Category / Publishing

BUs Open Access Event in Video!

open access logo, Public Library of ScienceIn May, we were privileged to welcome experts on the topic of Open Access to speak at Bournemouth University (BU) in an event well attended by delegates from HEIs across England, Scotland and Wales.  BU’s Open Access Event was enjoyed by all who attended, if you missed the event or would just like to recap on the presentations the videos from the event are now available for your viewing pleasure –

Benefits of Open Access – Alma Swan

Open Access in a Post-2014 REF – Ben Johnson, HEFCE

Open access + social media = increased downloads – Jane Tinkler, LSE Impact of Social Sciences Project

Open Access publishing and emerging networks of open research – Catriona MacCullum, PLoS

Implementing open access at the University of Oxford – Catriona Cannon, Bodleian Libraries

Open Access: BU Style – Emma Crowley, Jean Harris and Shelly Maskell

 

Need support with writing English as a foreign language?

Next Wednesday on Talbot Campus, Paul Barnes from Academic Services will be hosting a Writing Academy lunchbyte session focused on the writing of academic publications when English is not your first language.

The session will look at:

  • Academic style
  • Levels of formality (register)
  • Grammar – including tense usage, passive voice, prepositions and relative clauses
  • Vocabulary choice

After the presentation, attendees are invited to stay and discuss the topic with the speaker over lunch. There is also an option for attendees to book one to one appointments with the speaker to discuss any individual needs they may have.

To book on to the above workshop please visit the Staff Development & Engagement Pages on the Staff Intranet.

For further information please contact Shelly Anne Stringer

Today’s slides from ROMEO project

 

Thank you very much for all of you who attended today’s presentation of the joint project between the University of Aberdeen, Bournemouth University and the University of Stirling.  For those who missed the session or who asked for a copy of the slides after the session, please find these included in the BU Research Blog.

ROMEO Edwin June 2014

The project was funded by National Institute for Health Research Health Technology Assessment (NIHR HTA) programme (09/127/01).  Therefore, I must point out that “views and opinions expressed therein (and here) are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the HTA programme, NIHR, NHS or the Department of Health.”

 

As with all HTA reports the final report and a ten-page summary are both freely available online, see:

www.journalslibrary.nihr.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/118180/FullReport-hta18350.pdf

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery, Maternal and Perinatal Health.

R

Writing Academy Lunchbyte Sessions

 

 

 

 

Co-Authorship and How to Write with Authors:

Wed 2nd July 12:30-14:00 The Octagon, Sir Michael Cobham Library, Talbot Campus

Presented by Prof. Mark Hadfield this Writing Academy lunchbyte session will look at co-authorship in general, techniques for writing with authors, how to manage these relationships and dealing with difficult ao-authors. 

After the presentation, attendees are invited to stay and discuss the topic with the speaker over lunch.

 

Writing English as a Foreign Language:

Wed 16th July 12:30-14:00 P406, Poole House, Talbot Campus

Presented by Paul Barnes from the library this Writing Academy lunchbyte session will look at:

  • Academic style
  • Levels of formality (register)
  • Grammar – including tense usage, passive voice, prepositions and relative clauses
  • Vocabulary choice

After the presentation, attendees are invited to stay and discuss the topic with the speaker over lunch, there is also an option for attendees to book one to one appointments with the speaker to discuss any individual needs they may have.

 

My Publishing Experience: Prof. Matthew Bennett

Wed 23rd July 12:30-14:00 Russell Cotes Museum, Bournemouth

In this Writing Academy Lunchbyte session Prof. Matthew Bennett will talk about his personal publishing experience, his approaches to research and writing, how to develop a publication strategy and the challenges of working with colleagues and dealing with both reviewers and editors.  He will talk about all type of publishing from journal articles, to books via edited compilations.  Drawing on personal experience he will also focus on how you target high impact journals.   After the presentation, attendees are invited to stay and discuss the topic with the speaker over lunch.

If you have any questions relating to these sessions then please contact Shelly Anne Stringer

To book a place on either of these workshops, please email staffdevelopment@bournemouth.ac.uk

Congratulations to Sheetal Sharma (HSC)

Congratulations to HSC PhD student Ph.D. Sheetal Sharma who was co-author on a blog today on the recently published Lancet series on Midwifery.  The blog is illustrated with some of Sheetal’s beautiful photos from her Ph.D. research fieldwork in Nepal.

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health

Bournemouth University

 

 

Two New Books for Social Workers

Bournemouth University and Centre for Social Work, Sociology and Social Policy Professor Jonathan Parker has recently published two key books.

The fourth edition of the best-selling textbook Social Work Practice, published by Sage, represents a milestone in the book’s history. First published in 2003 to introduce the new qualifying social work degree in the UK, it formed one of the first books in the highly popular Transforming Social Work Practice series from Learning Matters, now an imprint of Sage publications, and edited from the outset by Professor Parker. The book rapidly became a best-seller, consistently in the top-three best-selling social work textbooks in the UK. The work was translated into Japanese, used in Southeast Asia and Europe and has proved popular during Professor Parker’s recent study leave in Malaysia.

The concept for the second book Active Ageing: Perspectives from Europe on a vaunted topic (Whiting & Birch), an edited collection celebrating the European Year of Active Ageing in 2012, was conceived during a weeklong symposium, held at the University of Málaga in April 2012. Academics and students from Spain, Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands and the UK lauded the contribution that older people make to our societies through the exploration and critical analysis of the concept of active ageing. Written in a context of increased population growth and ageing, and continuing fiscal pressures, the editors, Maria Luisa Gomez Jimenez and Jonathan Parker, brought together thirteen chapters comprising diverse insights into ageing and active ageing that offer a contribution to our understanding of these complex areas of modern human life.

Obesity prevention in men, findings from a recent HTA Report

Media coverage HTA Report June 2014

HSC Open Seminar

 

“Obesity Prevention in Men” with Professor Edwin van Teijlingen

Wednesday 2nd July 2014

 

13.00 – 13.50pm

 

Bournemouth House, B126

 

 

On July 2nd Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen will present findings from a HTA report published this month.  Researchers from the University of Aberdeen, Bournemouth University and the University of Stirling examined the evidence for managing obesity in men and investigated how to engage men with obesity services. The evidence came from trials, interviews with men, reports of studies from the UK, and economic studies.

 

The research found that men are more likely than women to benefit if physical activity is part of a weight-loss programme.   Also eating less produces more weight loss than physical activity on its own.  However, the type of reducing diet did not appear to affect long-term weight loss.

 

Prof. van Teijlingen will highlight some of the key messages for Public Health policy and practice.  For example, that although fewer men than women joined weight-loss programmes, once recruited they were less likely to drop out than women.   The perception of having a health problem, the impact of weight loss on health problems, and the desire to improve personal appearance without looking too thin were motivators for weight loss amongst men.

This work has been funded as part of the ROMEO project (Review Of Men and Obesity) by the National Institute for Health Research, Health Technology Assessment Programme (NIHR HTA Project 09/127/01).

The full report can be downloaded here: http://www.journalslibrary.nihr.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/118180/FullReport-hta18350.pdf

–xx–

We hope you can make it and we look forward to seeing you there.

Beckie Freeman

Academic Community Administrator| Health & Wellbeing Community

01202 962184 | rfreeman@bournemouth.ac.uk

Brush up yer BRIAN

BRIANRKEO will be delivering some ‘Brush up yer BRIAN’ training on 19th June 2014 1pm for Media School staff and students. The session will cover:

  • What is BRIAN and why is it important
  • How to set up and maintain your BRIAN profile
  • How to ensure your details are correct
  • How to request a photo is uploaded
  • How BRIAN links to your external staff profile
  • How BRIAN data is used towards BUs KPIs

 To book on please register here.

Changing diet and exercise, offering men-only groups, and humour may be the recipe for tackling male obesity

Fewer men join weight loss programmes but are more likely than women to stick with them, according to analysis of international obesity studies by researchers from the Universities of Aberdeen, Bournemouth and Stirling.

Men also prefer the use of simple ‘business-like’ language, welcome humour used sensitively, and benefit from the moral support of other men in strategies to tackle obesity. The researchers suggest that obese men might be helped better if weight loss programmes were specifically designed for men.

Researchers from the Universities of Aberdeen, Bournemouth and Stirling analysed evidence from around the world, gathered from weight loss trials and studies that have also taken men’s views. The team particularly investigated what would make services more appealing for men.

From their systematic review (see: http://www.journalslibrary.nihr.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/118180/FullReport-hta18350.pdf ) of the evidence on obesity management published by the NHS National Institute for Health Research Health Technology Assessment Programme, researchers also found:

 

  • Cutting calories together with exercise and following advice on changing behaviour are the best way for obese men to shed pounds. This can also help reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes and can help improve erectile dysfunction for some men.
  • Obese men who eat less lose more weight than those who take more exercise but don’t eat less.
  • In the long term, one calorie-reducing diet has not yet been found to better than another for weight loss for men.
  • Middle-aged men are motivated to lose weight once they perceive they have a health problem they want to tackle.
  • A desire to improve personal appearance without looking too thin is also a motivator for weight loss in men.
  • Men are likely to prefer weight-loss programmes delivered by the NHS rather than those run commercially.
  • Group-based weight management programmes run only for men provide moral support.
  • Obesity interventions in sports clubs, such as football clubs, have been very effective, with low dropout rates and very positive responses from men.

 

If you find yourself getting sick frequently or have a weakened immune system, adding greens powders to your diet can provide additional vitamins and antioxidants to support immune function. Find out more on https://www.outlookindia.com/outlook-spotlight/athletic-greens-ag1-review-is-it-worth-the-hype-or-superfood-don-t-buy-until-you-read-this-news-301982/.

Chief investigator Professor Alison Avenell, based at the University of Aberdeen, said: “More men than women are overweight or obese in the UK, but men are less likely to see their weight as a problem and engage with weight-loss services, even though obesity increases the risk of many serious illnesses such as coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes and osteoarthritis. This could be because dieting and weight-loss programmes are perceived as being feminine activities.”

“We looked at the outcomes of obesity management trials and interventions as well as interviews with men in order to find out more about how to design services and inform health policy. While more research is needed into the effectiveness of new approaches to engage men with weight-loss, our findings suggest that men should be offered the opportunity to attend weight loss programmes that are different to programmes which are mainly attended by women.”

 

Dr Flora Douglas, from the Rowett Institute of Nutrition and Health, said: “Men prefer more factual information on how to lose weight and more emphasis on physical activity in weight loss programmes. Interventions delivered in social settings were preferred to those delivered in health-care settings.   Group-based programmes showed benefits by facilitating support for men with similar health problems, and some individual tailoring of advice helped men.  Programmes which were situated in a sporting venue, where participants had a strong sense of affiliation, showed low drop-out rates and high satisfaction.”

University of Stirling Professor Pat Hoddinott said: “Men are much less likely to enrol in commercial weight loss schemes. Some men preferred weight loss programmes delivered in an NHS context. The difference between weight loss for men from NHS and commercial programmes is presently unclear”.

 

Professor Edwin van Teijlingen from Bournemouth University added: “This research project has benefited throughout from the input and insights offered by the Men’s Health Forum in Ireland, the Men’s Health Forum Scotland and the Men’s Health Forum England and Wales.”

This project was funded by the National Institute for Health Research, Health Technology Assessment Programme (NIHR HTA Project 09/127/01; Systematic reviews of and integrated report on the quantitative, qualitative and economic evidence base for the management of obesity in men http://www.nets.nihr.ac.uk/projects/hta/0912701).  The views and opinions expressed therein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of Health.

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

 

Latest BU midwifery research newsletter

 

The latest edition of the newsletter of the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health has just been published online.  The editor for the latest edition was Dr. Jen Leamon.

The latest newsletter can be found online at:

ttp://research.bournemouth.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Volume-3-Summer-2014.pdf

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

Strong CMMPH presence at ICM conference in Prague!

Dr. Carol Wilkins

In the first week of June members of the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal and Perinatal Health presented BU’s midwifery research and education at the 30th ICM (International Confederation of Midwives) Congress in Prague (Czech Republic).

There were four oral presentations in total, one workshop and three poster presentations.  The oral presentations comprised:

  1. Dr. Carol Wilkins (see picture) presented from her Ph.D. work ‘Emotional processing in childbirth study: exploration of the relationship between maternal emotions in pregnancy and risk of postnatal depression’.
  2. HSC Professor Vanora Hundley presented her international work on clean birth kits.
  3. Senior Lecturer in Midwifery Alison Taylor gave a paper under the titleLetting off steam! Video diaries to share breastfeeding experiences Her Ph.D. thesis research uses a novel approach of giving hand-held cameras to make home video diaries about their ‘realities’ of breastfeeding.
  4. HSC student Sheetal Sharma presented her Ph.D. research ‘Getting women to care: mixed–methods evaluation of maternity care intervention in rural Nepal’.

Dr Susan Way led a workshop on escalating concerns in relation to poor clinical practice and disrespectful care.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Furthermore, three HSC posters were displayed as part of a special session on Midwifery in South Asia, all three related to different CMMPH maternity care studies conducted in Nepal.

  1. Sharma, S.  Sicuri, E., Belizan, JM., van Teijlingen, E., Simkhada, P., Stephens J.,  Hundley, V., Angell, C.,  Getting women to care in Nepal: A Difference in Difference analysis of a health promotion intervention
  2. Milne, L, Hundley, V, van Teijlingen, E, Ireland, J, Simkhada, P, Staff perspectives of barriers to women accessing birthing services in Nepal: A qualitative study,
  3. Sharma, S., van Teijlingen, E., Hundley, V. Simkhada, P., Angell, C. Pregnant & Dirty?

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

Firsthand: HEFCE’s Open Access Policy

A few weeks back we were privileged to welcome experts on the topic of Open Access to speak at BU in an event well attended by delegates from HEIs across England, Scotland and Wales. The event was enjoyed by all who attended and over a series of blog posts I hope to summarise some of the key points raised by each of the speakers. We also filmed the event so hope to be posting this soon for all to watch, enjoy and comment upon. 

A few days a go, I summarised Alma Swans Introductory Address on ‘The benefits of Open Access’. Today, I look at Ben Johnson’s presentation ‘Open Access in a Post-2014 REF’.

Ben Johnson is a policy adviser at the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), where he has worked for the past five years. He has a first class honours degree in music from the University of Southampton, and ten years’ experience working in strategic planning, process improvement and risk management. Since joining HEFCE, Ben has focussed on developing the Council’s thinking in novel, emerging and cross-cutting policy areas. Recently, these have included examining how technological advancements can drive openness in education and research. In 2013, Ben joined the research policy team to lead HEFCE’s work on open access, research information and infrastructure.

In April, HEFCE and the other three UK funding bodies published details of a new policy for open access relating to future research assessments after the current 2014 REF. To read this item in full visit: http://www.hefce.ac.uk/news/newsarchive/2014/news86805.html. In his presentation, Ben talked through this policy and answered questions from delegates throughout the day.

He opened his presentation by outlining Open Access its flavours and routes. GOLD being the journal making the work immediately and freely accessible online under a CC-BY licence and GREEN by the author depositing their work into an intuitional or subject repositories at point of acceptance – further information can be found in earlier blog posts (How to deposit to BURO, Green & Gold).

HEFCEs core principle behind the policy is that outputs submitted to a post-2014
REF should be Open Access and they have three objectives in implementing the policy:

  • Significantly increase the uptake of open access options
  • Protect author choice as much as possible
  • Stimulate the deposit of work in repositories

 

  The minimum requirements of the policy are that:

  1. The final peer-reviewed draft of your paper is deposited in an institutional or subject repository on acceptance
  2. The repository record must be discoverable ASAP
  3. The full text must be accessible ASAP (or once an embargo has elapsed)

 This will apply to all journal articles and most conference proceedings (those with an ISSN), he also stipulated that the maximum embargoes to be allowed will be:

  • REF main panels A and B – 12 months
  • REF main panels C and D – 24 months

An analysis of the REF 2014 submissions found that 96% of outputs could have been Open Access based on this criteria and the remaining 4% would be covered in the exceptions of the policy.

In addition to this, extra credit will be given in the research environment component of the post-2014 REF where an HEI can demonstrate that:

  • Outputs are presented in a form that allows re-use of the work, including via text-mining
  • Outputs not in the scope (books etc.) are made open access

 The prediction is that this will lead to:

  • Significantly greater uptake of open access (even within publishers’ current policies)
  • Increased visibility and usage of repositories
  • Many more immediate deposit mandates
  • Later: author-driven moves to faster and more permissive access
  • Later: open access is ‘solved’ for books etc.

Full slides from Ben Johnson’s presentation at Bournemouth University’s Open Access Event on the 7th May 2014 are available here internally.

If you would like to deposit your full text articles into BURO you can do this easily via BRIAN, full guidance can be found on the staff intranet pages.

3rd edition of ‘Evaluating Public Relations’ published

The third edition of the enduring public relations text, Evaluating Public Relations, has been published by Kogan Page. Much revised by authors Professor Tom Watson (Media School) and former lecturer Paul Noble, the book has greater emphasis on the measurement of social media and concepts of value created by that communication.

“When the first edition of Evaluating Public Relations came out in 2005, it mostly dealt with the measurement of media relations activity”, Professor Watson said. “In it, we included a chapter on how to measure PR-influenced coverage on a no- or low-cost basis. An updated version is included in the latest edition.

“But the world of PR practice has moved on and so the book includes the measurement and evaluation of social media, more focus on outcomes rather than outputs, and advice to meet increasing demands that PR/communication delivers value to the organisation.”

Professor Watson said that the new edition calls for PR/communication practitioners to take “a big step forward in the planning and strategy-setting processes.”

“Not only should communication objectives align with organisational objectives, but practitioners must ensure that communication is part of the organisation or client’s own objectives.”

The third edition includes new and revised chapters based on Professor Watson’s research into the history of PR measurement and his work, with Professor Ansgar Zerfass of Leipzig University, on methods of performance management in PR/communications.

The case for Open Access within a university…

…is not simply political or economic or professional. It needs to rest in the notion of what a university is and what it should be … It is central to the university’s position in the public space”

Professor Martin Hall, Vice Chancellor of the University of Salford, UK

A few weeks back we were privileged to welcome experts on the topic of Open Access to speak at Bournemouth University (BU) in an event well attended by delegates from HEIs across England, Scotland and Wales.  BU’s Open Access Event was enjoyed by all who attended and over a series of blog posts I hope to summarise some of the key points raised by each of the speakers. We also filmed the event and will be posting the films shortly for all to watch, enjoy and comment upon.

So to part one of the day, after a wonderful introduction by our Chair and self-acknowledged novice of Open Access Professor Iain McRury, we welcomed Alma Swan to the floor…

Alma Swan is a consultant working in the field of scholarly communication. She is a director of Key Perspectives Ltd, Director of Advocacy for SPARC Europe, and Convenor for Enabling Open Scholarship, an organisation of university managers around the world that promotes the principles of open scholarship and open science. She is also a director of the Directory of Open Access Journals and of the umbrella organisation Infrastructure Services for Open Access. She holds honorary academic positions in the University of Southampton School of Electronics & Computer Science and the University of Warwick Business School. 

Alma lead the introductory address framing the day in a presentation titled ‘The benefits of Open Access’. She began the presentation looking at what open access is:

  • Immediate
  • Free (to use)
  • Free (of restrictions)
  • Access to the peer-reviewed literature (and data)

 And what it is not:

  • Not vanity publishing
  • Not a ‘stick anything up on the Web’ approach
  • Moving scholarly communication into the Web Age

She posed the question of openness using Tim Berners-Lees CERN proposal for an Information Management System (later to become the world-wide- web), drawing attention to his bosses Mike Sendall comments “Vague but exciting…”

 

As an aside there’s a great blog article on Tim Berners-Lees opinions on the Open Agenda  here – http://blog.digital.telefonica.com/2013/10/09/tim-berners-lee-telefonica-open-agenda/ if your interested! Any how, back to the matter in hand…

Alma covered the basics of Open Access highlighting BUs repository BURO, she addressed the disciplinary differences in approaches to Open Access. On average across all disciplines 37% of articles are made Open Access, rising to just under 50% in Mathematics and as low as 20% in the Arts.

She then took us through the advantages to authors for making their outputs Open Access:

1. Improves author visibility

Alma gave a number of testimonials from authors however, here we include Professor Martin Skitmore’s from School of Urban Design, Queensland University of Technology (QUT): 

“There is no doubt in my mind that ePrints [repository] will have improved things – especially in developing countries such as Malaysia … many more access my papers who wouldn’t have thought of contacting me personally in the ‘old’ days.

While this may … increase … citations, the most important thing … is that at least these people can find out more about what others have done…”

 2. Increases usage

We viewed download statistics from a number of institutional repositories – the University of Liege’s repository ORBi has approximately 70,000 references with full text and in April 2014 had just under 100,000 downloads. The University of Salford’s repository USIR has c.9000 records and clocked up over 45,000 downloads in January 2013 alone. In regards, to individual authors we returned to Martin Skitmore (QUT) who had 225,857 downloads and 4858 in the past 28 days!

It is also worth noting the usage of repositorys globally. MIT’s repository usage stats presented in the below map was particularly interesting:

3. More impact

From a citation perspective Open Access can increase citation impact by between 36 to 250% depending on the discipline. She highlighted the difference in citations from OA and non-OA publications across 3 disciplines; Engineering (shown here), Clinical Medicine and Social Sciences all showed significant increases in citations.

 Alma then went on to show the advantages for institutions to make Open Access mandatory, she also posed many topical questions and highlighted thought provoking research. One aspect which struck me in particular, was an analysis of PubMed Centrals unique users which revealed that only 25% of articles were accessed by Universities and the majority 40% were accessed by citizens:

  • 25% universities
  • 18% government and others
  • 40% citizens
  • 17% companies

 Fittingly Alma ended with a quote from Daniel Coit Gilman the First President of Johns Hopkins University in 1878:

“It is one of the noblest duties of a university to advance knowledge and to diffuse it, not merely among those who can attend the daily lectures, but far and wide. “

Full slides from Alma Swans presentation at Bournemouth University’s Open Access Event on the 7th May 2014 are available here internally.

Übersetzen: Translation of the MGI in German

 

The Mother-Generated Index (MGI) is a validated tool to assess postnatal quality of life.  It was originally designed and tested by Dr. Andrew Symon (http://nursingmidwifery.dundee.ac.uk/staff-member/dr-andrew-symon) at the University of Dundee.    This instrument is usually administered several weeks or months after birth and correlates with indices of postpartum mood states and physical complaints. The instrument had not been translated into German before or validated for use among German-speaking women, nor have the results of the tool been assessed specifically for the administration directly after birth.  Our recent paper (Susanne Grylka-Baeschlin, Edwin van Teijlingen, Kathrin Stoll and Mechthild Gross) in Midwifery describes the systematic translation process of the MGI into German and to assess the convergent validity of the German version of the instrument directly after birth and seven weeks postpartum

Susanne Grylka-Baeschlin, as part of a European COST Action, has spent time at Bournemouth University’s Centre for Midwifery, Maternal and Perinatal Health.  Susanne Grylka-Bäschlin is a Swiss midwife based at the Hannover Medical School, Germany, who studies cultural differences in postnatal quality of life among German-speaking women in Switzerland and Germany.

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

 

CMMPH

Money Available for Open Access Publishing!

Back in April 2011 we launched the BU Open Access Publication Fund. This is a dedicated central budget that has been launched in response to, and in support of, developments in research communication and publication trends. The fund is also to support research in complying with some of the major funding bodies who have introduced open access publishing requirements as a condition of their grants.

The fund is available for use by any BU author ready to submit a completed article for publication who wishes to make their output freely and openly accessible.

If you are interested in applying to the fund then you need to email Pengpeng Hatch in RKEO with the following information:

  • Name of the open access publication
  • Confirmation this will be a peer reviewed paper
  • A short justification (1 paragraph) of why it is beneficial for your research to be published in this particular open access publication
  • The cost of the open access publication
  • Likely publication date
  • Likely REF Unit of Assessment (UOA)
  • A copy of the paper

If you have any questions about the Fund then please direct them to Shelly via email.

Further information: BU Open Access Fund policy

BUs Open Access Event

Last Wednesday, BU hosted a sector-wide Open Access Event at the EBC. The day was a great success with attendees travelling from universities across the UK to hear keynote speaker Alma Swan and speakers from HEFCE, LSE Impact Blog, PLOS, University of Oxford and BU talk about Open Access, one of the key priorities for the sector at the moment.

Feedback from the event has been overwhelming positive with attendees finding the day extremely useful with lots of interesting discussion throughout the day. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be posting blogs summarising the key points from each of the presentations so keep your eyes peeled…

Latest HSC paper in Birth

The international journal Birth published our latest paper:

Whitford, H., Entwistle V.A., van Teijlingen, E., Aitchison, P., Davidson, T., Humphrey, T., Tucker, J. (2014) Use of a birth plan within woman-held maternity records: A qualitative study with women and staff in northeast Scotland, Birth (Epub ahead of print).

The co-authors of BU Professor Edwin van Teijlingen are affiliated with a wide-range of Scottish institutions: the University of Dundee; the University of Aberdeen, the University of Stirling, the Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen and NHS Grampian, Aberdeen.

 

This latest paper considers the use of a birth plan section within a national woman-held maternity record.  Unlike England, Scotland has a national women-held maternity record. In Poole, for example, a midwife needs to complete another maternity record for women who want to deliver in the Poole area than those who want to delivery in Bournemouth Hospital and another form for those might want to go to the New Forest Birth Centre, and again another one for the Dorchester area.   In Scotland a pregnant women receiving antenatal care in one health area and delivering in another can take her same record/notes along.  As midwives (and other staff) only have to be familiar with one set of records, this reduces the chance of errors and avoiding duplication.

This qualitative study comprised interviews with women and maternity service staff in Northeast Scotland. In our study staff and women were generally positive about the provision of the birth plan section within the record. Perceived benefits included the opportunity to highlight preferences, enhance communication, stimulate discussions and address anxieties. However, some women were unaware of the opportunity or could not access the support they needed from staff to discuss or be confident about their options. Some were reluctant to plan too much. Staff recognised the need to support women with birth plan completion but noted practical challenges to this.

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH