Category / writing

CMMPH lecturer Daisy Wiggins’ paper published

open access, PG research, Publishing, student research, Women's Academic Network, writing

Congratulations to Daisy Wiggins in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH) on the publication of her paper ‘The effect of a birthplace decision support tool on women’s decision-making and information gathering behaviours during pregnancy: mybirthplace study protocol’.  The paper is published in the Open Access journal Journal of Innovation in Health Informatics and can be accessed by clicking here!  The paper is co-authored by CMMPH’s Prof. Vanora Hundley, Dr. Carol Wilkins, as well asProf. Carol Bond (University of Wolverhampton) and the Chief Executive of the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) Gill Walton.

 

Congratulations to all!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

 

Reference:

Wiggins D, Hundley VA, Wilkins C, Bond C, Walton G. The effect of a birthplace decision support tool on women’s decision-making and information gathering behaviours during pregnancy: mybirthplace study protocol. J Innov Health Inform.2018;25(1):001–006.

 

New CMMPH paper accepted in Nurse Education Today

international, PG research, Publishing, student research, Training, writing

Congratulations to Mrs. Preeti Mahato on the acceptance of her paper ‘Qualitative evaluation of mental health training of Auxiliary Nurse Midwives in rural Nepal’ by Nurse Education Today, an academic journal published by Elsevier.   Preeti is currently registered as PhD student in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH).  The paper is co-authored by CMMPH’s Catherine Angell and Edwin van Teijlingen as well as BU Visiting Faculty Padam Simkhada and Jillian Ireland.  The paper is a result of the evaluation part of the ‘Mental Health Training for Community-based Maternity Providers in Nepal’ project and written on behalf of this THET team.

Our THET project in Nepal is a collaboration between the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH), Tribhuvan University (Nepal’s oldest university) and Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU). The project receives funding from DFID, and is managed through THET and supported locally in Nepal by a charity Green Tara Nepal.

 

THET team:

Edwin van Teijlingen, Padam Simkhada, Shyam K Maharjan Preeti Mahato, Bhimsen Devkota, Padmadharini Fanning, Jillian Ireland, Bibha Simkhada, Lokendra Sherchan, Ram Chandra Silwal, Shyam K Maharjan, Ram K Maharjan, Catherine Angell, Flora Douglas.

 

 

 

Latest editorial on Nepal by Dr. Regmi in FHSS

international, open access, Publishing, writing

Last week the Journal of Manmoham Memorial Institute of Health Sciences based in Nepal published as its editorial ‘What can we learn from the Nepal Health Facility Survey 2015. [1]  The Nepal Health Facility Survey 2015 is a first of its kind.  It is a much needed start to help analyse and improve the workings of the country’s health system.  This is very important and timely as one of the targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) is to reduce premature mortality by one-third from non-communicable diseases.  Success in this effort will depend on the concerted efforts on health facilities (for both health promotion, prevention and management) for an early and optimal care. The editorial also raises some of the ethical and methodological issues associated with the first ever Nepal Health Facility Survey 2015.  The lead author of the editorial is Dr. Pramod Regmi and our co-authors include Prof. Padam Simkhada (Visiting Faculty in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences).  The Journal of Manmoham Memorial Institute of Health Sciences is an Open Access journal hence freely available to scholars and politicians and health managers across the globe, including those based in low-income countries such as Nepal.

 

Reference:

  1. Regmi, P., van Teijlingen, E., Simkhada, P, Kurmi, O, Pant, P. (2017) What can we learn from the Nepal Health Facility Survey 2015? Journal of Manmohan Memorial Institute of Health Sciences (JMMIHS) 3(1): 1-5

 

Systematic Review birthing centres by CMMPH PhD student Preeti Mahato

international, open access, PG research, Publishing, Student Engagement, student research, writing

BU PhD student Mrs Preeti Mahato published her latest scientific paper ‘Determinants of quality of care and access to Basic Emergency Obstetric and Neonatal Care facilities and midwife-led facilities in low and middle-income countries: A Systematic Review’ in the Journal of Asian Midwives [1].  This paper is co-authored by Dr. Catherine Angell and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen, who are both based in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH) and Prof. Padam Simkhada, BU Visiting Professor and based at Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU).  Journal of Asian Midwives is a free Open Access journal, freely available for anybody across the globe to read online.

The authors highlight that maternal mortality is a major challenge to health systems in Low and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) where almost 99% of maternal deaths occurred in 2015. Primary-care facilities providing Basic Emergency Obstetric and Neonatal Care (BEmONC) facilities, and facilities that are midwife-led are appropriate for normal birth in LMICs and have been proposed as the best approach to reduce maternal deaths. However, the poor quality of maternal services that leads to decreased utilisation of these facilities is among the major causes of maternal deaths worldwide. This systematic review studied factors affecting the quality of care in BEmONC and midwife-led facilities in LMICs.

Thematic analysis on included studies revealed various factors affecting quality of care including facility-level determinants and other determinants influencing access to care. Facility-level determinants included these barriers: lack of equipment and drugs at the facility, lack of trained staff, poor attitudes and behaviour of service providers, and poor communication with women. Facility-level positive determinants were: satisfaction with services, emotional support during delivery and trust in health providers. The access-to-care determinants were: socio-economic factors, physical access to the facility, maintaining privacy and confidentiality, and cultural values.  The authors include that improving quality of care of birthing facilities requires addressing both facility level and non-facility level determinants in order to increase utilization of the services available at the BEmONC and midwife-led facilities in LMICs.

This is the fifth paper co-authored by CMMPH’s current most published PhD student.  The evaluation of birth centres in rural Nepal by Preeti Mahato under joint supervision Dr. Angell and Prof. Simkhada (LJMU) and Prof. van Teijlingen.

References:

  1. Mahato, P., van Teijlingen, E., Simkhada, P., Angell, C. (2017) Determinants of quality of care & access to Basic Emergency Obstetric & Neonatal Care facilities & midwife-led facilities in low & middle-income countries: A Systematic Review, Journal of Asian Midwives 4(2):25-51.
  2. Mahato, P., van Teijlingen, E., Simkhada, P., Angell, C. (2016) Birthing centres in Nepal: Recent developments, obstacles and opportunities, Journal of Asian Midwives 3(1): 18-30. http://ecommons.aku.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1033&context=jam
  3. Mahato, P., van Teijlingen, E., Simkhada, P., Sheppard, Z., Silwal, R.C. (2017) Factors related to choice of place of birth in a district in Nepal. Sexual & Reproductive Healthcare 13: 91-96.
  4. Mahato, P.K., Regmi, P.R., van Teijlingen, E., Simkhada, P., Angell, C., Sathian, B. (2015) Birthing centre infrastructure in Nepal post 2015 earthquake. Nepal Journal of Epidemiology 5(4): 518-519. http://www.nepjol.info/index.php/NJE/article/view/14260/11579
  5. Regmi, P., van Teijlingen, E., Hundley, V., Simkhada, P., Sharma, S., Mahato, P. (2016) Sustainable Development Goals: relevance to maternal & child health in Nepal. Health Prospect 15(1):9-10. www.healthprospect.org/archives/15/1/3.pdf

There’s no such thing as a bad metric.

BRIAN, Guidance, Publishing, Research assessment, writing

Lizzie Gadd warns against jumping on ‘bad metrics’ bandwagons without really engaging with the more complex responsible metrics agenda beneath.

An undoubted legacy of the Metric Tide report has been an increased focus on the responsible use of metrics and along with this a notion of ‘bad metrics’.  Indeed, the report itself even recommended awarding an annual ‘Bad Metrics Prize’.  This has never been awarded as far as I’m aware, but nominations are still open on their web pages.  There has been a lot of focus on responsible metrics recently.  The Forum for Responsible Metrics have done a survey of UK institutions and is reporting the findings on 8 February in London.  DORA has upped its game and appointed a champion to promote their work and they seem to be regularly retweeting messages that remind us all of their take on what it means to do metrics responsibly.   There are also frequent twitter conversations about the impact of metrics in the up-coming REF.  In all of this I see an increasing amount of ‘bad metrics’ bandwagon-hopping.  The anti-Journal Impact Factor (JIF) wagon is now full and its big sister, the “metrics are ruining science” wagon, is taking on supporters at a heady pace.

It looks to me like we have moved from a state of ignorance about metrics, to a little knowledge.  Which, I hear, is a dangerous thing.

It’s not a bad thing, this increased awareness of responsible metrics; all these conversations.  I’m responsible metrics’ biggest supporter and a regular slide in my slide-deck shouts ‘metrics can kill people!’.  So why am I writing a blog post that claims that there is no such thing as a bad metric?  Surely these things can kill people? Well, yes, but guns can also kill people, they just can’t do so unless they’re in the hands of a human.  Similarly, metrics aren’t bad in and of themselves, it’s what we do with them that can make them dangerous.

In Yves Gingras’ book, “Bibliometrics and Research Evaluation” he defines the characteristics of a good indicator as follows:

  • Adequacy of the indicator for the object that it measures
  • Sensitivity to the intrinsic inertia of the object being measured
  • Homogeneity of the dimensions of the indicator.

So, you might have an indicator such as ‘shoe size’, where folks with feet of a certain length get assigned a certain shoe size indicator. No problem there – it’s adequate (length of foot consistently maps on to shoe size); it’s sensitive to the thing it measures (foot grows, shoe size increases accordingly), and it’s homogenous (one characteristic – length, leads to one indicator – shoe size).  However, in research evaluation we struggle on all of these counts.  Because the thing we really want to measure, this elusive, multi-faceted “research quality” thing, doesn’t have any adequate, sensitive and homogeneous indicators. We need to measure the immeasurable. So we end up making false assumptions about the meanings of our indicators, and then make bad decisions based on those false assumptions.  In all of this, it is not the metric that’s at fault, it’s us.

In my view, the JIF is the biggest scapegoat of the Responsible Metrics agenda.  The JIF is just the average number of cites per paper for a journal over two years.  That’s it.  A simple calculation. And as an indicator of the communication effectiveness of a journal for collection development purposes (the reason it was introduced) it served us well.  It’s just been misused as an indicator of the quality of individual academics and individual papers.  It wasn’t designed for that.  This is misuse of a metric, not a bad metric. (Although recent work has suggested that it’s not that bad an indicator for the latter anyway, but that’s not my purpose here).  If the JIF is a bad metric, so is Elsevier’s CiteScore which is based on EXACTLY the same principle but uses a three-year time window not two, a slightly different set of document types and journals, and makes itself freely available.

If we’re not careful, I fear that in a hugely ironic turn, DORA and the Leiden Manifesto might themselves become bad (misused) metrics: an unreliable indicator of a commitment to the responsible use of metrics that may or may not be there in practice.

I understand why DORA trumpets the misuse of JIFs; it is rife and there are less imperfect tools for the job. But there are also other metrics that DORA doesn’t get in a flap about – like the individual h-index – which are subject to the same amount of misuse, but are actually more damaging.  The individual h-index disadvantages certain demographics more than others (women, early-career researchers, anyone with non-standard career lengths); at least the JIF mis-serves everyone equally.  And whilst we’re at it peer review can be an equally inadequate research evaluation tool (which, ironically, metrics have proven). So if we’re to be really fair we should be campaigning for responsible peer review with as much vigour as our calls for responsible metrics.

Bumper stickers by Paul van der Werf
Bumper stickers by Paul van der Werf (CC-BY)

 

It looks to me like we have moved from a state of ignorance about metrics, to a little knowledge.  Which, I hear, is a dangerous thing.  A little knowledge can lead to a bumper sticker culture ( “I HEART DORA” anyone?  “Ban the JIF”?) which could move us away from, rather than towards, the responsible use of metrics. These concepts are easy to grasp hold of, but they mask a far more complex and challenging set of research evaluation problems that lie beneath.  The responsible use of metrics is about more than the avoidance of certain indicators, or signing DORA, or even developing your own bespoke Responsible Metrics policy (as I’ve said before this is certainly easier said than done).

The responsible use of metrics requires responsible scientometricians.  People who understand that there is really no such thing as a bad metric, but it is very possible to misuse them. People with a deeper level of understanding about what we are trying to measure, what the systemic effects of this might be, what indicators are available, what their limitations are, where they are appropriate, how they can best triangulate them with peer review.  We have good guidance on this in the form of the Leiden Manifesto, the Metric Tide and DORA.  However, these are the starting points of often painful responsible metric journeys, not easy-ride bandwagons to be jumped on.  If we’re not careful, I fear that in a hugely ironic turn, DORA and the Leiden Manifesto might themselves become bad (misused) metrics: an unreliable indicator of a commitment to the responsible use of metrics that may or may not be there in practice.

Let’s get off the ‘metric-shaming’ bandwagons, deepen our understanding and press on with the hard work of responsible research evaluation.

 

Elizabeth Gadd

Elizabeth Gadd is the Research Policy Manager (Publications) at Loughborough University. She has a background in Libraries and Scholarly Communication research. She is the co-founder of the Lis-Bibliometrics Forum and is the ARMA Metrics Special Interest Group Champion

 

 

Creative Commons LicenceOriginal content posted on The Bibliomagician reposted here with permission. Content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

RKEDF – Highlighting Academic Publishing

Publishing, writing

Within the Research and Knowledge Exchange Development Framework (RKEDF), there are a number of events in the coming months to support your academic publishing activities.

The flagship three-day Writing Academy retreats will commence on 11th April and 27th June. To find out more, please see the information page. Please note that you will need faculty to support to attend and cannot book onto these events without this recommendation.

If you have specific needs or wish to ‘dip your toe in the water’, there are shorter sessions available:

Find out more about what is on offer to support your academic publishing and your wider research development.

 

 

 

Two papers on health & migration in Nepal

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

This last week two separate papers have been accepted on aspects of health and well-being among migrants workers from Nepal.  The first in the International Journal of Migration, Health and Social Care is based on a completed PhD project in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences with Dr. Pratik Adhikary as first author [1].  This paper ‘Health and well-being of Nepalese migrant workers abroad’ is co-authored by two former FHSS staff Dr. Zoe Sheppard and Dr. Steve Keen, and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen of the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH).

 

The second paper ‘A study of Health Problems of Nepalese Female Migrants Workers in the Middle-East and Malaysia’ was accepted by the Open Access journal BMC International Health & Human Rights [2].  The lead author of this paper is Bournemouth University (BU) Visiting Faculty Prof. Padam Simkhada (based at Liverpool John Moores University) and two of his co-authors are based in Nepal: Manju Gurung (chair of Pourakhi Nepal) and Dr. Sharada Prasad Wasti and one at BU: Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen .

There is  a growing momentum in migration research at BU with further academic papers being published related to studies on migrant workers from Nepal [4-8], relatives of migrant workers [9], migration into the UK [10-12], Eastern European migration issues [13-15], migration and tourism [16], migration and the media [17] as well as migration in the past [18].

 

References:

  1. Adhikary P, Sheppard, Z., Keen S., van Teijlingen E. (2018) Health and well-being of Nepalese migrant workers abroad, International Journal of Migration, Health and Social Care (accepted). https://doi.org/10.1108/IJMHSC-12-2015-0052
  2. Simkhada, P.P., van Teijlingen, E.R., Gurung, M., Wasti, S. (2018) A study of Health Problems of Nepalese Female Migrants Workers in the Middle-East and Malaysia, BMC International Health & Human Rights (accepted Jan.).
  3. Adhikary, P., Simkhada, P.P., van Teijlingen E., Raja, AE. (2008) Health & Lifestyle of Nepalese Migrants in the UK BMC International Health & Human Rights 8(6). Web address: www.biomedcentral.com/1472-698X/8/6.
  4. van Teijlingen E, Simkhada, P., Adhikary, P. (2009) Alcohol use among the Nepalese in the UK BMJ Rapid Response: www.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/339/oct20_1/b4028#223451
  5. Adhikary P., Keen S., van Teijlingen, E. (2011) Health Issues among Nepalese migrant workers in Middle East. Health Science Journal 5: 169-175. www.hsj.gr/volume5/issue3/532.pdf
  6. Adhikary, P., Sheppard, Z., Keen, S., van Teijlingen, E. (2017) Risky work: Accidents among Nepalese migrant workers in Malaysia, Qatar and Saudi, Health Prospect 16(2): 3-10.
  7. Aryal, N., Regmi, PR., van Teijlingen, E., Simkhada, P., Adhikary, P., Bhatta, YKD., Mann, S. (2016) Injury and Mortality in Young Nepalese Migrant Workers: A Call for Public Health Action. Asian-Pacific Journal of Public Health 28(8): 703-705.
  8. Simkhada, PP., Regmi, PR., van Teijlingen, E., Aryal, N. (2017) Identifying the gaps in Nepalese migrant workers’ health & well-being: A review of the literature, Journal of Travel Medicine 24 (4): 1-9.
  9. Aryal, N., Regmi, PR., van Teijlingen, E., Dhungel, D., Ghale, G., Bhatta, GK. (2016) Knowing is not enough: Migrant workers’ spouses vulnerability to HIV SAARC Journal of Tuberculosis, Lung Diseases & HIV/AIDS 8(1):9-15.
  10. Scammell, J., 2016. Nurse migration and the EU: how are UK nurses prepared? British Journal of Nursing, 25 (13), p. 764.
  11. Holscher, J., 2017. The effects of Brexit on the EU, the UK and Dorset – a migrant’s account. BAFES Working Papers, 1-11.
  12. Sapkota, T., Simkhada, P., van Teijlingen, E. (2014) Nepalese health workers’ migration to United Kingdom: A qualitative study. Health Science Journal 8(1):57-74.
  13. Filimonau, V., Mika, M. (2017) Return labour migration: an exploratory study of Polish migrant workers from the UK hospitality industry. Current Issues in Tourism, 1-22.
  14. Janta, H., Ladkin, A., Brown, L., Lugosi, P., 2011. Employment experiences of Polish migrant workers in the UK hospitality sector. Tourism Management, 32 (5): 1006-1019.
  15. Mai, N., Schwandner-Sievers, S. (2003) Albanian migration and new transnationalisms, Journal of Ethnic & Migration Studies 29(6): 939-948.
  16. Dwyer, L., Seetaram, N., Forsyth, P., Brian, K. (2014) Is the Migration-Tourism Relationship only about VFR? Annals of Tourism Research, 46: 130-143.
  17. Marino, S., Dawes, S. (2016). Fortress Europe: Media, Migration and Borders. Networking Knowledge, 9 (4).
  18. Parker Pearson, M., Richards, C., Allen, M., Payne, A., Welham, K. (2004) The Stonehenge Riverside project Research design and initial results Journal of Nordic Archaeological Science 14: 45–60.

New paper international midwifery

international, Publishing, writing

Over the Festive Season the International Journal of Childbirth published the latest article from staff based at the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH) [1].  This paper ‘Women, Midwives, and a Medical Model of Maternity Care in Switzerland’ is co-authored with Bournemouth University Visiting Faculty Ans Luyben (a Dutch midwife working in Switzerland), Sue Brailey from the School of Health & Education at Middlesex University and Lucy Firth at the University of Liverpool.

This Swiss paper builds on a body of work within CMMPH around a medical/social model of childbirth.  BU academics have applied this model in multidisciplinary studies, including the disciplines of midwifery, [2-4] sociology, [5] and media studies [6].

 

References

  1. Brailey, S., Luyben, A., Firth, L., van Teijlingen, E. (2017) Women, midwives and a medical model of maternity care in Switzerland, International Journal of Childbirth 7(3): 117-125.
  2. van Teijlingen, E. (2017) The medical and social model of childbirth, Kontakt 19 (2): e73-e74
  3. MacKenzie Bryers H., van Teijlingen, E. (2010) Risk, Theory, Social & Medical Models: critical analysis of the concept of risk in maternity care, Midwifery 26(5): 488-496.
  4. Ireland, J., van Teijlingen, E. (2013) Normal birth: social-medical model, The Practising Midwife 16 (11): 17-20.
  5. van Teijlingen E. (2005) A critical analysis of the medical model as used in the study of pregnancy and childbirth, Sociological Research Online, 10 (2) Web address: http://www.socresonline.org.uk/10/2/teijlingen.html
  6. 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

Last publication of 2017?

international, Knowledge Exchange, Publishing, writing

The final issue for 2017 of the Dutch Journal for Midwives, Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Verloskundigen, published our contribution on midwives and the media [1].  The two-page article ‘MEER BEMOEIEN MET MEDIA’ argues (in Dutch) that midwives as individuals and as a profession must try to engage with the media.  Midwives should be open to starting a dialogue concerning issues around maternity care and midwifery.  This article published in a practitioners’ journal builds on the collaborative research conducted at Bournemouth University around midwifery and the media [2-4], and our recently published edited book on the topic [5].

Ann Luce, Vanora Hundley & Edwin van Teijlingen

 

References:

  1. van Teijlingen, E., De Vries, R., Luce, A., Hundley, V. (2017) Meer bemoeien met media (In Dutch: more engagement with media). Tijdschrift voor Verloskundigen (in Dutch: Journal for Midwives), 41 (6):28-29.
  2. 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
  3. Hundley, V., Duff, E., Dewberry, J., Luce, A., van Teijlingen, E. (2014) Fear in childbirth: are the media responsible? MIDIRS Midwifery Digest 24(4): 444-447.
  4. Hundley, V., Luce, A., van Teijlingen, E. (2015) Do midwives need to be more media savvy? MIDIRS Midwifery Digest 25(1):5-10.
  5. Luce, A., Hundley, V., van Teijlingen, E. (Eds.) (2017) Midwifery, Childbirth and the Media, Palgrave Macmillan

 

Last review of the year

international, open access, Publishing, writing

This morning as Associate Editor I reviewed one academic paper resubmitted to BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth.  After this I had to invite three reviewers for another paper newly submitted to BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth. 

This afternoon I peer-reviewed a paper submitted to Women & Birth.  For readers of our BU Research Blog who are not involved in academia, the volume of requests to review for scientific journals has gone through the roof in the past few years.  And these are legitimate requests from high quality journals.  There is a whole heap of so-called predatory journals pestering academics for reviews (and papers and editorial board memberships).

All that is left to be done before the Christmas Break is editing six short book chapters, submitting one scientific paper, and answer seventy odd emails.

Merry Christmas and a Happy & Healthy 2018

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen