Category / open access

Mental health & maternity care in Nepal: THET-funded training

international, open access

group work NawalparasiIMG_6649

A few days I posted a short report of our first session as part of the THET-funded project ‘Mental Health Training for Community-based Maternity Providers in Nepal’, see this previous post here.  Yesterday we completed the final third day training of the first session of this BU-led project.  Over three days we had 70 ANMs (Auxiliary Nurse Midwives) in attendance, which we think is (nearly) all such staff based in all birthing centres in the district (=province).  The three days were the same, i.e. each session was repeated twice so each day one third of the ANMs could attend, and two-third could be at work in the birthing centre ensuring women could deliver safely.

logo THETAs part of this project we send UK volunteers (health and/or education) experts to Nepal to offer high quality training in areas where it is most needed.  Further detail on this BU-led THET project can be found in our scientific paper Mental health issues in pregnant women in Nepal  published in the Nepal Journal of Epidemiology available through Open Access.  Mental illness is still very much a taboo topic in Nepal as it has often a serious stigma attached to it.  Moreover, the relatively short training of ANMs is often fairly basic and the national curriculum does not cover mental health issues in any detail.  This joint project between Bournemouth University, Liverpool John Mooores University, Tribhuvan University and the local charity Green Tata Nepal addresses issues about mental health in general and in pregnant women and new mothers in particular.  Tribhuvan University is the oldest university in Nepal and one of the ten largest universities in the world (based on student numbers).  The project is multi-disciplinary involving midwives, (mental health) nurses, and doctors as well as global health researchers, educationalists and sociologists.

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

 

 

FOSTER e-learning resources on open science and open access in Horizon 2020 now freely available

open access

Open-Access-logoThe European project FOSTER (Facilitate Open Science Training for European Research) aims to establish mechanisms for researchers to embed open sciences in their daily workflow, thus supporting them to optimize their research visibility and impact and comply with the EU open access policies.

Two of the current courses are particularly relevant for BU staff:

  • Introduction to open science: provides a general introduction to the various components and philosophies of open science including why open science is essential to rigorous, reproducible and transparent research, as well as to future research evaluation criteria focused on societal impact. This is relevant to anyone undertaking research.
  • Open access to publications in Horizon 2020: provides information on how to adhere to the H2020 mandate by depositing publications in open access and therefore ensuring they are freely available. This is relevant to anyone currently working on a Horizon 2020 research project and anyone considering applying to Horizon 2020.

These resources are freely available from the FOSTER website.

“Open science does not equal open access” – so what is it then?

open access

open science principlesOpen science is the movement to make scientific research, data and dissemination accessible to all levels of an inquiring society, amateur or professional. It incorporates open access publishing as a key principle, alongside open data, open source, open methodology, open peer review and open educational resources. Examples of movements within open science include citizen science (whereby research is conducted, in whole or in part, by amateur or nonprofessional scientists) and open data (data should be freely available to everyone to use and republish as they wish, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control). There is an excellent introduction to open science available here: what, exactly, is open science?

open science does not equal open access The open science movement is gaining momentum. Some research funders, such as the UK Research Councils and European Commission for example, now have mandates in place to enforce open access publishing and open data sharing as a requirement of receiving their funding. The RCUK public engagement strategy states the UK Research Councils will support collaborative and co-produced research (e.g. citizen science, community engagement and social participation) and the councils have funded a number of open science research projects, for example, EPSRC funded UCL’s ‘Extreme’ Citizen Science (ExCiteS) project and AHRC funded Oxford’s Constructing Scientific Communities: Citizen Science in the 19th and 20th Centuries.

A substantial and growing number of researchers are now embedding the principles of open science in how they design and conduct research. Dr Michael Pocock, an ecologist at CEH NERC, for example, is a keen advocate of open science and has led several citizen science projects with the aim of collectively undertaking hypothesis-led research. He has authored these excellent slides – Real science and real engagement: the value of citizen science.
openscienceThe European-funded project FOSTER (Facilitate Open Science Training for European Research) aims to establish mechanisms for researchers to embed open sciences in their daily workflow, thus supporting them to optimize their research visibility and impact. The project has created an excellent resource bank that provides a general introduction to the various components and philosophies of open science including why open science is essential to rigorous, reproducible and transparent research, as well as to future research evaluation criteria focused on societal impact.

The Open Science Federation website is an excellent source of information and inspiring ideas of how to embed open science into your research. There is an open science Twitter account if you want to keep up to date with open science information from around the world – @openscience.

If you are interested in building open science principles into your next research project, then speak with your Research Facilitator.

Sources of Government Open Data as potential research material

open access

During yesterday’s Fusion Curriculum meeting there was a brief discussion about sources of open data.

There are an increasing number of open data sets offering an almost unlimited scope for data analysis and data mash-up.  Data is downloadable in common formats and in some cases it is possible to create visualisations on the fly from the host website.

Here are three sites that you might like to explore:

Country URL Datasets Jan 16
UK Government Open Data https://data.gov.uk/data/search                      26,122
US Data.gov http://catalog.data.gov/dataset                   191,487
EU Open Data Portal https://open-data.europa.eu/en/data/                        7,894

There are many more data sets available to BU both under subscription and as open access.  To discuss in more detail please contact your LLS Faculty Liaison Team.

Latest Major Funding Opportunities

Funding opportunities, Knowledge Exchange, open access, R & KE Operations

Welcome back!

The following funding opportunities have been announced. Please follow the links for more information. Money Bear Funding

 

EPSRC

Pilot call: Access to the Research Data Facility (RDF) for UK researchers

EPSRC have recognised the need to store active computational data and to be able to use this data for further scientific benefit, so are looking at giving access to storage on the national Research Data Facility (RDF).

This call is for applicants within the remit of RCUK but performing research outside of the remit of EPSRC and NERC. The total amount of storage available for this pilot call is 1000TB.

deadline dates:

Technical assessment : 29th January

Closing date: 12th February

 

Marine Renewable Energy KE Fellow call

NERC invites proposals for a Knowledge Exchange Fellowship in the area of marine renewable energy. NERC is seeking to invest in a suitably qualified academic to broker links between the academics and businesses within the UK marine renewable energy community, as well as with relevant regulators and policymakers.

Applicants should outline their own approach to a programme of work in the marine renewable energy sector. Further guidance on this opportunity is at the foot of this page along with instructions on how to submit the application via Je-S.

deadline dates:

17 March 2016 at 16:00

 

Philip Leverhulme Prizes

Philip Leverhulme Prizes recognise the achievement of outstanding researchers whose work has already attracted international recognition and whose future career is exceptionally promising. This call is repeated once a year.

deadline dates:

16 May 2016 at 16:00

 

Artist in Residence Grants

These awards support the residency of an individual artist in a UK university or museum in order to foster a creative collaboration between the artist and the staff and/or students of that institution. The term ‘artist’ encompasses visual artists, creative writers, musicians, poets and other producers of original creative work.

The scheme brings an artist into a research and study environment where their artistic form or creative art is not part of the normal curriculum or activities of the host department. There must be a distinct contrast between the artist and host department’s expertise (for example, a poet being hosted by a physics department, a composer by a geography department). It is not the objective of the residency to provide additional teaching capacity for the host department. An artist may not apply directly – all applications must be made by the host institution.

Applications open on 8 April 2016. The closing date is 4pm on 8 September 2016

 

Joint Call of the JPI Urban Europe, supported by the European Commission

JPI Urban Europe’s fourth call – the ERA-NET Cofund Smart Urban Futures (ENSUF) – supported by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 programme, is open.

Three call topics are defined:

  • Concepts and strategies for smart urban transformation, growth and shrinkage
  • New dynamics of public services
  • Inclusive, vibrant and accessible urban communities

deadline date (pre-proposals):

15 March 2016 at 12:00 Central European Time

 

 

If you are interested in submitting to any of the above calls you must contact RKEO with adequate notice before the deadline.

Please note that some funding bodies specify a time for submission as well as a date. Please confirm this with your RKEO Funding Development Officer

You can set up your own personalised alerts on Research Professional. If you need help setting these up, just ask your School’s/Faculty’s Funding Development Officer in RKEO or view the recent blog post here.

If thinking of applying, why not add notification of your interest on Research Professional’s record of the bid so that BU colleagues can see your intention to bid and contact you to collaborate.

 

Open Access publishing discussion at EU

open access, Publishing

EU Open Access 2015The European Commission held a workshop in October about alternatives to Green and Gold Open Access publishing.  The presentations held at this workshop are freely available online, click here.  Discussions included questions such as: how might these alternatives work, how they have evolved, whether they work well, and what challenges they don’t manage to tackle. This report synthesises the presentations and discussions from the workshop.   For more details see: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/news/report-workshop-alternative-open-access-publishing-models

Open-Access-logo

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

Latest co-creation paper hot off the press! Study investigated the mechanism of spinal manipulation.

open access, PG research, Publishing, Research themes

Does cervical lordosis change after spinal manipulation for non-specific neck pain? A prospective cohort study

C-spine QF image for Chiro and Man Therapies

The mechanism for spinal manipulation in the treatment of pain is unknown. One mechanism proposed in the literature is that neck pain might be alleviated by changing or ‘correcting’ the alignment of the cervical spine (normal is considered to be a lordosis or lordotic curve – curving in towards the body). We decided to put this idea to the test in an undergraduate student project at AECC. Mike Shilton, a third year chiropractic student at the time, measured the angle of the cervical spine on x-ray images taken of patients and healthy volunteers that I had recruited for my PhD research. In that research, briefly, patients received spinal manipulation over 4 weeks, while healthy volunteers did not. Both groups had motion x-rays taken at baseline and 4-week follow-up. By using the first static image of each motion sequence we were able to investigate whether the cervical spine alignment or lordosis changed in the patient group, and whether such changes were greater than that in the healthy group not receiving treatment.

For the statistical analysis Mike was assisted by another student, Bas Penning de Vries. After the study it was proposed to the two students, by me and Professor Alan Breen, that they have a go at writing up the study for publication, with our assistance of course. Happily, they decided to do so. It might have been at times a painful process for them (most worthwhile things seem to be!), but they persevered and now it is published in a peer-reviewed open access journal! A great achievement for them, a publication already as they begin their clinical careers.

This co-created paper was a valuable exercise for the two undergraduate students, getting to learn about the research process, statistical analysis, publication and dissemination. An obvious benefit of co-creation to academics is that the workload of a project is spread throughout a larger team, albeit the students require support -but the time invested in that support should pay off. For instance, Mike and Bas  brought a fresh perspective to the team, posing well considered questions and suggestions that could be taken on board to improve the robustness of my own work and lines of argument. And of course, we now have a publication that would have taken much longer to get to press had I not had their assistance in writing it. In other words, with co-creation, everyone stands to gain.

Dr Jonny Branney

Research from the Department of Psychology in the New Scientist

HEIF, Knowledge Exchange, open access, student research

Research resulting from a BU-funded PhD studentship is featured in this week’s edition of the New Scientist, and was also recently covered by the Independent. Under the supervision of Dr Sarah Bate from the Department of Psychology (Faculty of Science and Technology), Anna Bobak has spent the last three years investigating so-called “super recognisers”, or people with extraordinary face recognition skills. It appears that only a small proportion of the general population have these skills, yet they may be incredibly useful in forensic and security tasks, such as the identification of perpetrators from CCTV footage or in passport control. While super-recognisers have previously been identified via laboratory tests of face recognition, Anna’s work demonstrates that only some of these individuals also excel at more applied face recognition tasks. In a recent paper published in Applied Cognitive Psychology, she demonstrates that more real-world tasks are required to identify the super recognisers who can truly be of value to the Police Force and in national security settings.

Anna has recently moved into a PDRA position where she continues to work with Sarah in the field of super recognition. Her post is part of a HEIF5+1 initiative that aims to generate knowledge exchange with the Police. The team are currently working directly with Dorset Police to create screening tools that can identify officers who may be particularly suited to certain face recognition tasks, and to make a series of recommendations for best practice that are extracted from excellent performance. They are also creating resources that educate officers about the limitations and biases that act upon the human face recognition system, and how these may influence core policing activities.

Millennium Project – free access to research

open access, Publishing

Screen Shot 2015-11-12 at 13.17.03

To mark the final year of the Millennium Project, commissioned by the UN, Taylor & Francis Group are offering free access to selected research related to each of the eight Millennium Development Goals.

 You only have until the end of 2015 to download included free access articles, focusing on Poverty, Education, Gender, Health, Environmental Sustainability and Development.

Click here to make the most of hundreds of free access articles dedicated to the Millennium Development Goals.

BU PhD student Sheetal Sharma’s publication in MIDWIFERY

international, open access, Publishing, writing

Sheetal Sharma Midw 2030

 

Ms. Sheetal Sharma, PhD student in FHSS, published her latest paper in Midwifery (Elsevier) this week. This latest paper ‘Midwifery2030, a woman’s Pathway to health: What does it mean?’ is co-authored by a number of illustious midwifery researchers. The 2014 State of the World’s Midwifery report included a new framework for the provision of womancentred sexual, reproductive, maternal, newborn and adolescent health care, known as the Midwifery2030 Pathway. The Pathway was designed to apply in all settings (high-, middle- and low income countries, and in any type of health system). This paper describes the process of developing the Midwifery2030 Pathway and explain the meaning of its different components, with a view to assisting countries with its implementation.

Sheetal is currently in her final year of a PhD on the evaluation of the impact of a maternity care intervention in Nepal.

Sheeta;

Sheetal Sharma

Congratulations!!

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen, Dr. Catherine Angell & Prof. Vanora Hundley (all CMMPH)

&

Visiting Faculty Prof. Padam Simkhada (based at Liverpool John Moores University).

 

Reference:

ten Hoope-Bender, P. Lopes, S., Nove, A., Michel-Schuldt, M.,  Moyo, NT, Bokosi, M., Codjia, L.,  Sharma, S., Homer, CSE. (2015) Midwifery2013, a woman’s Pathway to health: What does it mean? Midwifery

 

BURO intermittently unavailable

BRIAN, open access

BURO, BU’s open access repository for research, is currently experiencing some intermittent Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, which means that occasionally it has been temporarily unavailable to our BURO Editorial Team and external users of open access content.  Please note, this does not seem to have affected the uploading files to BURO from BRIAN or the links to open access works embedded in your Staff Profile Pages.  The company that host BURO have been contacted and we hope all will be resolved shortly.

If you have any concerns please report to IT Services.

The guide Open Access and Depositing your Research will help answer some of your questions about open access.

If you have any further questions about depositing your research open access please contact buro@bournemouth.ac.uk