Latest research and knowledge exchange news at Bournemouth University
The HRA have therefore decided stop reviewing applications for individual undergraduate and master’s student projects from now until further notice.
Please see this new guidance which relates to health and social care research projects conducted by undergraduate and master’s students: https://www.hra.nhs.uk/planning-and-improving-research/research-planning/student-research/
Over the past fe
w weeks, Parliament has seen a surge in need for access to research expertise as it engages with the COVID-19 outbreak.
In this rapidly evolving situation, Parliament needs quick access to researchers who can provide expert insights relating to both Coronavirus and its impacts.
Parliament and Parliamentarians use these insights to help carry out their function effectively; that is to say, to represent the people, scrutinise the Government, debate important and pressing issues and pass legislation.
To speed up the process of Parliament accessing relevant research expertise, Parliament’s Knowledge Exchange Unit (KEU) are creating a COVID-19 Outbreak Expert Database.
If you feel you have any expertise relating to the COVID-19 outbreak or its impacts, the KEU would be very grateful if you would sign up to the database. Signing up does not commit you to contributing in anyway, it’s simply so that Parliament has your details to hand and can contact you very rapidly; if they contact you and you aren’t able to respond, they will fully understand.
A link to the sign-up form is found here.
(Please ensure you let Sarah Carter, Public Affairs and Policy Officer, or your Impact Officer, know you have signed up, as we are tracking the responses.)
Staff in Parliament have identified a number of areas where Parliament may need to be able to access research expertise, listed below, and found on the sign up page. If you identify an area that has not been listed, please do feel free to give detail on the sign up form in ‘other’:
Agriculture and farming, Airlines/airports, Arts, Behavioural science, Burial and cremation, Brexit, Business, Charities, Children and families, Civil contingency planning and management, Climate change, Communicating uncertainty, , Consumer protection, Coronavirus, Coroners, Countryside, Courts, Criminal justice, Criminal law, Crisis communications, Critical national infrastructure, Data protection, Death, Defence, Economics, Education – higher and further, Education – schools, Elections, Emergency planning, Emergency services, Employment, Employment law, Energy, Environment, European Union, Financial services, Financial systems and institutions, Foreign policy, Government, Health economics, Health services, Housing, Human rights, Immigration, Immunology / vaccinology, Industry, Infection control, Inflation, Insolvency, International law, IT, Law, Legal aid, Leisure and tourism, Local government, Medicine, National security, Package holidays, Pandemics, Pensions, Police powers, Ports and maritime, Prisons, Public expenditure, Public finance, Public health, Public order, Railways, Registration of deaths, Religion, Social security and tax credits, Social services, Sports, Surveillance , Taxation, Trade, Transport, Unemployment, Virology, Waste, Water, Welfare, Welfare benefits.
Abstract
Junior colleagues or PhD students submitting their first manuscript often ask: “How long will it take before the editor comes back to me with a decision?” My stock answer is: “It depends!” It depends on the nature of the journal, the support available to the editor, how busy the editor is, or how difficult she finds it to allocate your paper to appropriate reviewers. Moreover, once sent out for review it depends how busy the reviewers are. I often have to remind my colleagues and student that academics are hardly ever paid for being a reviewer, and hence they do their reviewing over and above a usually heavy academic teaching and research load.
This short article highlights the case of one of our research papers which took four years from the day of submission to the journal to finally appearing in print. And, I hasten to say, it was not because the initially submitted manuscript was so bad that the authors had to make major changes and re-write or re-structure the whole paper. This blog highlights some of the unexpected hiccups in the process of getting an article published.
Introduction
On October the 5th 2016 Samridhi Pradhan, who worked for Green Tara Nepal in Kathmandu and who was Bournemouth University Visiting faculty at the time, emailed the then editor of an English-language journal based in Nepal with our manuscript. She wrote: “Respected Editor, I wish to submit a new manuscript entitled “Factors affecting the uptake of institutional delivery, antenatal and postnatal care services” in Nawalparasi district, Nepal in your esteemed Kathmandu University Medical Journal (KUMJ).” The editor wrote back the same day thanking us for our submission, and presenting us with a “manuscript ID o20161006250 for your valuable paper.…We will very soon go for initial screening and let you notify.” We expected the editor to send this manuscript out for review, then for us to get feedback a few months later, make some (minor) changes and have the paper published in 2017.
Then nothing happened for a year although we emailed and phoned the editor of KUMJ regularly. There seems to be a problem finding reviewers, and we offered to other potential reviewers. In December one of our co-authors Dr. Sharada Wasti informed our team that the KUMJ editor had suggested in a conversation with home that our paper would appear in the December volume of the journal. Dr. Waste emailed on 15 December 2017: “I will follow up and keep update with you by the end of this month.” KUMJ duly published Vol. 15 (4) labelled Oct.-Dec. 2017 but our paper was not included.
Four days later on December 19th 2017 we received an email for the editor with a set of minor comments and questions about the manuscript for reviewers. We made the requested amendments and resubmitted our paper on January 10th 2018. Months passed and KUMJ published two more issues in 2018 without our paper despite our team sending reminders regularly. Then on the last day of July 2018 Dr. Wasti emailed our team that he had had contact with the editor who had made it clear that: “This paper has been accepted” and it was supposed to come published in the last volume, which would have been the April-June 2018 issue Vol.16 (2). Dr. Wasti added that the editor had made it clear that although it was not covered, KUMJ “will publish in our upcoming volume.” This next issue Vol. 16 (3) again failed to publish our paper.
Then there was a long gap with KUMJ changing editors, correspondence being mislaid and manuscripts getting lost. Due to Dr. Wasti’s persistence in contacting the editors we received a request to update our paper with 2019 data in December 2019, nearly a year and a half after re-submission. A few days later that month we were informed that the journal was finally going to publish our paper. Another wo months passed before the editor email that say: “Congratulation, your paper has been finalized and selected for coming issue of KUMJ, paper has been uploaded in our website www.kumj.com.np.”
Some papers take longer to get published than others!
Our paper is now online first 3½ years after the initial submission. And to add insult to injury the journal is backdating the paper to appear with a publication date of September 2019, so it will be published in Vol.17(3) labelled July-Sept. 2019. This is, of course, an unusual story with a very long gap between first submission of a manuscript and the final appearance of the paper in print. It is unusual because the paper was only ever submitted to one journal. It is more likely that the publish process takes time because the first journal rejects the paper, the second paper also rejects your paper and then the subsequent paper asks for a set of alterations and changes. For example, van Teijlingen and Hundley (2002) outlined such process for one of their papers which took two years from initial submission to publication. However, this paper was submitted to five different journals in succession after having between rejected by the first four.
References:
Congratulations to Dr. Alison Taylor in the Centre for Midwifery,Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH) whose third PhD paper has just been accepted by the International Breastfeeding Journal. Alison’s paper ‘Commercialisation and commodification of breastfeeding: video diaries by first-time mothers’ reminds us that many of aspects of our lives are increasingly commercialised in post-modern society. Although breastfeeding is perhaps a late comer to this process in recent years, it too has seen significant commercialisation facilitated by social media and our obsession with celebrity culture.
This paper explores how the commercialisation and commodification of breastfeeding impacts mothers’ experiences of breastfeeding. The paper highlights that women preparing for breastfeeding are exposed to increasing commercialisation. When things do not go to plan, women are even more exposed to commercial solutions. The impact of online marketing strategies fuelled their need for paraphernalia so that their dependence on such items became important aspects of their parenting and breastfeeding experiences. Dr. Taylor and her co-authors offer new insights into how advertising influenced mothers’ need for specialist equipment and services. Observing mothers in their video diaries, provided valuable insights into their parenting styles and how this affected their breastfeeding experience.
The International Breastfeeding Journal is an Open Access journal owned by Springer.
References:
Congratulations to the Bournemouth authors who published the paper ‘Donning the ‘Slow Professor’: A Feminist Action Research Project’ earlier this month [1]. This paper was published in the journal Radical Teacher. The paper argues that the corporatisation of Higher Education has introduced new performance measurements as well as an acceleration of academic tasks creating working environments characterised by speed, pressure and stress. This paper discusses findings from a qualitative, feminist participatory action research (PAR) study undertaken by an interdisciplinary team of women academics at a modern, corporate university in England. The study illuminates how corporatized HE erodes faculty autonomy, degrades learning environments, damages professional satisfaction and health. Strategies for resistance and liberation developed through the PAR process are discussed.
The writing collective for this paper comprised: Sara Ashencaen Crabtree, Ann Hemingway, Sue Sudbury, Anne Quinney, Maggie Hutchings, Luciana Esteves, Shelley Thompson, Helen Jacey, Anita Diaz, Peri Bradley, Jenny Hall, Michele Board, Anna Feigenbaum, Lorraine Brown, Vanessa Heaslip, and Liz Norton.
Reference: Ashencaen Crabtree, S., Hemingway, A., Sudbury, S., Quinney, A., Hutchings, M., Esteves, L., Thompson, S., Jacey, H., Diaz, A., Bradley, P., Hall, J., Board, M., Feigenbaum, A., Brown, L., Heaslip, V., Norton, L. (2020) Donning the ‘Slow Professor’: A Feminist Action Research Project , Radical Teacher, Vol. 116
Congratulations on the latest paper published yesterday by Dr. Preeti Mahato in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Reproductive Health (CMMPH) and colleagues. This paper ‘Factors associated with contraceptive use in rural Nepal: Gender and decision-making’ [1], is freely available for the next 49 days through our personalized link: click here! 
This research paper in the journal Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare reports on a secondary analysis of pas a quantitative cross-sectional study in four villages of a hilly district in Nepal. This authors found that gender was associated with current/ever use of contraceptives but decision-making was not found associated with current/eve use of contraceptives. And, as perhaps was to be expected, socio-economic factors such as husband’s and wife’s education; and indicators showing sharing of childcare responsibilities were found to be associated with contraceptive use. the paper concludes that educational, health promotional and family planning programmes involving husbands are needed to promote use of contraceptives.
Preeti’s co-authors are based at Dorset County Hospital in Dorchester, at CMMPH and at Singapore Clinical Research Institute/Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School, Singapore.
Reference:
I
n recognition of the important contribution that early career academics play in driving research for the future, we are delighted to continue the BU Academic Targeted Research scheme to attract and recruit talented individuals in targeted research areas. Following the successful recruitment of five new posts, we will employ one other new Senior Lecturer with significant postdoctoral expertise (or of comparable experience) with outstanding potential in alignment with the targeted research areas:
We wish to recruit a diverse cohort of individuals with the motivation to become future academic leaders in their field. As an academic at BU, successful candidates will develop their career in exciting work environments, be provided with a high level of dedicated time to drive research activity and build capacity, and have the freedom to develop their research interests within the targeted areas. BU is committed to Fusion and as such successful candidates will also have the opportunity to contribute to the education and professional practice activities within their Department.
To support these roles and accelerate their careers, BU will provide three years of full-time salary (or part-time equivalent) and reasonable costs directly related to the proposed programme of research activities (up to £10k per year). The standard Academic Application Form must be completed and in all cases accompanied by the BU Academic Targeted Research scheme application form, which will propose the research activities and request funding.
To find out more about these exciting opportunities, please read the scheme guidance and visit the BU website.
The deadline for applications is Sunday 10 May 2020.
Any enquiries should be directed to researchfellowships@bournemouth.ac.uk.
24th March 2020
This event has been cancelled due to restrictions arising from COVID-19.
At Bournemouth University we collaborate with global institutions and organisations through our education, research and practice.
Our vision is that by 2025, BU will be recognised worldwide as a leading university for inspiring learning, advancing knowledge and enriching society through the fusion of education, research and practice.
In recognition of the important contribution that international academics play in driving research for the future, we are delighted to be launching the second round of the BU Global Visiting Fellowship (GVF) scheme. This aims to attract global research talent from our international priority partner institutions to collaborate with BU academics in our strategic investment areas:
Applications that incorporate social sciences and humanities are particularly welcome.
Each Fellowship is offered for a three year period to support the development of a collaborative partnership between the Fellow and their Bournemouth University host member of staff. Funding is available to support a range of activities that promote research collaboration between individuals and groups at both institutions. During their Fellowship tenure each Fellow will spend a minimum of one month (this can be spread across the three years) at Bournemouth University.
Fellows must be nominated by a member of academic staff at BU. The BU nominator will complete the Global Visiting Fellowships Application Form. This collaboration will be expected to propose ambitious and innovative programmes of research and related engagement activities.
Applications are welcome from those who have had a career break or time in other roles; there are no time limits in respect of time spent outside a research environment. Global Visiting Fellowships may be held on a part-time basis in order to combine research with personal responsibilities. Applications are particularly welcome from women (as a GVF and/or BU nominator) and the panel reserve the right to apply a quota to the funding available for a minimum of one female GVF to be funded per round.
The closing date for the 2020 round is 24th March 2020.
To find out more details about this scheme and applicant eligibility (including who our international priority partner institutions are), please read the scheme guidance (pdf 350kb).
If you are from one of our international priority partner institutes, your research aligns with one of our strategic investment areas, and you would like an introduction to a BU academic to collaborate with, please contact: researchfellowships@bournemouth.ac.uk
The first budget of the new Government was delivered on Wednesday. Overall a quieter week as most focussed on the nation’s health. We can do no better than refer you to the BU website and for staff, the BU intranet pages.
There was very little specifically relating to HE in the budget. Of most relevance is the increase in the research and development investment:
1.220 The Budget sets out ambitious plans to increase public R&D investment to £22 billion per year by 2024-25. This landmark investment is the largest and fastest ever expansion of support for basic research and innovation, taking direct support for R&D to 0.8% of GDP and placing the UK among the top quarter of OECD nations – ahead of the USA, Japan, France and China. This unprecedented increase in investment will support a range of objectives, including:
1.221 Details of how this funding will support these and other objectives will be set out at the forthcoming CSR, but the Budget announces a set of measures that will have an immediate impact.
And
Other HE matters
On FE
Dods summarise and speculate on the main educational elements within the budget:
A series of regional factsheets have been published on the 2020 budget. Here is the one for the South West, it includes:
And sharing the national pot to access:
The budget also launched the long-awaited Comprehensive Spending Review (2020). This will conclude in July when the Chancellor will set out the detailed spending plans for public services and investment, including the resource budgets from 2021-22 to 2023-24 and capital budgets up to 2024-25. It will be a key time for HE as many of the delayed big decisions such as Augar Review, student fee levels, and TEF are set to be tackled as part of the CSR.
Cross subsidisation – whereby HE institutions fund aspects of research activity from student fee income – has been a contentious point which bothered Government in the recent past. It was overshadowed as the value for money discussion rose; however, quiet rumblings about whether cross subsidisation is ‘right’ have continued in the background. On Monday, prior to the budget, HEPI published a report on cross subsidisation within the post-Augar context and exploring the Government’s 2.4% R&D target.
The report argues that the debate about value for money in higher education alongside parts of the Augar Review (the £7,500 tuition fee recommendation) fails to acknowledge the interdependence between teaching and research. It argues that adopting the Augar recommendations would circumscribe university investment in new programmes such as artificial intelligence and machine learning – contradictory to the Government aim to strengthen research in these areas.
The paper concludes:
Nick Hillman, the Director of HEPI and the author of the report, said:
Nicola Dandridge has set out her plans to improve the relationship that the OfS has with HE providers in an interesting blog on Wonkhe.
It sets out plans such as:
In the meantime the requirement to make daily reports to the OfS of numbers of staff or students with the corona virus appear to have been bypassed by advice to stay at home and not seek to get tested if you are showing symptoms – making the numbers essentially meaningless. Universities up and down the country will be hoping that this particular requirement will be relaxed.
HESA have issued a report that says that “Research shows decline in ‘graduate premium’ less pronounced for 1st and 2:1 degrees”.
From the HESA website;
Click here to view the updated inquiries and consultation tracker. Email us on policy@bournemouth.ac.uk if you’d like to contribute to any of the current consultations.
DfE has published new figures on apprenticeships in England.
To subscribe to the weekly policy update simply email: policy@bournemouth.ac.uk.
Did you know? You can catch up on previous versions of the policy update on BU’s intranet pages here.
External readers: Thank you to our external readers who enjoy our policy updates. Unfortunately we cannot subscribe you to receive the updates direct to your inbox as they may contain privileged content from our partners and subscriptions which we may only be permitted to share with our internal staff. However, you can continue to read our truncated updates which omit the restricted content on the policy pages of the BU Research Blog – here’s the link.
JANE FORSTER | SARAH CARTER
Policy Advisor Policy & Public Affairs Officer
Follow: @PolicyBU on Twitter | policy@bournemouth.ac.uk
The Departments of Psychology (SciTech), Midwifery and Health Sciences (HSS) from Bournemouth University and SSLA part of Symbiosis International (Deemed University) were successful in getting the United Kingdon India Education Research Initiative (UKIERI) 
funding to support 10 UK Psychology Students and Staff to visit India. This initiative receives further support from Global Engagement Hub, Bournemouth University.
The Study in India Programme has been designed in collaboration with BU’s project partner university Symbiosis International in India, where this will be hosted. This exchange will offer a program of interactive lectures, workshops, research methods seminars, clinical experience observations, and relevant field visits.
Students will also contribute to research with Sheetal Astitva, which is a GCRF funded initiative aimed to improve mental health in rural India and Nepal. The lead researchers for this initiative are Prof. Edwin van-Teijlingen and Dr. Shanti Shanker.
Dr Gayatri Kotbagi presented at the International Gender Conference 2020, Symbiosis School of Liberal Arts, Pune, India. She presented on the Mental Health, Rights, and Policies as part of the GCRF funded initiative Sheetal Astitva.
This project led by Prof. Edwin van-Teijlingen and Dr. Shanti Shanker focuses on grassroots level centers addressing the lack of accessibility in rural India. This project collaborates with the Taluka Health Officer at Paud (Mulshi, Dr Ajit Karanjkar) and local medical officers.
The Health Research Authority have released guidance for clinical researchers, sponsors and sites with regard to COVID-19 (Coronavirus) – please read this guidance if you are currently conducting your project or are in the planning stages/set-up of the study (so you are aware of the current situation).
This guidance is subject to change and will be updated as and when required by the HRA.
You can read the guidance in the link provided above, but for convenience, these are the most likely situations BU clinical researchers may face. Please ensure that in planning amendments that these do not create additional burden to NHS staff or resources.
How this should be handled – these are non-substantial amendments that do not require HRA/HCRW approval or NHS R&D agreement. Where the study involves the NHS, they will be marked by the sponsor as a category C amendment not requiring assessment, and sent directly to the sites. The site should implement the amendment on the date specified by the sponsor.
How this should be handled – these are non-substantial amendments that do not require HRA/HCRW approval or NHS R&D agreement. The same procedure as the first example should be followed.
How this should be handled – these are non-substantial amendments that do not require HRA/HCRW approval or NHS R&D agreement. The same procedure as above should be followed.
How this should be handled – for studies not involving provision of treatment to participants, a notification to the REC or study-wide review (for non-REC studies) should be provided, and an end of study report should subsequently be provided.
For any studies involving provision of treatment to participants, careful consideration should be given to post-study care. If this cannot be in line with the information provided in the participant-information sheet, a substantial amendment should be submitted.
To support sites in implementing the amendments it is important that:
There may be some instances in which the site may raise issues or changes that need to be made. If they do, please inform the Sponsor as soon as possible.
If you think that you may need to implement any changes or amendments to your study due to COVID-19 please get in touch with us as soon as possible. If you have any concerns or queries then please also get in touch to discuss these.
UK could increase economic growth by 0.5 percentage points per year, with a potential gain of 10% of GDP by 2030 by equalising labour force participation rates of men and women (Gov.uk 2019).
In the last few decades, women of various ethnic origins including Indian high-class professionals in the fields of IT, medical, academia and entrepreneurship have come to the UK. However, women of various ethnic origins are underpreprsented in the labour force. Although they have significant productive capacity, it is mostly unused because of several socioeconomic reasons, including many of them choosing to stay at home because of them not being knowledge about the UK job market.
In view of BU’s commitment to gender equality and diversity, through charity impact grant, this project led to a partnership between BU and ICAD (Indian Cultural Association of Dorset) that can advance the BU values of integrating ethnic minorities into mainstream British society and promoting social harmony.
The first setting up scene event took place at Bournemouth University on the International Women’s Day. It was well attended by both women and men from different cultural backgrounds.
The speakers included Dr Shrivastava who spoke on the business case for gender equality, Mrs Sarah Ali Choudhary on the need for women to put themselves forward, Dr Elvira Bolat on the enabling power of social media and Mrs Adel Padiachy on the need for taking care of mental health. The interactive session included quizzes and Indian cultural music.
The event ended on a high note with everyone taking personal pledges to support the cause of gender equity on several fronts.
Planning for a follow-up workshop on skill development is underway for the summer this year. This workshop will aim to empower women from ethnic minority groups through workshops on skills required in various walks of life such as self-employment, labour market entry, social media marketing, higher education, health and wellbeing.
Funding is tough in higher education and many great ideas fall short of just a little bit of money to makes something cool a reality. This could be one of them.
PalaeoGo is a concluding HEIF project that puts extinct animals into your smart phone using Augmented Reality. The idea was to enhance visitor experience at museums and science outreach in general. We have generic Apps in the app stores (App Store, Google Play) as well as a couple of bespoke ones specific to museums, The Etches Collection (App Store, Google Play) and Winchester Science Centre (App Store, Google Play) as well as a BU Campus version (App Store, Google Play). They bring dinosaurs to life and are hugely popular with children.
Perhaps the work we are most of proud of is that with Kingsleigh Primary School. In December 2019 we ran an outreach event which saw us take our PalaeoGo apps into school and we ran a dinosaur colouring competition alongside. This saw Year Two children compete for the prize of having their drawing come to life in a video. The community response was huge, and the school were happy with the outcome.
So, impressed with the idea and aware that once the project was over, and we had lost our talented digital artist Cameron Kerr (something which has now happened), such interventions would no longer be possible we began to plan a solution. We put our minds to trying to create the pipeline which would take a scanned piece of artwork from a child and produce their own video as the end product. In this way a school where ever they are in the World could run their own dino colouring competition. We now have that code all primed and ready as illustrated in this video, and we are looking for a talented web developer to package it all into a neat school/child friendly website, preferably pro bono.
So, ideas and/or offers of help are needed on how we move this brilliant idea into something that kids across the World can interact with. Answers on a postcode to the frustrated PalaeoGo team.
Notice for those who currently employ or who need to employ researchers on projects.
There is a new Code of Practice for the Employment of Researchers available on the staff intranet.
This document provides guidance on the University’s expectations for the recruitment, support, management and development of research staff in line with the Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers.
If you have any queries, please contact RKEDF@bournemouth.ac.uk.
Congratulations to Dr. Preeti Mahato in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH) on the acceptance of her latest academic paper in the journal Sexual & Reproductive Healthcare. [1] Contraceptive use is one of the most effective methods for reducing the number of pregnancies and thus benefiting the health and survival of women and children, especially in low-income countries such as Nepal. Increased contraceptive use and thus decreased fertility results in decreased obstetric risk mainly by reducing unwanted pregnancy in women with high parity. This paper reports of factors that act as barriers to contraceptive use or that act as facilitators of its use.
Reference:
The Research & Knowledge Exchange Framework (RKEDF) is now into its fourth year. It offers training and development opportunities to academics at all stages of their career, supporting staff to increase their skills, knowledge and capabilities.
The RKEDF offers a range of support including sessions for those who are new to research or to BU, for staff who want to further develop their research careers and for people who want to disseminate their research findings or create an impact plan.
The Research Development & Support team are currently planning activities and sessions for the 2020/21 programme of events and would like to hear your ideas and suggestions. What’s worked well? What would you changed? Are there any other sessions or training materials you’d like to see included? We’d like to hear both from people who have engaged with the RKEDF and those who haven’t.
Tell us what you think via our survey and be in with a chance of winning one of three £20 Amazon vouchers. The deadline date is Sunday 15 March.
BU staff can login below:
April’s Café Scientifique – Should we help machines understand and respond to our emotions?
Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (PRES) 2024 – 2 WEEKS LEFT
Working with The Conversation: online training session – Wednesday 8th May Public Engagement Opportunity: Share your research with the public at Café Scientifique
Apply for up to £1,000 to deliver an event and take part in a national festival of public engagement with research
MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2024
Research Information Network
Horizon Europe News – December 2023