Category / open access

Latest Major Funding Opportunities

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

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.

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

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

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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

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

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

 

New CMMPH paper published from COST collaboration

BMC Health Serv Res
This week saw publication of a new CMMPH paper in BMC Health Services Research.  This methodological paper ‘Assessing the performance of maternity care in Europe: a critical exploration of tools and indicators‘ is a collaboration between several European maternity-care researchers based in Spain (Ramón Escuriet, Fatima Leon-Larios), Belgium (Katrien Beeckman), Northern Ireland (Marlene Sinclair), the UK (Lucy Firth, Edwin van Teijlingen), Switzerland ( Christine Loytved, Ans Luyben) and Portugal (Joanna White).  Dr. Ans Luyben is also Visiting Faculty in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences at Bournemouth University.  The underlying work was supported by the European Union through a COST Action called Childbirth Cultures, Concerns, and Consequences headed by Prof. Soo Downe at the University of Central Lancashire.  COST is seen by the EU as an important tool in building and supporting the European Research Area (ERA).

Cost ActionThis paper critically reviews published tools and indicators currently used to measure maternity care performance within Europe, focusing particularly on whether and how current approaches enable systematic appraisal of processes of minimal (or non-) intervention in support of physiological or “normal birth”.

The authors conclude: “The review identified an emphasis on technical aspects of maternity, particularly intrapartum care in Europe, rather than a consideration of the systematic or comprehensive measurement of care processes contributing to non-intervention and physiological (normal) birth. It was also found that the links between care processes and outcomes related to a normal mode of birth are not being measured.”

 

Professor Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

Open Access publishing does not have to be expensive!

Nepal J Epid Open AccessAs it is Open Access Week I would like to clarify one of the Open Access publishing myths.  One of the common replies I receive from academics colleagues when raising Open Access publishing is that it is (too) expensive. This is, of course, true for many academic journals, but not all are expensive.  Some don’t even charge a processing fee at all.  Infamously, The Lancet Global Health charges an article processing fee of US $4750 upon acceptance of submitted research articles.  More moderately priced scientific journals still charge anything up to about £1,500 per article.

Open-Access-logoAcademic publishing has been big business for decades, and Open Access has rapidly become part of that business.  While traditional book and magazine publishers struggle to stay afloat, research publishing houses have typical profit margins of nearly 40%, according CBCNEWS who quote Vincent Larivière from the University of Montreal’s School of Library & Information Science.

At the same time we see a sharp increase in so-called Predatory Publishers who have set up business for the sole reason to make money from Open Access publishing.  They have not established or taken over academic journal for the greater good of the discipline or the dissemination of research findings to the widest possible audience.  Unscrupulous publishers jump on the Open-Access bandwagon BU librarian Jean Harris recently shared an interesting article about Predatory Publishers (click here to read this!).

J Asian MidwHowever, there are other format of Open Access. One of our more recent papers on research ethics was published in the Nepal Journal of Epidemiology which is an online Open Access journal that does not charge authors for publishing!  Also the Journal of Asian Midwives, where FHSS PhD student Preeti Mahato recently had her article accepted, is hosted in Pakistan by Aga Khan University through its institutional repository eCommons.  Publishing in this Open Access online journal is also free of charge.  In other words, Open Access publishing does not have to be expensive!

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

 

Vitae invites you to their first live online vitaechat in conjunction with International Open Access Week

Open Access 2015 blog banner 1

vitae invites you to join the first live online #vitaechat this Friday 23rd October between 1-2pm UK time, to coincide with the International Open Access Week.

Early career researchers need to be familiar with many forms of ‘open’ – from open access, to open data, to open education – but what does it mean to be a researcher in this open environment?

During this live Twitter chat, the host will lead participants through a discussion of the potential career benefits and opportunities associated with open research, as well as the steps researchers need to take to prepare themselves to be effective in an open research environment, both within an academic career and beyond.

JOIN THE LIVECHAT ON THE #VITAECHAT CHANNEL, 23 OCTOBER AT 1 PM (UK TIME)

Open Access Success Story #4

Open Access 2015 blog banner 1

The Faculty of Media and Communication Open Access Lunch and Networking event will take place today at 12noon, PG19 Lecture Theatre, at Poole House ground floor in Talbot.

Professor Tom Watson will share with the audience his experience of Open Access.

Professor Tom Watson has applied a range of open access methods in developing collaboration with international researchers, rapidly expanding scholarship in the history of public relations and for his own research. He is an active supporter of open access journals and conference proceedings, as well as placing most of his research publications on BURO and other online platforms. He will discuss the methods and share his experience about the pros and cons of the Green open access route.