Category / Guidance

Release of the beta version of RCUK’s Gateway to Research

Guidance

 Research Councils UK (RCUK) is due to release a beta version of the ‘Gateway to Research’ portal imminently to give the public better access to information about research funded by the Research Councils.

Gateway to Research aims to provide a mechanism for businesses and other interested parties to identify potential partners in universities to develop and commercialise knowledge, and maximise the impact of publicly funded research. It is being developed as part of the BIS Innovation and Research Strategy, published in December 2011.

The beta Gateway to Research contains information such as who, what and where the Research Councils fund, as well as details about the outcomes, outputs and impact from research, linking to already available open access repositories and data catalogues.

The information contained within the Gateway to Research beta version is a fixed snapshot of available information on research. It contains real data from grants across all seven Research Councils, awarded from 2006 onwards, that is already held in data sources such as RCUK’s Research Outcomes System (ROS) (please see the Principles of Use document for more details) and ResearchFish. Therefore the data is not new – Gateway to Research brings the information together in one place. Any updates and additional information about research need to be made in data sources – they cannot be made directly on Gateway to Research.

Updates made in data sources will not update the beta system automatically as this will initially be a manual process and it may take some time. Over the next year, RCUK will be building the infrastructure to ensure that the data will be routinely updated once the final live system is launched at the end of 2013. Updates to output data will then be reflected in Gateway to Research after they have been submitted.

RCUK need your feedback

The beta version has gone through robust technical testing and is close in look, feel and function to how RCUK envisage the final product. However, it is important that they ensure the data it delivers and its functionality meets the needs of its users.

RCUK are therefore calling on people to use and interrogate the beta site and provide feedback to RCUK on their experience to inform the development of Gateway to Research over the next year. They would like to encourage third parties to investigate innovative ways that the data can be used and shared to take it to a broader audience.

You can access the beta Gateway to Research at http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk/ . It is currently password protected but it will be publicly available for you to use when it is officially released within the next few days (on or around 12 December 2012).

Please email your feedback to gateway@rcuk.ac.uk .

Updating information about your research

Colleagues within BU are aware of the process for updating information about the outcomes and outputs of their research, through ROS and ResearchFish.  If you require more information then please refer to the ‘Principles of Use’ document above or visit RCUK’s web site to find out what ROS is, how it works, and how it can benefit you.

If you have any further questions, please email gateway@rcuk.ac.uk or contact individual Research Councils for information on specific areas of research.

Research Professional

Guidance

Every BU academic has a Research Professional account which delivers weekly emails detailing funding opportunities in their broad subject area. To really make the most of your Research Professional account, you should tailor it further by establishing additional alerts based on your specific area of expertise.

Research Professional have created several guides to help introduce users to ResearchProfessional. These can be downloaded here.

Quick Start Guide: Explains to users their first steps with the website, from creating an account to searching for content and setting up email alerts, all in the space of a single page.

User Guide: More detailed information covering all the key aspects of using ResearchProfessional.

Administrator Guide: A detailed description of the administrator functionality.

In addition to the above, there are a set of 2-3 minute videos online, designed to take a user through all the key features of ResearchProfessional.  To access the videos, please use the following link: http://www.youtube.com/researchprofessional 

Research Professional are running a series of online training broadcasts aimed at introducing users to the basics of creating and configuring their accounts on ResearchProfessional.  They are holding monthly sessions, covering everything you need to get started with ResearchProfessional.  The broadcast sessions will run for no more than 60 minutes, with the opportunity to ask questions via text chat.  Each session will cover:

  • Self registration and logging in
  • Building searches
  • Setting personalised alerts
  • Saving and bookmarking items
  • Subscribing to news alerts
  • Configuring your personal profile

Each session will run between 10.00am and 11.00am (UK) on the fourth Tuesday of each month.  You can register here for your preferred date:

22nd January 2013: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/637298448 

26th February 2013: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/267446504 

26th March 2013: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/518275168 

23rd April 2013: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/255287520 

28th May 2013: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/806064201 

25th June 2013: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/492839664 

23rd July 2013: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/771246561 

27th August 2013: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/398714217 

24th September 2013: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/882372120 

These are free and comprehensive training sessions and so this is a good opportunity to get to grips with how Research Professional can work for you.

UK Research Office (UKRO) visit to BU on 27th November 2012

Funding opportunities, Guidance, R & KE Operations, Research themes

BU welcomed Jo Frost, BU’s named contact for the UK Research Office (UKRO). Jo’s presentation was wide-ranging and hugely informative, outlining the current FP7 scheme and the forthcoming Horizon 2020 scheme, which is still going through the consultation process. It is expected that Horizon 2020 will focus on three priorities: ‘Excellent Science’, ‘Industrial Leadership’ and ‘Societal Challenges’. Jo also introduced the new Erasmus for All scheme.

All the slides from the day are available to BU staff only. These slides include many links to useful sources of information, if you would like to take part in the Horizon 2020 consultation or are planning ahead and want to prepare a submission to the many funding streams within this framework. Jo stressed the need to build networks and many suggestions are included in her presentation. These slides also give detailed information on the proposed budget allocations and themes within the three priority areas.

If you would like to enhance your knowledge of changes to EU funding, please refer to Jo’s slides. You can also contact Corrina Dickson, Paul Lynch, Sarah Katon or Emily Cieciura, who can help you develop your EU submissions.

BU staff can view the slides at: I:\R&KEO\Public\RDU\European Related\UKRO 2012 Presentation.

Fusion Investment Fund – One week to get your applications in!

Funding opportunities, Fusion, Guidance

Please be aware of the upcoming deadline for submitting your application to the Fusion Investment Fund!

The upcoming round of funding has a deadline of 1st December – committees will then meet in January to decide which proposals get funding, with decisions going out to applicants in mid-January.

I will be posting specific details about some of the proposals throughout 2013, I hope these will be useful to help illustrate what the funds can be used for and why certain applications were successful in a particular strand.

We have already planned interventions to take place in the Spring leading up the next round of funding which has a 1st June deadline. Feel free to drop me an email about these.

To apply to fund please see the intranet pages here.

 

Good luck!

Sam Furr

FusionFund@bournemouth.ac.uk

Launch of our new Research Council Application Guidance webpages!

Guidance

We have recently launched a new section on the Blog that focuses specifically on providing guidance and information about writing applications to Research Councils – you can access the information here: Research Council Application Guidance. The pages contain information about the different sections required when writing a proposal to a Research Council, including guidance on writing: the impact sections, the data management plan, and the justification of resources documents. Where possible examples of good practice are also provided. We really hope this will be a useful resource 🙂

We aim to develop this into a comprehensive suite of information for academic colleagues writing proposals to Research Councils. If you have any feedback on the pages or if there is anything you’d like to see that isn’t there yet then please let us know so it can be added.

You can access the information from the Research Toolkit link in the top menu bar of the Blog (just beneath the picture of the books) or from this handy link – Research Council Application Guidance.

Code of Ethical Fundraising & Donors’ Charter

Guidance

A new university-wide policy has been implemented; the Code of Ethical Fundraising & Donors’ Charter.

All staff who have any involvement in fundraising, dealing with corporate sponsors, negotiating with suppliers and other organisations, and managing relationships with external organisations should be aware of and adhere to this procedure.

To spread the word to staff about the Code the Alumni and Development Office will be holding four coffee mornings in December, open to all staff. These will include a short presentation from Claire House-Norman, Director of Development and Alumni Relations (as well as cake!) and staff will have the opportunity to ask questions and discuss the Code further with Claire and her team.

The coffee mornings will be held from 10.30am-11.30am on:

  • 3rd December, 21 Lansdowne Rd
  • 4th December, The Retreat, Talbot Campus
  • 5th December, 21 Lansdowne Rd
  • 6th December, The Retreat, Talbot Campus

If you would like to attend please register using the form at: https://bournemouthuniversity.wufoo.com/forms/k7p8r5/

The policy can be found the Policies and Procedures Section of the BU Intranet.

If you have any queries about the policy please contact Claire House-Norman or for queries about the events please contact Tom Galpin.

Changes to Research Council research grants administration

Guidance

Changes to final reporting

In a move to reduce the amount of effort required of grant holders and peer reviewers, and building on the policy of consolidating outcomes reporting through online systems, the Research Councils have decided to scale back their requirements for final reporting on grants.

For Councils other than BBSRC and ESRC, most grants with an end date on or after 1st January 2013 will no longer require a final report. ESRC will for now be continuing with its end of award reporting process and BBSRC intends to phase out final reports over the coming months. Some grant schemes within the other Councils may also continue to require reports and in these cases a final report request will be issued in the normal way. But, in the majority of cases, a final report will not be required.

Grants ending before 1 st January 2013 will continue to require a final report in the normal way, unless this requirement has previously been waived.

Changes to research grant terms and conditions

Some changes have been made to the core terms and conditions of Research Council grants, affecting grants announced from 1 October 2012. These are:

GC7 (Extensions) – grants may now be extended for up to 12 months, in total, as a result of maternity, paternity or adoption leave.

GC2 (Research Governance), under Misconduct and Conflicts of Interest – inclusion of a requirement that the Research Organisation has in place procedures for governing good research practice, and for investigating and reporting unacceptable research conduct, that meets the requirements set out in the 2012 Concordat to Support Research Integrity (as well as the RCUK Policy and Guidelines on Governance of Good Research Conduct).

Improvements to peer-review feedback

In a first step towards improving the transparency of the peer review process, the Councils are making changes to the Je-S system in November that will enable the decision provided to grant applicants on the outcome of their proposal to be made available, through Je-S, to research organisation administrative offices.

Fusion Investment Fund – Applying for BUDI secondment

Funding opportunities, Fusion, Guidance

What is being offered?

The Study Leave Committee (Fusion Investment Fund) will fund five dedicated secondment opportunities for BU staff to get involved with The BU Dementia Institute (BUDI).  Staff can be bought out of their current roles for up to 6 months to get involved directly with BUDI. 

Who are BUDI looking for?

You don’t have to be a health care specialist to participate, they need psychologists, education experts, marketing and media experts, business and leadership professionals, economists, engineers, data analysts, project managers and computer scientists.  It is truly cross-disciplinary and an ideal way for staff to gain experience of research and knowledge exchange bids.

How to apply

Potential applicants are encouraged to contact the Director of BUDI Professor Anthea Innes and can apply before the 1st December deadline via the Fusion Investment Fund application form details of which can be found on the staff portal. 

When you make your online application please mark it clearly ‘BUDI Secondment’ as it will be sent to Anthea Innes for her endorsement before being submitted to the Study Leave Committee.

Hear it direct from the horse’s mouth! – Individual one-to-one advice from FIF committee members

Funding opportunities, Fusion, Guidance

For the December round of Fusion Investment Funding the committee members from all three strands (open to staff) are available to contact to arrange advice and guidance on completing your applications, from today until the 1st December deadline.

Please note the CCCP committee members will be available by phone or email only.

To contact members from one of the panels send an email to a member, names found clicking on the following pages and scrolling down to the ‘assessment’ box:

Co-Creation and Co-Production strand CCCP

Staff Mobility and Networking strand SMN

Study Leave strand SL

 

Don’t forget to apply by the 1st December deadline!

Sam

Fusion Investment Fund Applications – Three weeks to go!

Funding opportunities, Fusion, Guidance

I would like to remind you of the deadline for applications to the Fusion Investment Fund, which is the 1st December 2012.

Fusion Investment Fund workshop takes place – Martin Pickard leads successful surgery.

I attended a workshop session on Tuesday this week with a small group of your colleagues, attendees had the opportunity to bring along draft proposals to show Martin and myself to get individual feedback and discuss in the group aspects of their applications that can be improved, in order to secure Fusion Investment Funds.  Martin will also offer further feedback to attendees having read their ammended proposals following the session.  I would urge applicants to the fund to use further intervention opportunities ahead of the December deadline. 

Fusion Investment Fund intervention opportunities:

Each of the three committees are contactable by email in order to get individual feedback on your application.  You should scroll down to the assessment section of the relevant strand webpage to find committee member names and do drop them an email!

CCCP Strand; Staff Mobility and Networking Strand; Study Leave Strand

 

Applying to the fund.

To apply to the fund please see the information here on our intranet pages. I would stongly advise reading the FIF FAQs revised before you fill out a form.

If you have any queries about the fund please email FusionFund@bournemouth.ac.uk.

Best of luck!

Sam

Research Professional

Guidance

Every BU academic has a Research Professional account which delivers weekly emails detailing funding opportunities in their broad subject area. To really make the most of your Research Professional account, you should tailor it further by establishing additional alerts based on your specific area of expertise.

Research Professional have created several guides to help introduce users to ResearchProfessional. These can be downloaded here.

Quick Start Guide: Explains to users their first steps with the website, from creating an account to searching for content and setting up email alerts, all in the space of a single page.

User Guide: More detailed information covering all the key aspects of using ResearchProfessional.

Administrator Guide: A detailed description of the administrator functionality.

In addition to the above, there are a set of 2-3 minute videos online, designed to take a user through all the key features of ResearchProfessional.  To access the videos, please use the following link: http://www.youtube.com/researchprofessional 

Research Professional are running a series of online training broadcasts aimed at introducing users to the basics of creating and configuring their accounts on ResearchProfessional.  They are holding monthly sessions, covering everything you need to get started with ResearchProfessional.  The broadcast sessions will run for no more than 60 minutes, with the opportunity to ask questions via text chat.  Each session will cover:

  • Self registration and logging in
  • Building searches
  • Setting personalised alerts
  • Saving and bookmarking items
  • Subscribing to news alerts
  • Configuring your personal profile

Each session will run between 10.00am and 11.00am (UK) on the fourth Tuesday of each month.  You can register here for your preferred date:

27th November 2012: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/326491841

22nd January 2013: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/637298448 

26th February 2013: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/267446504 

26th March 2013: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/518275168 

23rd April 2013: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/255287520 

28th May 2013: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/806064201 

25th June 2013: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/492839664 

23rd July 2013: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/771246561 

27th August 2013: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/398714217 

24th September 2013: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/882372120 

These are free and comprehensive training sessions and so this is a good opportunity to get to grips with how Research Professional can work for you.

BUDI to benefit from successful £3,834 Fusion Investment Fund bid

Funding opportunities, Fusion, Guidance

 

Following a successful fusion bid application I am going to Canada later this month. One of the aims of the trip is to promote the growing Bournemouth University Dementia Institute (BUDI), as well as develop new and existing relationships BUDI already has with our Canadian colleagues.

Rural dementia service provision is a growing strand of research work in BUDI (Bournemouth University Dementia Institute). GRIID is an international group exploring rural service provision led by Anthea Innes along with Debra Morgan (Canada) David Edvardsson (Sweden), Amit Dias (India) and Peter Birkett (Australia). The on-going collaboration received seed corn funding from HSC QR and is currently being written up for publication.  The trip to Canada will enable me to explore further activities to conduct under the GRIID consortia as part of the 5 year work plan of this international group.

It will also enable BUDI to continue to build on the existing links with Professor Morgan at the University of Saskatchewan, established by Professor Anthea Innes 5 years ago. During the trip I will have the opportunity to attend and present a key note lecture at the Annual Summit of the Knowledge Network in Rural and Remote Dementia Care. This annual Summit brings together around 50 province based policy makers, decision makers, practitioners and researchers who are eager to work collaboratively with the university to identify research opportunities and will provide a model to explore for the ongoing collaborative ways of working BUDI is establishing.  

Professor Morgan developed and leads a unique and highly esteemed memory clinic (Morgan et al 2011. Evaluation of Telehealth for Preclinic Assessment and Follow-Up in an Interprofessional Rural and Remote Memory Clinic. Journal of Applied Gerontology 30: 304-33) at the University of Saskatchewan and I will be visiting this clinic whilst I am there. The visit will not only develop my own practice, but will provide the opportunity to disseminate and share knowledge with the Dorset memory service teams on my return.

In Toronto I plan to visit Dr Pia Kontos at Toronto University. Her research on person centred care reinforces the focus in the programmes we deliver to undergraduate and post graduate students. Sharing her experiences of a more creative dissemination of research, compliments my PhD thesis which has used a visual methodology. A visit to another existing collaborator of Anthea, the director of the Canadian Alzheimer’s Association Education team, in Toronto, will allow us to explore potential educational work between BUDI and our Canadian Alzheimer Association colleagues.

So the week in Canada promises to be busy and I am sure fulfilling!

New look BRIAN

Guidance

BRIAN was successfully upgraded last week and the eagle eyed amongst you will have noticed that your home page looks different.  Please see the BRIAN Upgrade notes, which gives a short explanation of what everything is.

The majority of the functionality remains the same but there are some new features that will enhance your interaction with BRIAN.

Notes from ESRC ARMA WORKSHOP 2012 on challenges and opportunities for the social sciences in the current economic climate

Funding opportunities, Guidance

BU’s Teresa Coffin and Eva Papadopoulou (Research and Knowledge Exchange Operations) attended a training day hosted by the ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) aimed at discussing the challenges and opportunities for the social sciences in the current climate. The focus of the event included presentations from the main Department Heads who outlined their internal workings, grant application framework and advice for successful applications. They also discussed their amended research agenda, funding opportunities, various partnerships and current strategic priorities. Notes from the day can be found here:

ARMA Notes

Reminder – BRIAN upgrade

Guidance

BRIAN will be unavailable from 9am to 12noon today due to an upgrade to the system.  Please see yesterdays posting for details of the upgrade.  This will also mean that the external staff profile pages will be unavailable.  These may be unavailable for slightly longer as the information from BRIAN will take time to upload into the web pages.

Thank you for your patience.

BRIAN Unavailability due to upgrade – 1/11/12

Guidance

BRIAN is likely to be unavailable between 9am and 12noon on Thursday, 1st November 2012 whilst the system upgrades to a new version.  I say likely as the issues experienced yesterday with the network have put all systems at risk.  I will issue a blog post tomorrow to state whether or not the upgrade will take place and I will also put a warning notice on the log-in screen for BRIAN informing users of when the system will be unavailable.

The upgrade will include a new look user profile page within BRIAN and so your home page will look different, however, all functions will remain the same.  There will be the addition of a ‘Favourites’ tab, which will allow for a separate display of publications that you have flagged as a ‘favourite’ (please note that ‘favourites’ are only available in BRIAN and not replicated in the web based external staff profile pages).

If you choose to make a publication ‘invisible’ (you may choose to do this for publications of a sensitive/controversial nature) then this will be hidden in your external profile page.  However, if you co-author with another BU academic, the publication will only be hidden for the author who has selected to make it ‘invisible’.  Therefore, you will need to discuss with all relevant BU authors whether a publication will be visible externally by one or none of you.

There will be an improved link between Supervisors and PhD students.  When Supervisors add their PhD students to their BRIAN account, this currently creates a false link for the student in the external staff profile pages.  The upgrade will enable a hyperlink within the Supervisors external profile page to the Students external profile page.  More details will follow on this.

The authors for publications will be displayed in the external staff profile pages as ‘BU Authors’ and ‘Other Authors’.  The BU Authors will be hyperlinked so that users can go directly to a BU staff members profile page.

There will be a number of changes to the REF module, which will mainly benefit the RKEDO team.

There are a number of developments still to take place on BRIAN.  This includes the Grants module, which should go live shortly.

Please note that the user guides and videos will contain screen prints of the previous homepage.  These will be updated in due course.