Category / Publishing

New Book Series: Routledge Studies in Espionage and Culture

A new book series seeks to generate new insights into the connections between espionage and culture. During the second half of the twentieth century the public became aware of the importance of the role of espionage and security services. Television, radio and print news reported shocking events including the defection of Soviet moles like Kim Philby, Guy Burgess and Donald McLean; the Profumo affair of 1963 that exploded when the British Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, had an affair with a woman who was in contact with the Soviet security services; and the state censorship of Peter Wright’s memoir Spycatcher (1987). Whilst the news sparked the public interest popular culture soon followed and the 1950s and 60s saw the resurgence of spy books, films and television series. The James Bond franchise of books and films began in 1953 with the publication of the book Casino Royal. Bond achieved mass popularity in 1962 with the cinematic release of Dr No. Over the coming decades twelve authors have written James Bond novels or shorts stories and he has been played by seven actors with the books and films enjoyed by millions. Other authors such as John le Carré and Len Deighton released bestsellers which were adapted for film and television and brought an often more realistic version of spying to an international public.

The twenty-first century has seen no reduction in espionage intrigues and spy culture. The Edward Snowden release of American intelligence secrets , the murder of Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006 and most recently the accusations that American President Donald Trump had been compromised by the Russian security services, who had also undertaken the mass hacking of American government computers during his election campaign, have ensured that espionage remains in the public eye. These news stories have seen the emergence of new espionage culture. The James Bond series remains as popular as ever. Le Carré’s Tinker Tailor, Soldier, Spy was remade in 2011. And in BBC’s The Game (2014) and FX’s The Americans (2013), the link to the Cold War remains close to the public association with espionage culture. This link has generated nostalgia for the Cold War with many people perceiving the era as relatively safe with the intelligence game making the world more secure than it is today with the asymmetric terrorist threat.  The spy genre has also evolved and series like Homeland from 2011, the BBC’s Spooks and Channel 4’s recent reality-television series Spies (2017) have given viewers an inside view on the nature of modern espionage. Spy scandals and spy culture continue to play a key part in news and entertainment and capture the public imagination

Jointly edited by Dr Nicholas Barnett, Lecturer in Twentieth Century History at Plymouth University and Dr Laura Crossley, Lecturer in Film at Bournemouth University, ‘Routledge Studies in Espionage and Culture’ is a major new books series which seeks to investigate representations of the intelligence world and how we interact with it. The scope of the series is international and it seeks to blend several disciplines including cultural studies, history, literature and film studies. Books published in the series will investigate topics including: the spy novel, films, television shows, documentaries, games, music, fashion and materiality. Whilst books on the representation of intelligence agencies in popular culture are welcome the editors also welcome contributions which investigate political cultures and the everyday lives within the organisations themselves as well as wider considerations of surveillance culture. Scholars have long been interested in the representation of spies and spying and this series seeks to establish itself as one of the key outlets for continuing that scholarly conversation. Where possible the monographs and collections of essays will be include comparative international studies but submissions will also be welcomed which examine significant national cultures. The series does not seek to limit itself to any particular time period and will publish accounts of both historic and contemporary espionage and culture. Each book will feature a unique introduction written by the series editors.

Editors: Dr Laura Crossley (Bournemouth University) lcrossley@bournemouth.ac.uk

Dr Nicholas Barnett (Plymouth University)  nicholas.barnett@plymouth.ac.uk

Publish Open Access in Springer Journals for Free!

Open-Access-logoBU has an agreement with Springer which enables its authors to publish articles open access in one of the Springer Open Choice journals at no additional cost.

There are hundreds of titles included in this agreement, some of which are – Hydrobiologia, European Journal of Nutrition, Annals of Biomedical Engineering, Climatic Change, Marine Biology and the Journal of Business Ethics. A full list of the journals included can be found here

To make sure that your article is covered by this new agreement, when your article has been accepted for publication, Springer will ask you to confirm the following:

  • My article has been accepted by an Open Choice eligible journal
  • I am the corresponding author (please use your institutional email address not your personal one)
  • I am affiliated with an eligible UK institution (select your institutions name)
  • My article matches one of these types: OriginalPaper, ReviewPaper, BriefCommunication or ContinuingEducation

Springer will then verify these details with us and then your article will be made available in open access with a CC BY licence.

Please note that 30 Open Choice journals are not included in this agreement as they do not offer CC BY licensing.

If you have any questions about the agreement or the process, please contact OpenAccess@bournemouth.ac.uk

First 2017 publication by CMMPH academics

Yesterday saw the publication of the paper  ‘Antenatal care trial interventions: a systematic scoping review and taxonomy development of care models’, which is the first paper this year for the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH)  [1].    The paper is based on a cross-UK collaboration led by Dr. Andrew Symon from the University of Dundee which is published in the Open Access journal BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth.  This is the second paper from this collaboration, the first one ‘Midwifery-led antenatal care models: Mapping a systematic review to an evidence-based quality framework to identify key components & characteristics of care ‘ was published last year [2].

symon-taxonomy-2017The latest BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth paper is a first step in establishing a taxonomy of antenatal care models.  The article concludes that interventions can be defined and described in many ways. The intended antenatal care population group proved the simplest and most clinically relevant way of distinguishing trials which might otherwise be categorised together. Since our review excluded non-trial interventions, the taxonomy does not represent antenatal care provision worldwide. It offers a stable and reproducible approach to describing the purpose and content of models of antenatal care which have been tested in a trial. perhaps key is that the paper highlights a lack of reported detail of trial interventions and usual care processes.

Our paper provides a baseline for future work to examine and test the salient characteristics of the most effective models, and could also help decision-makers and service planners in planning implementation.

Moreover we look forward to conducting more research as part of this exciting collaboration in midwifery and maternity care.

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen & Prof. Vanora Hundley

CMMPH

 

References:

  1. Symon, A., Pringle, J., Downe, S., Hundley, V., Lee, E., Lynn, F., McFadden, A., McNeill, J., Renfrew, M., Ross-Davie, M., van Teijlingen, E., Whitford, H., Alderdice, F. (2017) Antenatal care trial interventions: a systematic scoping review and taxonomy development of care models BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth 17:8 http://bmcpregnancychildbirth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12884-016-1186-3
  2. Symon, A., Pringle, J., Cheyne, H., Downe, S., Hundley, V., Lee, E., Lynn, F., McFadden, A., McNeill, J., Renfrew, M., Ross-Davie, M., van Teijlingen, E., Whitford, H, Alderdice, F. (2016) Midwifery-led antenatal care models: Mapping a systematic review to an evidence-based quality framework to identify key components & characteristics of care, BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth 16: 168 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2393/16/168

Free access to two modules from the BMJ’s Research to Publication tool

res-to-pubThe BMJ have launched a new research tool called Research to Publication, with the aim of getting more authors from submission to publication. It is comprised of a series of self e-learning modules, enabling researchers to hone and improve their research capabilities.

This is not a free product, but they are offering free access to two modules – How to Write and Publish a Study Protocol and Introduction to Randomised Blinded Trials. If anyone is interested in this product, you can access the two free modules here. If you do take a look at the free modules, I’d be very interested in any feedback you have about the product. Please send feedback to cwentzell@bournemouth.ac.uk.

New blog on Open Access publishing

authoraid-2016Some months ago Andy Nobes asked my colleague Prof. Padam Simkhada and I if we could write a blog about why we had so many papers in freely available online journals in Nepal.  Andy is the Programme Officer, Research Development & Support at INASP, which is an international development charity based in Oxford working with a global network of partners in Africa, Latin America and Asia.

We had a whole range of immediate answers to Andy’s question, including ones like: we both love Nepal; we are on the editorial board of a few journals that are part of the NepJOL group; and editors invite us to submit articles and/or editorials. Moreover, we feel reasons for Open Access publishing are very similar to our key reasons for working in a low-income country like Nepal. These principles are (a) conducting applied academic research in low-income countries for the greater good; (b) helping to build research-capacity; and (c) telling the world about our research through quality academic publications.  This week saw the publication of our blog ‘Publishing in journals of the NepJOL family’ on the AuthorAid website, click here to read the post.

Edwin van Teijlingen, Professor of Reproductive Health Research at Bournemouth University and Padam Simkhada, Professor of International Public Health at Liverpool John Moores University and BU Visiting Faculty.

Top three most accessed 2016 paper BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth

bmc-media-luce-et-alIt is always nice to receive some good news just before Christmas.  The journal BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth informed us that our paper ‘“Is it realistic?” the portrayal of pregnancy and childbirth in the media’ was in the top three most popular papers [1]This interdisciplinary paper crosses the boundaries between the study of maternity care & midwifery, sociology of health & illness, and that of the media.  With BU’s Dr. Ann Luce as first author, it is one of the top three accessed articles of nearly 400 articles published in 2016 (as of Dec 16th).     

 

Reference:

  1. Luce, A., Cash, M., Hundley, V., Cheyne, H., van Teijlingen, E., Angell, C., (2016) “Is it realistic?” the portrayal of pregnancy and childbirth in the media BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth 16: 40 http://bmcpregnancychildbirth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12884-016-0827-x