BU is introducing a new Research Council Development scheme which is a coordinated, targeted set of activities designed to inspire and equip BU researchers to achieve greater success with Research Council funding.
The aim is to:
Increase awareness of the Research Councils opportunities
Equip researchers with the confidence and skills to apply for the Research Councils funding in line with their career stage
Fast-track the development of a portfolio of proposals by facilitating proposal writing, setting next steps and allocating support
Due to the wide range of opportunities offered by Research Councils, the RCDS will feature a range of activities which may be generic in scope or targeted to a cohort as follows.
E cohort – early career researchers and those new to Research Councils (learning aims: first grants, fellowships, general mind-set and approach)
M cohort – mid-career researchers and those with some Research Councils experience (learning aims: project leadership and moving up to larger grants/collaborations)
P cohort – professorial level and those with significant Research Council experience (learning aims: high value, strategic and longer-larger funding)
As the RCDS is being piloted, this first cohort will have access to the ‘gold standard’ of a mix of development activities:
As a group and within targeted cohorts: training, workshops, structured proposal writing sessions and opportunities to build peer-to-peer support.
1:1 support for scoping/identifying funding streams and planning/starting proposals.
Hands-on work to develop proposals through the scheme, including bid surgeries.
We will evaluate what’s been offered after the first pilot and tailor the requirement for future cohorts. The criteria for membership, expectations of membership, and the training and development timetable for the pilot of the RCDS can be found in the scheme document. Those wanting to participate in this great opportunity will need to submit an expression of interest to: researchdev@bournemouth.ac.uk stating:
Why they are applying to the RCDS
What (if any) Research Council Bidding experience they have to date
Which targeted cohort they consider themselves to be in: E, M or P
Do they have a funding proposal in development? If so, to provide details of the proposal (this is not essential to be a member)
Please submit your expression of interest by 9th February 2018. RKEO will then send a membership agreement form to potential members, where they will agree to attend the training sessions and submit proposals to the research councils. At this stage, potential members will need to seek approval from their line manager and Faculty DDRPP.
Please read through the Scheme document and if any clarification is required then contact Jo Garrad, Funding Development Manager, RKEO. This pilot is a fantastic opportunity to accelerate your research council funding track record.
To enhance the researcher development workshops available to BU’s academics, the Research and Knowledge Exchange Office is making some changes to the Research and Knowledge Exchange Development Framework (RKEDF), in consultation with senior faculty staff.
BU academics wishing to find out more about these exciting developments should refer to their internal Faculty Blogs for more details.
Make sure that you don’t miss out on these career-enhancing opportunities!
BU PhD student Mrs Preeti Mahato published her latest scientific paper ‘Determinants of quality of care and access to Basic Emergency Obstetric and Neonatal Care facilities and midwife-led facilities in low and middle-income countries: A Systematic Review’ in the Journal of Asian Midwives [1]. This paper is co-authored by Dr. Catherine Angell and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen, who are both based in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH) and Prof. Padam Simkhada, BU Visiting Professor and based at Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU). Journal of Asian Midwives is a free Open Access journal, freely available for anybody across the globe to read online.
The authors highlight that maternal mortality is a major challenge to health systems in Low and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) where almost 99% of maternal deaths occurred in 2015. Primary-care facilities providing Basic Emergency Obstetric and Neonatal Care (BEmONC) facilities, and facilities that are midwife-led are appropriate for normal birth in LMICs and have been proposed as the best approach to reduce maternal deaths. However, the poor quality of maternal services that leads to decreased utilisation of these facilities is among the major causes of maternal deaths worldwide. This systematic review studied factors affecting the quality of care in BEmONC and midwife-led facilities in LMICs.
Thematic analysis on included studies revealed various factors affecting quality of care including facility-level determinants and other determinants influencing access to care. Facility-level determinants included these barriers: lack of equipment and drugs at the facility, lack of trained staff, poor attitudes and behaviour of service providers, and poor communication with women. Facility-level positive determinants were: satisfaction with services, emotional support during delivery and trust in health providers. The access-to-care determinants were: socio-economic factors, physical access to the facility, maintaining privacy and confidentiality, and cultural values. The authors include that improving quality of care of birthing facilities requires addressing both facility level and non-facility level determinants in order to increase utilization of the services available at the BEmONC and midwife-led facilities in LMICs.
This is the fifth paper co-authored by CMMPH’s current most published PhD student. The evaluation of birth centres in rural Nepal by Preeti Mahato under joint supervision Dr. Angell and Prof. Simkhada (LJMU) and Prof. van Teijlingen.
References:
Mahato, P., van Teijlingen, E., Simkhada, P., Angell, C. (2017) Determinants of quality of care & access to Basic Emergency Obstetric & Neonatal Care facilities & midwife-led facilities in low & middle-income countries: A Systematic Review, Journal of Asian Midwives 4(2):25-51.
Mahato, P., van Teijlingen, E., Simkhada, P., Sheppard, Z., Silwal, R.C. (2017) Factors related to choice of place of birth in a district in Nepal. Sexual & Reproductive Healthcare 13: 91-96.
Mahato, P.K., Regmi, P.R., van Teijlingen, E., Simkhada, P., Angell, C., Sathian, B. (2015) Birthing centre infrastructure in Nepal post 2015 earthquake. Nepal Journal of Epidemiology 5(4): 518-519. http://www.nepjol.info/index.php/NJE/article/view/14260/11579
Regmi, P., van Teijlingen, E., Hundley, V., Simkhada, P., Sharma, S., Mahato, P. (2016) Sustainable Development Goals: relevance to maternal & child health in Nepal. Health Prospect 15(1):9-10. www.healthprospect.org/archives/15/1/3.pdf
It’s been four months since the 2017-18 RKEO calendar landed on your desk. The calendar contains all of the events that RKEO arrange, major funder call closing dates, information on various research schemes, and other activities that will be of interest to academics.
The Research & Knowledge Exchange Office would like your feedback on the calendar before deciding on whether to create next year’s.
Tell us what you think by completing our short survey . All entrants names will be entered into a draw and one lucky person will receive an RKEO goodie bag. The deadline date is TODAY – Friday, 26 January.
As a result of their long standing research partnership with Poole Museum, Dr Holly Crossen-White and Dr Anglea Turner-Wilson were invited to preview a new exhibition last Friday attended by the Mayor of Poole, Councillor Lindsay Wilson and Councillor Mohan Iyengar Cabinet Member for Economy, Culture and Learning and Community Engagement. The exhibition, Her story: Tales of Poole Women Past and Present was inspired by International Women’s Day and features two women associated with Bournemouth University. Firstly, Jean Tocher who served as a WREN in the Royal Naval Intelligence Section at Bletchley Park during World War II and in later life worked at Bournemouth University as a Careers Advisor. Dr Kate Murphy from the Faculty of Media and Communications is the other women to feature in the exhibition. The exhibition highlights the great achievements of women who have a local connection. Visitors to the exhibition are being asked to leave their own reflections about a woman they feel has had a significant influence upon their life.
Our BU briefing papers are designed to make our research outputs accessible and easily digestible so that our research findings can quickly be applied – whether to society, culture, public policy, services, the environment or to improve quality of life. They have been created to highlight research findings and their potential impact within their field.
For many years Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) was thought to be a disorder exclusive to childhood, and has only recently been recognised as existing in adults. Around 6% of adults have the classic ADHD symptom of inattention and have difficulty concentrating, remembering things and organisation.
This paper examines whether inattention may be linked with problems in the brain system which co-ordinate Working Memory (WM). WM allows you to hold information in your mind while either manipulating the information, or doing something else at the same time. It is essential to build a stable mental ‘task model’ to complete tasks at home, work or study.
Using the Conners Adult ADHD rating scale, adults aged 18–35 were assessed for ADHD symptoms and completed tasks designed to tap verbal and spatial aspects of WM.
We are ready and rearing to go for the first Café Scientifique of 2018!
We will be joined by Dr. Phillipa Gillingham, who will be discussing whether managing protected areas is a wise way of spending conservation resources.
Recent climate change has caused many species to change their distributions to try and track suitable conditions. However, borders of the areas that we are managing and protecting do not move, potentially being a waste of time and money.
What’s your opinion? Come on down to Café Boscanova on Tuesday 6th February to join the discussion. Find out more on our website.
Dr. Gillingham is currently working on the likely impacts of climate change on protected areas in the UK.
Lizzie Gadd warns against jumping on ‘bad metrics’ bandwagons without really engaging with the more complex responsible metrics agenda beneath.
An undoubted legacy of the Metric Tide report has been an increased focus on the responsible use of metrics and along with this a notion of ‘bad metrics’. Indeed, the report itself even recommended awarding an annual ‘Bad Metrics Prize’. This has never been awarded as far as I’m aware, but nominations are still open on their web pages. There has been a lot of focus on responsible metrics recently. The Forum for Responsible Metrics have done a survey of UK institutions and is reporting the findings on 8 February in London. DORA has upped its game and appointed a champion to promote their work and they seem to be regularly retweeting messages that remind us all of their take on what it means to do metrics responsibly. There are also frequent twitter conversations about the impact of metrics in the up-coming REF. In all of this I see an increasing amount of ‘bad metrics’ bandwagon-hopping. The anti-Journal Impact Factor (JIF) wagon is now full and its big sister, the “metrics are ruining science” wagon, is taking on supporters at a heady pace.
It looks to me like we have moved from a state of ignorance about metrics, to a little knowledge. Which, I hear, is a dangerous thing.
It’s not a bad thing, this increased awareness of responsible metrics; all these conversations. I’m responsible metrics’ biggest supporter and a regular slide in my slide-deck shouts ‘metrics can kill people!’. So why am I writing a blog post that claims that there is no such thing as a bad metric? Surely these things can kill people? Well, yes, but guns can also kill people, they just can’t do so unless they’re in the hands of a human. Similarly, metrics aren’t bad in and of themselves, it’s what we do with them that can make them dangerous.
Adequacy of the indicator for the object that it measures
Sensitivity to the intrinsic inertia of the object being measured
Homogeneity of the dimensions of the indicator.
So, you might have an indicator such as ‘shoe size’, where folks with feet of a certain length get assigned a certain shoe size indicator. No problem there – it’s adequate (length of foot consistently maps on to shoe size); it’s sensitive to the thing it measures (foot grows, shoe size increases accordingly), and it’s homogenous (one characteristic – length, leads to one indicator – shoe size). However, in research evaluation we struggle on all of these counts. Because the thing we really want to measure, this elusive, multi-faceted “research quality” thing, doesn’t have any adequate, sensitive and homogeneous indicators. We need to measure the immeasurable. So we end up making false assumptions about the meanings of our indicators, and then make bad decisions based on those false assumptions. In all of this, it is not the metric that’s at fault, it’s us.
In my view, the JIF is the biggest scapegoat of the Responsible Metrics agenda. The JIF is just the average number of cites per paper for a journal over two years. That’s it. A simple calculation. And as an indicator of the communication effectiveness of a journal for collection development purposes (the reason it was introduced) it served us well. It’s just been misused as an indicator of the quality of individual academics and individual papers. It wasn’t designed for that. This is misuse of a metric, not a bad metric. (Although recent work has suggested that it’s not that bad an indicator for the latter anyway, but that’s not my purpose here). If the JIF is a bad metric, so is Elsevier’s CiteScore which is based on EXACTLY the same principle but uses a three-year time window not two, a slightly different set of document types and journals, and makes itself freely available.
If we’re not careful, I fear that in a hugely ironic turn, DORA and the Leiden Manifesto might themselves become bad (misused) metrics: an unreliable indicator of a commitment to the responsible use of metrics that may or may not be there in practice.
I understand why DORA trumpets the misuse of JIFs; it is rife and there are less imperfect tools for the job. But there are also other metrics that DORA doesn’t get in a flap about – like the individual h-index – which are subject to the same amount of misuse, but are actually more damaging. The individual h-index disadvantages certain demographics more than others (women, early-career researchers, anyone with non-standard career lengths); at least the JIF mis-serves everyone equally. And whilst we’re at it peer review can be an equally inadequate research evaluation tool (which, ironically, metrics have proven). So if we’re to be really fair we should be campaigning for responsible peer review with as much vigour as our calls for responsible metrics.
Bumper stickers by Paul van der Werf (CC-BY)
It looks to me like we have moved from a state of ignorance about metrics, to a little knowledge. Which, I hear, is a dangerous thing. A little knowledge can lead to a bumper sticker culture ( “I HEART DORA” anyone? “Ban the JIF”?) which could move us away from, rather than towards, the responsible use of metrics. These concepts are easy to grasp hold of, but they mask a far more complex and challenging set of research evaluation problems that lie beneath. The responsible use of metrics is about more than the avoidance of certain indicators, or signing DORA, or even developing your own bespoke Responsible Metrics policy (as I’ve said before this is certainly easier said than done).
The responsible use of metrics requires responsible scientometricians. People who understand that there is really no such thing as a bad metric, but it is very possible to misuse them. People with a deeper level of understanding about what we are trying to measure, what the systemic effects of this might be, what indicators are available, what their limitations are, where they are appropriate, how they can best triangulate them with peer review. We have good guidance on this in the form of the Leiden Manifesto, the Metric Tide and DORA. However, these are the starting points of often painful responsible metric journeys, not easy-ride bandwagons to be jumped on. If we’re not careful, I fear that in a hugely ironic turn, DORA and the Leiden Manifesto might themselves become bad (misused) metrics: an unreliable indicator of a commitment to the responsible use of metrics that may or may not be there in practice.
Let’s get off the ‘metric-shaming’ bandwagons, deepen our understanding and press on with the hard work of responsible research evaluation.
Elizabeth Gadd is the Research Policy Manager (Publications) at Loughborough University. She has a background in Libraries and Scholarly Communication research. She is the co-founder of the Lis-Bibliometrics Forum and is the ARMA Metrics Special Interest Group Champion
Do you want to showcase your PhD? Raise the profile of your research? Be in with the chance of winning over £500 worth in prizes?
If the answer is yes to any of the above then the 3MT® might be the opportunity for you.
The 3MT® competition cultivates students’ academic, presentation, and research communication skills.
Presenting in a 3MT® competition increases capacity to effectively explain research in three minutes, in a language appropriate to a non-specialist audience.
Eligibility: Active PhD and Professional Doctorate candidates who have successfully passed their transfer milestone (including candidates whose thesis is under submission) by the date of their first presentation are eligible to participate. If your Viva Voce will take place before the date of the University final (7 June 2018) you are not eligible to enter the competition.
You are cordially invited to this lunchtime seminarwhich is open to all BUstaff.
Please feel free to bring your lunch.
Wednesday 24th January 2018
1 – 2 pm
B407, Bournemouth House, Lansdown Campus
The NIHR is the UK’s major funder of applied health research. The NIHR develops and supports the people who conduct and contribute to health research and equally supports the training of the next generation of health researchers. The NIHR CRN Study Support Service helps researchers set up and deliver high quality research to time and target in the NHS in England.
We are fortunate to have two Research Delivery Managers from the NIHR CRN Wessex, David Higenbottam and Alex Jones coming to BU who will be presenting a seminar about the network, funding opportunities and forthcoming strategic plan for 2018, followed by Q & A session.
Please email Michelle O’Brien (mobrien@bournemouth.ac.uk) if you are planning to attend. See you there!
Biographies
David Higenbottam Has worked in research since 2012.
2012 – 2014 South Coast DeNDRoN Network Manager.
2014 – to date Research Delivery Manager for Divisions 2 and 4 (Division 4 includes dementia as one of its specialities).
Alex Jones Worked for Hampshire & Isle of Wight CLRN from July 2013 – April 2014.
Division 5 Assistant Portfolio Manager then Portfolio Manager April 2014 – December 2017 (Division 5 includes ageing as one of its specialities).
Currently Acting Research Delivery Manager for Division 5.
Wessex CRN The Wessex CRN was formed in April 2014, its geographic footprint is Hampshire & Isle of Wight, Dorset and South Wiltshire. It comprises 12 partner NHS organisations and 10 clinical commissioning groups. Research specialities are spread across 6 Divisions.
It’s been four months since the 2017-18 RKEO calendar landed on your desk. The calendar contains all of the events that RKEO arrange, major funder call closing dates, information on various research schemes, and other activities that will be of interest to academics.
The Research & Knowledge Exchange Office would like your feedback on the calendar before deciding on whether to create next year’s.
Tell us what you think by completing our short survey . All entrants names will be entered into a draw and one lucky person will receive an RKEO goodie bag. The deadline date is Friday 26 January.
In 2017, Nesta launched the Early Years Social Action Fund to scale proven social action programmes that help children aged four to achieve developmental milestones by directly supporting parents. The £1 million fund was used to support organisations that are making an impact, but require support to scale up. Having supported dozens of social action programmes to scale, Nesta have seen that social action works best when there is a clear role to complement, not replace public services, where opportunities fit in and around people’s lives and where any skills needed can be codified and learnt by many.
As the UK struggles with challenges of stagnating social mobility, increasing inequality, and lagging productivity, Nesta have compiled a list of 18 reasons why the early years of a child’s life are so important for social mobility and people’s life chances which show why in 2018 we need to do more to support new ideas that help give all children the best chance to fulfil their potential.
18 reasons to prioritise early years in 2018
By the time children start school, the gap between disadvantaged children and their peers can be as large as 15 months.
Children from disadvantaged backgrounds hear up to 30 million fewer words than their more affluent peers by age three.
In the last decade, more than 2.5 million children in England – including over 580,000 poorer children – did not reach a good level of development by age five.
Opportunity is very unevenly distributed. Disadvantaged children in the best areas are twice as likely to reach a good level of development at age five, compared with similar children in the worst areas.
Gaps are evident by age two and a child’s development at as young as 22 months has been proven to be a good predictor for educational outcomes at age 26.
Of the £9.1 billion the UK Government is spending on early years, just £250 million will reach the most disadvantaged families. Or just 2.7 per cent.
In 2012, the UK was ranked 22nd out of 25 OECD countries for the proportion of expenditure in early years focused on closing the gap in opportunity.
In almost all OECD countries, 15-year-old students who had access to early education outperformed students who had not.
The gap between disadvantaged children and their peers in numeracy and literacy is particularly stark, with a 14 per cent gap in reading attainment, 15 per cent in writing, and 13 per cent in numbers.
The lowest gap is in technology, which if harnessed properly, could potentially help lower the gaps in other areas.
Good early education opportunities improve child outcomes regardless of family disadvantage or the quality of the home learning environment.
The gap in educational attainment by the time a child starts school is one of the key drivers of social mobility, equivalent to, for example, up to two years of learning by the time they sit their GSCEs.
Top university graduates earn significantly more, on average, than graduates from less prestigious universities, and non-university graduates.
Social mobility is a key driver in productivity and economic growth. A modest increase in the UK’s social mobility to the average across Western Europe would increase annual GDP by 2 per cent in the long term (or an additional £39bn to the UK economy).
These 18 reasons go to show that early years is at the heart of social mobility. They underscore the importance – both at an individual and societal level – of focusing on ideas and interventions that can impact child outcomes as soon as possible so that no child begins school behind the starting line.
Pourakhi, meaning self-reliant in Nepali, was established in 2003 to advocate for the rights of women who returned to Nepal after having worked abroad. The current Chair Manju Gurung is co-author on our paper.
Since 2003, Pourakhi has established a number of programmes around pre-employment, pre-departure, employment and post arrival support. In 2009, it opened a Shelter Facility to provide a safe space for women who returned to Nepal and were not able to rejoin their family and community. Pourakhi recognized that many women who returned from abroad had been victimized abroad and needed to seek relief from the government. In order to provide assistance to these women, In addition, Pourakhi established programmes to empower women after they return to Nepal from foreign employment. More specifically, Pourakhi established a financial literacy programme to educate women and an in business skills.
Pourakhi has been instrumental in ensuring that the voices of migrant women workers are heard and reflected in national policy and law. Additionally, it has successfully lobbied the government to ratify a number of international laws needed to protect the rights of female migrant workers.
Although Pourakhi began as an organisation by and on behalf of women, it has recognized that all migrant workers have the right to safe migration. Therefore, Pourakhi now assists both woman and men in all stages of the migration process.
The other two Nepali-speaking co-authors are Prof. Padam Simkhada from Liverpool john Moores University, who is also Visiting Professor in Bournemouth University’s Faculty of Health & Social Sciences and Dr. Sharada Prasad Wasti who is working for the Institute for Reproductive Health at Georgetown University, Washington, DC in the USA.
Congratulations to FHSS Prof. Vanora Hundley and her co-authors from across the globe who published ‘Progression of the first stage of spontaneous labour: A prospective cohort study in two sub-Saharan African countries’ in the journal PLOS Medicine [1].
The authors highlight that since the early 2000s researchers using new statistical methods to have informed changes in recommended labour practices in some settings, they have also generated a lot of controversy. As a result of persistent questions as to whether racial characteristics influence labour progression patterns, recent studies have been conducted among different populations, but not yet in any African population. The authors conclude that
As labour may not naturally accelerate in some women until a cervical dilatation of 5 cm is reached, labour practices to address perceived slow labour progression should not be routinely applied by clinicians until this threshold is achieved, provided the vital signs and other observations of the mother and baby are normal.
In the absence of any problems other than a slower than expected cervical dilatation rate (i.e., 1 cm/hour) during labour, it is in the interest of the woman that expectant, supportive, and woman-centred labour care is continued.
Dr. Jaeyeon Choe from the Faculty of Management and Centre for Events, Leisure, Society and Culture was invited to give a talk on ‘Spiritual Tourism in Southeast Asia’ at Vietnam National University, Hanoi in the first week of January 2018.
She shared her research on mindfulness and spiritual tourism. After she shared trends and motivations of spiritual tourism in Southeast Asia along with the findings from her research project, Spiritual Tourism in Chiang Mai, Thailand, a fascinating discussion with Vietnamese lecturers and students followed. Dr. Choe concluded that while Southeast Asian nations have geographical, cultural, historical and archaeological links, there are political, ethnic and religious boundaries. ASEAN needs a cooperative, integrated and sustainable approach to develop, plan, manage and promote spiritual tourism to reduce the economic and social imbalances.
Further research collaboration with the talented colleagues in Faculty of Tourism Studies, VNU University of Social Sciences and Humanities is envisaged.
You are cordially invited to this lunchtime seminarwhich is open to all BUstaff.
Please feel free to bring your lunch.
Wednesday 24th January 2018
1 – 2 pm
B407, Bournemouth House, Lansdown Campus
The NIHR is the UK’s major funder of applied health research. The NIHR develops and supports the people who conduct and contribute to health research and equally supports the training of the next generation of health researchers. The NIHR CRN Study Support Service helps researchers set up and deliver high quality research to time and target in the NHS in England.
We are fortunate to have two Research Delivery Managers from the NIHR CRN Wessex, David Higenbottam and Alex Jones coming to BU who will be presenting a seminar about the network, funding opportunities and forthcoming strategic plan for 2018, followed by Q & A session.
Please email Michelle O’Brien (mobrien@bournemouth.ac.uk) if you are planning to attend. See you there!
Biographies
David Higenbottam Has worked in research since 2012.
2012 – 2014 South Coast DeNDRoN Network Manager.
2014 – to date Research Delivery Manager for Divisions 2 and 4 (Division 4 includes dementia as one of its specialities).
Alex Jones Worked for Hampshire & Isle of Wight CLRN from July 2013 – April 2014.
Division 5 Assistant Portfolio Manager then Portfolio Manager April 2014 – December 2017 (Division 5 includes ageing as one of its specialities).
Currently Acting Research Delivery Manager for Division 5.
Wessex CRN The Wessex CRN was formed in April 2014, its geographic footprint is Hampshire & Isle of Wight, Dorset and South Wiltshire. It comprises 12 partner NHS organisations and 10 clinical commissioning groups. Research specialities are spread across 6 Divisions.
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BU is introducing a new Research Council Development scheme which is a coordinated, targeted set of activities designed to inspire and equip BU researchers to achieve greater success with Research Council funding.
Please read through the Scheme document and if any clarification is required then contact Jo Garrad, Funding Development Manager, RKEO. This pilot is a fantastic opportunity to accelerate your research council funding track record.
It’s been four months since the 2017-18 
Our 
It’s been four months since the 2017-18 
Fifteen years at BU
New eBook published in April
MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2024
Horizon Europe News – December 2023