents

The University is currently preparing to take part in the first Research Excellence Framework (REF) assessment, which is a national exercise to assess the quality of research in UK higher education institutions. To ensure that the University abides by its principles of transparency, consistency, accountability and inclusivity in preparing and finalising the BU submission to the REF, the BU REF 2014 Code of Practice (v2), BU REF Frequently Asked Questions and BU REF Individual Staff Circumstances Disclosure Form have been developed and are now being formally disseminated to all BU academic staff to ensure all eligible staff are fully informed. When you have received this email, it is important that you read the information contained in these documents and you are therefore required to acknowledge receipt of this communication by sending the automatic ‘read receipt’ to the email as soon as possible.

These documents are also available on the BU Research Blog under the ‘REF’ tab.

In conjunction with the dissemination of these key documents, two open sessions have been scheduled for the autumn to give you an opportunity to ask any questions you may have prior to the collection of the first round of BU REF Individual Staff Circumstances Disclosure Forms (due to be returned by 31 October 2012):

Talbot Campus:

Date: 27 September 2012

Time : 11.30am to 1.00pm

Venue: The Wallace Lecture Theatre, Weymouth House

Lansdowne Campus:

Date: 11 October 2012

Time: 3.00pm to 4.30pm

Venue: EB306, Executive Business Centre

You are invited to attend either event – more details will be circulated in due course. If you are unable to attend but have any queries, please contact Peng Peng Ooi (Research Development Officer – REF: pengpeng.ooi@bournemouth.ac.uk).

Many thanks for your cooperation in this and hopefully this information is useful for you.