Category / Publishing

Erasmus+ workshop at BU by Prof. Marahatta from Nepal

international, Publishing

Yesterday (10th August) Prof. Sujan Marahatta from Manmohan Memorial Institute of Health Sciences (MMIHS) gave an insightful talk under the title ‘Response to COVID-19 in Nepal’ to colleagues at Bournemouth University. Prof. Marahatta arrived in the UK yesterday morning and straight off the bus from Heathrow  airport came to present in the Bournemouth Gateway Building.  He is at Bournemouth University as part of the ERASMUS+ Key Action 107 which includes the exchange of academic staff and students between the UK and Nepal, between BU and MMIHS.  His talk covered his role in writing the official report ‘Responding to COVID-19’.

He also spoke about the various joint studies conducted between MMIHS and academics in BU’s Faculty of Health & Social Sciences.  These collaborations include a range of BU academics, Dr. Pramod Regmi, Dr. Catherine Angell, Dr. Preeti Mahato (who recently moved to Royal Holloway), Prof. Carol Clark, Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen, Dr. Nirmal Aryal, Dr. Shanti Shanker, and Prof. Vanora Hundley.

Erasmus+ is the European Commission’s flagship for financial support of mobility for Higher Education students, teachers and institutions. The British Councill is the funding agency in the UK and coordinates the funding at a national level.  BU is proud to be part of Erasmus+.

New paper by Dr. Orlanda Harvey

international, Publishing, student research, writing

Congratulations to Dr. Orlanda Harvey and Dr. Margarete Parrish both in the Department of Sociology and Social Work on the acceptance of their latest paper ‘Mixed-methods research on androgen abuse – a review’ by the journal Current Opinion in Endocrinology & Diabetes [1]. Orlanda was invited to write this review on the basis of her PhD research project.  Her PhD used a mixed-methods approach with people using un-prescribe /recreational Anabolic Androgenic Steroid (AAS) in several high-income countries including the UK.  Anabolic Androgenic Steroids are synthetic drugs mimicking male sex hormones, especially testosterone, and are often used for their anabolic effects, for example, increasing muscle and strength.  This PhD study resulted in several high-quality academic publications [2-4] as well as a feature article in HED Matters under the title ‘ECR Spotlight: From Social Work to Studying Steroids’ [5].
Congratulations!
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH
References:
  1. Harvey, O., van Teijlingen, E., Parrish, M. (2022) Mixed-methods research on androgen abuse – a review, Current Opinion in Endocrinology & Diabetes (accepted)
  2. Harvey, O., Parrish, M., van Teijlingen, E, Trenoweth, S. (2021) Libido as a reason to use non-prescribed Anabolic Androgenic Steroids, Drugs: Education, Prevention & Policy 29:3,276-288,DOI: 10.1080/09687637.2021.1882940
  3. Harvey, O., Keen, S., Parrish, M., van Teijlingen, E. (2019) Support for people who use Anabolic Androgenic Steroids: A Systematic Literature Review into what they want and what they access. BMC Public Health 19: 1024 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-019-7288-x https://rdcu.be/bMFon
  4. Harvey, O., Parrish, M., van Teijlingen, E., Trenoweth, S. (2020) Support for non-prescribed Anabolic Androgenic Steroids users: A qualitative exploration of their needs Drugs: Education, Prevention & Policy 27:5, 377-386. DOI 10.1080/09687637.2019.1705763
  5. Harvey, O., (2019) ECR Spotlight: From Social Work to Studying Steroids, HED Matters 2(2):16-19.

Dealing with difficult reviewers

international, open access, Publishing, writing

This week saw the publication of another Bournemouth University paper on academic writing and publishing.  This latest paper ‘Struggling to reply to reviewers: Some advice for novice researchers‘ has been published in the scientific journal Health Prospect: Journal of Public Health.  This  journal is published in Nepal and it is Open Access, hence freely available across the globe.

Peer review is the process by which academic journals assess and regulate the quality of content they publish, by inviting academic experts to review your submitted manuscripts.  It is a process of quality control. Once you have submitted your paper to a journal the editor will select potential peer reviewers within the field of research to peer-review your manuscript and make recommendations. In many case the peer review process can be a positive experience for you as it allows you to develop your skills and improve your written work.  For example, good reviewers may notice potential imbalances, point out missing key references or highlight different potential perspectives, and thus help you to enhance the overall quality of the paper.  On some occasions, however a reviewer can be a complete pain in the neck!

The paper is written by a multidisciplinary team based in the Department of Nursing Sciences (Dr. Regmi), the Department of Social Sciences and Social Work (Dr. Harvey), and the Department of Midwifery & Health Sciences (Dr. Taylor & Prof. van Teijlingen).  The authors bring their combined expertise in midwifery, social work, health education, sociology and health services research to offers the readers advice how to deal with the more difficult reviewers.

 

Reference:

  1. Harvey, O., Taylor, A., Regmi, P.R., van Teijlingen, E. (2022) Struggling to reply to reviewers: Some advice for novice researchers Health Prospect: Journal of Public Health 21(2):19-22

New paper on COVID-19 rumours in Nepal

Awarded & submitted bids, international, open access, Publishing, writing

Today the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health accepted the latest COVID-19 paper from an multidisciplinary team in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences (FHSS).  The paper ‘Fear, Stigma and Othering: The Impact of COVID-19 Rumours on Returnee Migrants and Muslim Populations of Nepal’ is based on research funded by British Academy Special Research Grants: COVID-19 Awards. This British Academy funded-study brought together social scientists and health researchers interested in social and media aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The project is apart of the Health Research Network for Migrant Workers in Asia and it is led by Dr. Pramod Regmi (Department of Nursing Sciences), Dr. Shovita Dhakal-Adhikari (Department of Social Sciences and Social Work), Dr. Nirmal Aryal (formerly Department of Midwifery & Health Sciences and soon to be appointed in the Department of Nursing Sciences), external collaborator Dr. Sharada Prasad Wasti from the University of Huddersfield, and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen (Department of Midwifery & Health Sciences).

 

Reference:

  1. Regmi, P., Dhakal Adhikari, S., Aryal, N., Wasti, S.P., van Teijlingen, E. (2022) Fear, Stigma and Othering: The Impact of COVID-19 Rumours on Returnee Migrants and Muslim Populations of Nepal, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health Accepted

Article in Food Control on adapting the Delphi method (during Covid restrictions) for research in the food sector

open accecss, Publishing

The purpose of the study was to present the first stage of work being undertaken to develop and evaluate a maturity framework designed to assess and benchmark the effectiveness, ability to achieve continuous improvement, and optimise processes and functioning of food safety regulatory and enforcement agencies across the world.

To achieve this aim, a comparison of global food safety regulations (desk review), and Delphi-interviews with stakeholders of food safety regulatory and enforcement agencies from Australia, Canada, Ireland, and USA were carried out. There were 4 members in the panel – each member had a minimum of twenty years of experience in the food regulatory world. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic-related lockdown, the panel was interviewed individually using MS Teams. 2 rounds of interviews were carried out. At the end of the first round, data was analysed using inductive, textual data analysis. A report was presented to each panel member, following which, a second round if individual interviews were carried out. This enabled us (the research team) to overcome the limitations posed by global lockdowns and social distancing measures, while carrying out a robust iterative process. Through inductive, textual data analysis, three dimensions and thirteen sub-dimensions were identified that covered cultural and systems elements influencing the quality and impact of food safety regulations across the world as well as the gaps identified by the stakeholders.

The conclusions of the study were that whilst there was broad support by food safety regulators for developing a benchmarking and evaluation framework for food safety regulatory and enforcement agencies, there were also some outstanding challenges such as defining globally applicable measures, buy-in from specialised agencies and senior management to adopt a maturity framework to change the culture within regulatory agencies, and the role played by governments in influencing the efficiency and functioning of regulatory systems.

The paper is Open-Access and resides here.

Feel free to drop me a message to learn more about the study or the methodology.

10 Tips for Getting Started as a Peer Reviewer

BU Challenges, Publishing

Are you thinking about being a peer reviewer but aren’t sure where to start? Are you concerned that you don’t have enough experience to review a manuscript for a journal?

Click on the link below to find out the ten easy things you can do to prepare to be a reviewer and put yourself in a position to start reviewing. Some of these are so simple you can do them in the next five minutes. Get started now!

10 tips for getting started as a peer reviewer

New paper on Amazonian Dark Earths involving IMSET researchers

Publishing

Today, Nature Communications published a long-expected Matters Arising in response to a 2021 paper in the same journal: “A new hypothesis for the origin of Amazonian Dark Earths“. The new paper, involving more than 50 leading scholars involved in research on prehistoric Amazonia, affirms a human origin for the dark earths found throughout the central and eastern Amazon basin.

Amazonian Dark Earths (ADEs) are distinguished by their exceptional fertility and richness of archaeological remains. Evidently produced by various kinds of human activity, including but not limited to manuring, rubbish deposition, and biomass burning, they are a distinctive feature of later indigenous settlement of the Amazon river basin.

The paper synthesises diverse archaeological, palaeoenvironmental, and historic data to demonstrate the human origin of ADEs. Source: Lombardo et al. 2022

For more information see: Lombardo, U., Arroyo-Kalin, M., Schmidt, M. et al. Evidence confirms an anthropic origin of Amazonian Dark Earths. Nat Commun 13, 3444 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-31064-2

British Academy Writing Workshop in Nepal: Call for participants

Awarded & submitted bids, conferences, international, Publishing, Training, Women's Academic Network, writing

We are inviting expressions of interest for Nepal-based academic with an interest in gender and development issue to participate in our Writing Workshop: “Promoting Publishing in the field of Gender and Development in Nepal”.  Bournemouth University is leading two separate three-day workshops for early career researchers (ECRs) working across various universities in Nepal to encourage and support them to publish in peer reviewed journals in the field of social sciences, in Kathmandu (from  17-19 August 2022), and in Pokhara (from  21-23 August 2022).  The funding for these exciting workshop is provided by the British Academy.

There will be a mixture of presentations, group discussion and other interactive exercises, and independent writing exercises. The workshop involves practical sessions to help attendees to make their research idea clear and compelling to reviewers, and finalise their papers for publications. One-to-one sessions with our expert advisers will allow attendees to work through different aspects of their own research papers, methods and ideas.

 

How to apply: If you are an ECR based in Nepal and have some idea (or/and data) to work towards publication in gender and development, then please send us:

  1. A short CV – 3 pages maximum;
  2. An abstract or summary of the proposed paper you wish to develop through the writing workshop- (300 words maximum) by 30thJune 2022.

Female ECRs are highly encouraged to apply. Please use Subject British Academy Writing Workshop 2022 and email to sdhakaladhikari@bournemouth.ac.uk,  with a copy to both: pregmi@bournemouth.ac.uk and rashmi.rajkarnikar@cdec.tu.edu.np . The faciliators will inform you about your selection for the workshop by the middle of July 2022.  Selected participants will be asked to to submit their first rough draft by 3rd August, so that this can be discussed further during the workshop (17-19 August 2022).

The Writing Workshop facilitators are three BU scholars, Dr Shovita Dhakal Adhikari, in the Department of Social Sciences & Social Work, Dr. Pramod Regmi in the Department of Nursing Sciences, and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen in the Department of Midwifery & Health Science in collaboration with Dr. Rashmee Rajkarnikar, at Nepal’s oldest and largest university, namely Tribhuvan University.

 

Another CMMPH COVID-19 publication on fathers

innovation, international, Knowledge Transfer, Publishing, writing

Congratulations to Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH) Visiting Faculty members Prof. Minesh Khashu and Ms. Jillian Ireland on the acceptance of their paper “COVID-19 restrictions and psychological well-being of fathers with infants admitted to NICU (neonatal intensive care units)—an exploratory cross-sectional study” has been accepted by Acta Paediatrica [1]. Acta Paediatrica

These authors, both employed by University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust, are part of an international team of researchers studying the role of fathers in maternity care.  The first author on the paper, Dr. Esther Adama is Lecturer in the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Edith Cowan University in Australia. Previous papers produced by some members of this team were both published in the Journal of Neonatal Nursing [2-3].

Congratulations to my colleagues!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

 

 

References:

  1. Adama E.A., Koliouli F., Provenzi L., Feeley N., van Teijlingen E., Ireland J., Thomson-Salo F., Khashu M and FINESSE Group (2022) COVID-19 restrictions and psychological well-being of fathers with infants admitted to NICU—an exploratory cross-sectional study, Acta Paediatrica (accepted).
  2. Fisher, D., Khashu, M., Adama, E., Feeley, N., Garfield, C., Ireland, J., Koliouli F., Lindberg, B., Noergaard, B., Provenzi, L., Thomson-Salo, F., van Teijlingen, E. (2018) Fathers in neonatal units: Improving infant health by supporting the baby-father bond & mother-father co-parenting, Journal of Neonatal Nursing 24(6): 306-312 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnn.2018.08.007
  3. Ireland, J., Khashu, M., Cescutti-Butler, L., van Teijlingen, E., Hewitt-Taylor, J. (2016) Experiences of fathers with babies admitted to neonatal care units: A review of literature, Journal of Neonatal Nursing 22(4): 171–176

Another research league table

international, Publishing

This week Research.com, a prominent academic platform, published its 2022 Edition of the Ranking of Top 1000 Scientists in the area of Social Sciences and Humanities.  Professor Edwin van Teijlingen, in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH), is listed as number 234 in United Kingdom ranking as well as number 1238 in the Social Sciences and Humanities world ranking.

 

New research paper published by PhD student Hina Tariq

NHS, open access, PG research, Publishing, student research, writing

PhD student Hina Tariq, currently undertaking the Clinical Academic Doctorate program at the Department of Social Sciences and Social Work (SSSW), published a new paper titled, “Factors associated with joint contractures in adults: a systematic review with narrative synthesis” Open Access in the journal of Disability and Rehabilitation. This paper is co-authored by her academic supervisors, Professor Sam Porter, Dr Desiree Tait and Dr Kathryn Collins, clinical supervisor, Joel Dunn (Dorset Healthcare University Foundation NHS Trust), and her formal colleague from Pakistan, Shafaq Altaf.

Summary: The review presents latest evidence on factors associated with joint contractures, which are essential to guide clinical practitioners and non-experts in identifying and managing the risk associated with joint contractures. Clinical interventions based on the timely identification of risks related to joint contractures in vulnerable adults can potentially prevent or ameliorate their development or progression.

The review has already crossed over 300 reads. The full text can be accessed by following this link: Full article: Factors associated with joint contractures in adults: a systematic review with narrative synthesis (tandfonline.com)

 

 

Congratulations to Dr. Rachel Arnold on her latest paper

NHS, open access, Publishing, writing

Congratulations to Dr. Rachel Arnold in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH) on the publication today of her  paper ‘Why use Appreciative Inquiry? Lessons learned during COVID-19 in a UK maternity service‘ [1].  This methodological paper is co-authored with Dr. Clare Gordon who holds a has joint clinical academic post at UCLan and Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, with a focus on developing clinically focused stroke research, education and improvement. Clare is also a former BU Ph.D. student.  Further co-authors from CMMPH are Professors Sue Way and Edwin van Teijlingen.  The final co-author, Dr. Preeti Mahato, finished her post in CMMPH two days ago to start her Lectureship in Global Health at Royal Holloway (part of the University of London).

The paper highlights that selecting the most appropriate research method is an important decision in any study. It affects the type of study questions that can be answered. In addition, the research method will have an impact on the participants – how much of their time it takes, whether the questions seem important to them and whether there is any benefit in taking part. This is especially important when conducting research with staff in health services. This article is a reflection on the process of using Appreciative Inquiry (AI) in a study that explored staff well-being in a UK maternity unit. The authors  discuss our experience of using AI,the strengths and limitations of this approach, and conclude with points to consider if you are thinking about using AI. Although a study team was actively involved in decisions, this paper is largely based on reflections by dr. Arnold, the researcher conducting the field work in the maternity services.

 

Reference:

Arnold, R., Gordon, C., van Teijlingen, E., Way, S., Mahato, P. (2022). Why use Appreciative Inquiry? Lessons learned during COVID-19 in a UK maternity service. European Journal of Midwifery, 6(May), 1-7. https://doi.org/10.18332/ejm/147444

Two new academic papers on COVID-19 research

international, Publishing, writing

This month CMMPH has two new research papers focusing on COVID-19.   The first one published in World Medical & Health Policy reports on a quantitative study of the availability of hand-washing facilities in households across Nepal [1].  This study used secondary data from Nepal Demographic Health Survey (NDHS) 2016 to assess the association between households’ wealth status to handwashing stations. The findings reported a statistically significant association between age of the household head, residence place, ecological zone, province, wealth status, having of mosquito net, having a radio, and TV at respondents’ household to fixed hand-washing stations at their households.

The second paper published three days ago in Vaccines is a qualitative study of of interviews with Nepali immigrants living in the UK and their attitudes towards COVD-19 vaccination [2].  Vaccination saves lives and can be an effective strategy for preventing the spread of the COVID-19, but negative attitudes towards vaccines lead to vaccine hesitancy. This study aimed to explore the factors influencing the uptake of the COVID-19 vaccine in the Nepali community in the UK. This study found that attitudes towards COVID-19 are generally positive. Nine overlapping themes around barriers to COVID-19 vaccination were identified: (a) rumours and mis/disinformation; (b) prefer home remedies and yoga; (c) religion restriction; (d) concern towards vaccine eligibility; (e) difficulty with online vaccine booking system; (f) doubts of vaccine effectiveness after changing the second dose timeline; (g) lack of confidence in the vaccine; (h) past bad experience with the influenza vaccine; and (i) worried about side-effects. Understanding barriers to the uptake of the COVID-19 vaccine can help in the design of better targeted interventions. Public health messages including favourable policy should be tailored to address those barriers and make this vaccination programme more viable and acceptable to the ethnic minority communities in the UK.   This Vaccine paper includes two FHSS Visiting Faculty as co-authors: Prof. Padam Simkhada and Dr. Bibha Simkhada.

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

 

 

 

 

 

References:

  1. Sharma, M., Adhikari, R., van Teijlingen, E. (2022) Handwashing station in Nepal: Role of wealth status in establishing a handwashing station, World Medical & Health Policy Accepted
  2. Simkhada, P., Tamang, P., Timilsina, L., Simkhada, B., Bissell, P., van Teijlingen, E., Sah, S.K., Wasti, S.P. (2022) Factors Influencing COVID-19 Vaccine Uptake among Nepali in the UK: A Qualitative Study, Vaccine 10(5), 780;https://doi.org/10.3390/vaccines10050780