Category / writing

British Academy Visit and British Academy Bid Writing retreat– reserve your place now!

REF Subjects, Training, writing

As part of the Research & Knowledge Exchange Development Framework “Funding from the Academies” pathway, two staff development opportunities are now available for booking.

 

  • The British Academy is returning to BU on 8 March 2017.  This is an invaluable opportunity to find out more about the international and domestic funding available through the organisation.  For those of you who are not familiar with the British Academy, it is the UK’s leading independent body for the humanities and social sciences, promoting funding, knowledge exchange and providing independent advice within the humanities. 

The session will last just over  1 hour (13:00-14:15) and will comprise a presentation focusing on international and domestic funding opportunities along with an overview of the British Academy, followed by a Q&A session.

Representatives of the British Academy will be available to answer any individual queries not covered in the presentation or Q&A session, and members of the Research and Knowledge Exchange Office will be on hand should you wish to discuss BU’s processes for bidding to the organisation.

Places for this event can be reserved through Organisational Development here.

  •  A workshop, the “Bid Writing retreat- British Academy small grant” will be held Monday April 3rd, 2017 (9:30-16:00). The workshop will offer helpful tips from past British Academy Small Grant winners as well as focused support from team members of the Research & Knowledge Exchange Office.  Participants are asked to have a draft application for the British Academy Small Grant in preparation in advance of this workshop that they can develop during the day.  You can book your place here.

Members of BU interested in discussing either of these training opportunities please contact Ehren Milner, Research Facilitator (emilner@bournemouth.ac.uk).

Royal Society of Biology Training courses

Training, writing

ShieldBooking is now open for Spring 2017 Training Courses with the Royal Society of Biology!

Courses include:

Persuasive Scientific Report Writing

When: 26 January 2017

Where: Charles Darwin House 2, 107 Gray’s Inn Road, London WC1X 8TZ

What: Participants will learn the principles and processes for high quality communication in scientific thinking and writing, with plenty of opportunity to discuss and practice the skills learnt.

Who: For writers of technical, scientific and other related reports or documents, who wish to improve their report and general document writing skills.

CPD: This event has been approved by the Royal Society of Biology for purposes of CPD and can be counted as 18 CPD points.

Fees: From £100 +VAT

 

Science Podcast Production

When: 16 March 2017

Where: Charles Darwin House 2, 107 Gray’s Inn Road, London WC1X 8TZ

What: Award-winning science broadcaster Richard Hollingham presents this introductory hands-on course on how to podcast – from getting good quality sound and content – to getting your podcast online and heard.

Who: For those interested in communicating science via podcast.

CPD: This event has been approved by the Royal Society of Biology for purposes of CPD and can be counted as 18 CPD points.

Fees: From £125 +VAT

 

Writing for a non-specialist audience

When: 23 March 2017

Where: Charles Darwin House 2, 107 Gray’s Inn Road, London WC1X 8TZ

What: How to write in an interesting and easy-to-read way while ensuring your message remains scientifically robust and accurate.

Who: For scientists in academia or industry hoping to improve the way they communicate with non-scientists, or for anyone hoping to develop their blogging and science writing skills.

CPD: This event has been approved by the Royal Society of Biology for purposes of CPD and can be counted as 24 CPD points.

Fees: From £100 + VAT

 

Presentation Skills

When: 10 April 2017

Where: Charles Darwin House 2, 107 Gray’s Inn Road, London WC1X 8TZ

What: This course will cover practical exercise on personal presentation and body language; structuring your presentation; uses and abuses of visual aids with a focus on Powerpoint; meeting the needs of your audience.

Who: This half-day course is for those who have had little experience of giving presentations.

CPD: This event has been approved by the Royal Society of Biology for purposes of CPD and can be counted as 12 CPD points.

Fees: From 50 +VAT

 

An Introduction to Exhibition Design

When: 27 April 2017

Where: Charles Darwin House 2, 107 Gray’s Inn Road, London WC1X 8TZ

What: This course will introduce participants to exhibition making, from the development of an exhibition concept to the final product.

Who: This practical course is suitable for those who may need to create a display, for example science communicators or scientists working in public engagement & outreach.

CPD: This event has been approved by the Royal Society of Biology for purposes of CPD and can be counted as 21 CPD points.

Fees: From £100 +VAT

 

Please click here for the information below about the science communication courses, further information and for full list of courses

First 2017 publication by CMMPH academics

open access, Publishing, writing

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

BUCRU – not just for Writing Week

writing

We’re coming to the end of Writing Week in the Faculty of Health and Social Sciences and by now you will have made a good start or have put the finishing touches to your academic writing projects. Over the last week, we have given you some tips on writing grant applications and highlighted some of the expertise within BUCRU. If you didn’t get the chance to pop in and see us we thought it would be useful to remind you what we’re about and how we can help.

Bournemouth University Clinical Research Unit (BUCRU) supports researchers in improving the quality, quantity and efficiency of research across the University and local National Health Service (NHS) Trusts. We do this by:

  • Helping researchers develop high quality applications for external research funding (including small grants)
  • Ongoing involvement in funded research projects
  • A “pay-as-you-go” consultation service for other work.

How can we help?

BUCRU can provide help in the following areas:

  • Study design
  • Quantitative and qualitative research methods
  • Statistics, data management and data analysis
  • Patient and public involvement in research
  • Trial management
  • Ethics, governance and other regulatory issues
  • Linking University and NHS researchers

Our support is available to Bournemouth University staff and people working locally in the NHS, and depending on the support you require, is mostly free of charge. There are no general restrictions on topic area or professional background of the researcher.

If you would like support in developing your research please get in touch through bucru@bournemouth.ac.uk or by calling us on 01202 961939. Please see our website for further information, details of our current and previous projects and a link to our recent newsletter.

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

PG research, Publishing, writing

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.

Making the Most of Writing Week: Research grant applications – not THAT PPI

writing

Remember, there are members of the BU Clinical Research Unit team available during the Faculty of Health and Social Sciences Writing Week to help you (you don’t need to be FHSS to speak to us, we’re here to help anyone doing health research) along the way. Today we’ll focus on Helen Allen.

Once you have decided on a funder, an important (but sometimes overlooked) aspect of working up a grant application is the planning and documenting of the involvement of service users/patients/relevant groups or organisations (Public Patient Involvement or PPI) ie the people most likely to have a vested interest in the research you are intending to do. Indeed, many major national funders, including the NIHR, require detailed evidence of how service users have been involved. But do you know who to approach?  When?  How?  What can service users be involved with? What can they add? Sometimes it’s relatively straightforward to identify appropriate individuals and organisations. Other occasions can call for more creativity. Hot tip: everything takes longer to arrange than you might think. Allow a minimum of 6 weeks to plan, consult service users and feedback from the PPI consultation to your colleagues.

If you’d like some advice about planning PPI and conducting service user consultations for a project Helen Allen will be pleased to advise you. Helen is available on Tuesday 3rd and Thursday 5th January.

Writer’s block? Wondering where to start? Need someone to talk to? BUCRU can help!

writing

Happy New Year! If making more time for writing grant proposals and research articles is one of your New Year’s Resolutions, then make the most of HSS Writing Week (3rd to 6th January). The aim of this week is to help support staff to find time in their busy schedules to work on those all-important grant proposals and research articles that keep getting lost under piles of marking.

We’re not expecting you to do it alone. Did you know that the Bournemouth University Clinical Research Unit can provide support for people undertaking healthcare research? As part of Writing Week, members of the unit will be available to help during the week (see below) so why don’t you pop in and see us (5th floor Royal London House) or send us an email.

BUCRU Availability

Who? When? What with?
Peter Thomas

(Professor of Healthcare Statistics & Epidemiology)

 Tuesday and Wednesday research study design and statistics
Helen Allen

(Public and Patient Involvement Lead)

 Tuesday and Thursday involvement of service users in research projects, arranging focus groups and interviews
Sharon Docherty

(Research Fellow: Quantitative Methods)

 Thursday and Friday designing, conducting and analysing quantitative research

New blog on Open Access publishing

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

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

international, open access, Publishing, writing

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

Four new FHSS publications

open access, Publishing, writing

bond-ahmed-2016

Congratulations to Dr. Carol Bond and Dr. Osman Ahmed in FHSS on the publication of their latest academic paper ‘Can I help you? Information sharing in online discussion forums by people living with a long-term condition’ [1].    Further congratulations are due to Osman who recently had three other papers accepted for publication [2-4].

 

Prof Edwin van Teijlingen

 

References:

  1.  Bond, C., Ahmed, O., 2016. Can I help you? Information sharing in online discussion forums by people living with a long-term condition. Journal of Innovation in Health Informatics, 23 (3).
  2. West L.R., Griffin , S., Weiler, R., Ahmed,O. 2016 Management of concussion in disability sport: a different ball game? British Journal of Sports Medicine doi:10.1136/bjsports-2016-096767
  3. “Educating the masses: Suggestions for improving online concussion information via the mainstream media” in Concussion (not available online yet)
  4. “Do Neurocognitive SCAT3 Baseline Test Scores Differ Between Footballers (Soccer) Living With and Without Disability? A Cross-Sectional Study” in Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine (not yet available online)