Tagged / congratulations

BU’s research council success rates 2014-15

BU research, Research news

RCUK logoYesterday Jo added a post to the Blog about the national Research Councils’ success rates in 2014-15. This post is a follow-on from that one and provides the data at BU-level. The coverage is decisions made between April 2014 to March 2015.

BU’s success rate in 2014-15 was a respectable 17% with two bids awarded out of the 12 submitted. In 2013-14 BU’s success rate was 33%, also based on 12 applications. Although the success rate this year has decreased slightly it is still one of BU’s highest annual success rates with the research councils. The sector average success rate in 2014-15 also declined slightly, from 30% to 28%. The successful BU awards were:

  • NERC – Integrated software system for the 3-dimensional capture and analysis of footwear evidence (Prof Matthew Bennett)
  • NERC – X-band radar applications for coastal monitoring to support improved management of coastal erosion (Dr Luciana Slomp-Esteves)

The sector average success rate with NERC was 26%, compared to BU’s impressive 67%.

BU has had more grants awarded from the Research Councils over the past year than are reported here, however, the official stats only show results against the lead institution so successful bids where BU is the collaborating institution are not shown against BU in the data.

BU is especially keen to increase the quality of bids submitted to Research Councils and RKEO run a number of initiatives, such as the Grants Academy, to support you to design, write and structure competitive, fundable research proposals and to maximise your chances of being awarded funding. Anyone considering submitting a bid to a research council should speak with their Research Facilitator as early on in the process as possible. The Research Facilitators have extensive experience of reviewing research proposals and can provide you with expert guidance on how to shape your bid. You can also access guidance documents on the Research Blog here: http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/research/researcher-toolbox/je-s-guidance/

Read more about the demand management measures that the Research Councils have put in place here: Demand Management. As the councils are still seeing an increase in applications received alongside declining success rates then there is a possibility that demand management requirements will be stepped up in future. This may also form part of the BIS changes likely to result from the HE Green Paper published last week and the CSR decisions announced at the end of the month. We’ll keep you posted via the Blog of any developments.

Congratulations to Dr Jennifer Roddis

Research news

PhDRKEO were proud to watch Dr Jennifer Roddis, Research Facilitator, RKEO, graduate yesterday as Doctor of Philosophy.  Jenny has worked incredibly hard to achieve her PhD whilst working full-time at the same time.  Jenny’s PhD explored perspectives and understanding of living with a long-term condition, specifically asthma or thrombophilia, from the point of view of affected individuals. She identified some interesting findings from the study, including identifying some of the reasons that individuals stop taking their medication and how they learn about their condition.

Well done Jenny!

New paper on obesity research

BU research, Publishing

Colleagues associated with the Health Economics Research Unit (HERU), Health Services Research Unit (HSRU) and the Rowett Institute of Nutrition and Health (all based at the University of Aberdeen), the Nursing, Midwifery & Allied Health Professional Research Unit (University of Stirling), the Scottish Collaboration for Public Health Research & Policy (SCPHRP) based at the University of Edinburgh and the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal and Perinatal Health (CMMPH) at Bournemouth University published their latest paper on obesity research.  The paper ‘A systematic review of the cost-effectiveness of non-surgical obesity interventions in men’ is published in the journal: Obesity Research & Clinical Practice.  This systematic review summarises the literature reporting the cost-effectiveness of non-surgical weight-management interventions for men. Studies were quality assessed against a checklist for appraising decision modelling studies.  This research is part of the larger ROMEO study.

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Faculty of Health & Social Sciences

 

Reference:

Boyers, D., Avenell, A., Stewart, F., Robertson, C., Archibald, D., Douglas, F., Hoddinott, P., van Teijlingen, E., A systematic review of the cost-effectiveness of non-surgical obesity interventions in men, Obesity Research & Clinical Practice (online first)

BU successful in retaining EC HR Excellence in Research Award!

Research news

Good news – BU has been successful in retaining the European Commission HR Excellence in Research Award and is now one of 72 universities in the UK who have successfully passed their two-year review.

The Award demonstrates BU’s commitment to aligning process and practice to the UK Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers and therefore improving the working conditions and career development for research staff. In turn this will improve the quantity, quality and impact of research for the benefit of UK society and the economy. The two year review required BU to highlight the key achievements and progress we have made since we gained the Award in January 2013 and to outline the focus of our strategy, success measures and next steps for the following two years.

Key achievements made at BU since 2013 in support of this agenda include:

You can read our progress review and future action plan (2015-17) in full here: https://research.bournemouth.ac.uk/research-environment/research-concordat/

Since 2012 the EC have been exploring a ‘stronger’ implementation approach, including the potential for using quality standards and/or a more formal certification/accreditation process for HR management of researchers across Europe. Recently a new expert group has been appointed to further discussions and Vitae’s recent event, on 23 January, enabled Award holders to provide input into the current five-step process and moving towards a ‘quality assessment’. Detail and outcomes from the event can be found here.

Read the full announcement on the Vitae website here: https://www.vitae.ac.uk/news/72-uk-institutions-have-the-european-commission2019s-hr-excellence-in-research-award

Student-midwife-run postnatal clinic: FUSION example

BU research, Fusion, PG research, Publishing, Uncategorized

FHSS staff and students published their latest article ‘Would a student midwife run postnatal clinic make a valuable addition to midwifery education in the UK? — A systematic review’ now out on line in Nurse Education Today 35 : 480-486.   The paper is written by Wendy Marsh, Dana M. Colbourne, Susan Way & Vanora Hundley.

We are pleased to inform you that the final version of your article with full bibliographic details is now available online.  The publishers are providing the following personal article link, which will provide free access to this article, and is valid for 50 days, until April 17, 2015:  http://authors.elsevier.com/a/1QcG5xHa50bEa

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

BU’s research website wins an international award

BU research

Exciting news – I am delighted to announce that BU’s research website, launched in January 2014, has won ‘Best Research Website’ in the annual international eduStyle Awards. These celebrate the best work in college and university websites and aim to recognise the most innovative and exciting developments in key areas of HE web development.

The BU research website won in both the People’s Choice and the Judged Award categories – a fantastic achievement!

BU was the only UK institution to be short listed in this category this year. The other short listed institutions were Yale University, MIT, Columbia University and Biola University.

See the full list of winners on the eduStyle website.

The BU research website complements our BU Research Blog which won a Heist award in 2012.

To find out more about how you can contribute your research news to the website, contact Rachel Bowen in RKEO.

Happy new year! BU’s research highlights of 2014

Awarded & submitted bids, BU research

2014 was another great year for research at BU.  Here are the fabulous highlights for your perusal, in no particular order:

REF logo1. REF results – Preparing for the REF submission was an enormous part of life for many at BU for many years and it was a long thirteen months waiting for the results to be published. But they were definitely worth waiting for! 61% of our research was recognised as internationally excellent, with 18% rated world-leading. 62% of our research environment was rated as world-leading or internationally excellent, an increase of 32% since 2008  – this is the environment that BU has built and enhanced over the past five years and includes initiatives such as the Grants Academy, EUADs, Writing Academy, the Research Blog, Festival of Learning, Fusion Investment Fund, etc. The REF team were short-listed for one of the VC’s Staff Awards this year in the Collaborative Team category. Overall the results showed that BU rose between 6-12 positions in the UK league tables (THE Table of Excellence, Research Fortnight,  WonkHE). You can read a summary and they key headlines of our success here: http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/research/2014/12/18/the-ref-results-are-in-bus-research-recognised-as-world-leading/.

 2. New look RKEO – The RKEO structure was reviewed in 2014 and we went live with a new one on 1st September. The process of the review and transition has been unsettling as well as exciting for many of us and I am pleased that the new structure is working so well and achieving so much already. Thank you for all of your patience and understanding throughout the change process. You can access a new structure chart and information about our new teams here: http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/research/contact/. We are determined to make the new structure a success and have embarked on a service excellence project that engages with over 60 colleagues across BU to reflect on and change our procedures and service provision.


3. Growth of RKE activity – Our annual RKE income at BU has continued to grow. In 2013-14 our income c. £6m, up 10% on the previous year. What’s particularly interesting is the change in where this income comes from: our funding from UK charities and UK government departments is decreasing and our income from ‘gold standard’ research funders, such as the research councils and EC, is increasing. For example, we received c. £1.13m income from the UK research councils in 2013-14 (an increase of 21% on the previous year and a whopping 122% increase since 2009-10). This indicates that the quality of our research proposals and ideas is maturing and our reputation growing. Our research council success rates for 2013-14 were impressive – BU’s overall success rate was 33% (12 bids submitted of which 4 were awarded) against a sector average of 30%. This is almost the highest success rate we have achieved, second only to 36% in 2007-08. We also submitted a record number of Marie Curie applications in 2014 – fingers crossed these will be awarded next year.

4. Significant grants/contracts awarded – There were a number of significant grants/contracts awarded to BU in 2014. These included:

  • Disaster management training contract with the Royal Office of Oman (Richard Gordon)
  • Significant number and value of NHS contracts (Clive Andrewes)
  • KTPs with Nautilus International Risk Consultants Ltd (Christos Gatzidis) and Chantacre Ltd (Andrew Main)
  • Stroke research project in collaboration with Cornell University, funded by Qatar (Ahmed Khattab)
  • BU hosted the 2014 Academy of Marketing Conference (Julie Robson)
  • Wellbeing and tourism grant from the ESRC (Heather Hartwell)
  • Communities in spaces of flow project from the AHRC (Janet Dickinson)
  • ESRC Seminar Series funding (Jens Holscher)
  • Two NIHR grants (Zoe Sheppard and Edwin van Teijlingen)
  • Wellcome Trust grant (Anna Feigenbaum)

5. Launch of new ethics structure – BU launched a new process and governance structure for research ethics in February 2014. This applies to all staff and students at BU. Ethical approval for projects that are considered above minimal risk is now provided by two discipline-based Research Ethics Panels, chaired by Prof Holger Schutkowski (SciTech) and Sean Beer (ST). Further details on ethics are available here: http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/research/researcher-toolbox/research-ethics/.

6. Festival of Learning 2014 – The second Festival of Learning took place in June 2014 and was a resounding success, attracting over 4,000 visits to more than 150 free activities/events and receiving excellent feedback across the board from attendees. The Festival is a now established as a major event in the RKEO and BU calendar and is a huge team effort. The Festival was nominated for a Heist award (national education marketing awards) and won a bronze award in the Best Community/Business/CSR Campaign category which is excellent recognition from the sector. Next year the Festival will take place in July and Naomi and Harry are already mid-way through preparations. Read more about the Festival of Learning 2015 here: http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/research/festival-of-learning-proposals/

7. Launch of sparkly new initiatives – We launched a number of amazing new initiatives this year, including: the KTP Academic Development Scheme, fast track, research lifecycle on the blog, Grants Academy external mentoring pilot, regular RKEO coffee mornings, Writing Academy, Open Access week, student engagement with research, undergraduate research assistantships. We also published a new Bournemouth Research Chronicle and are now preparing the next edition. We are currently reviewing the BRAD programme to make it much slicker and more useful to academics and we have increased the proportion of open access full-text in BURO to 17%.

Image sourced from The Academy of Medical Sciences

8. Recording of research outcomes and impact – Researchfish, the system for researchers to record the outcomes from their grants, was launched in 2014. This system is used by the UK research councils who required all RCUK funded researchers to enter all of their data by November 2014. BU’s compliance rate with this was 100%, compared to the sector average of 85%.

9. RKEO’s external engagement – RKEO have continued to engage externally to raise the profile of RKEO and BU, to further professionalise research management and to gain credibility and kudos within the sector. One of the main highlights of 2014 was Shelly Anne Stringer’s organisation a sector-wide open access event held at BU in May that attracted external delegates from around the country and featured high calibre keynote speakers, including HEFCE. RKEO staff have also presented at a number of key conferences this year: Jo Garrad, Jenny Roddis and Emily Cieciura at the Vitae conference in September, Naomi Kay, Harry Gibson and Barry Squires at the Engage conference in November, and Corrina Lailla Osborne and Julie Northam at the ARMA conference in June. Jenny Roddis and Julie Northam have taken on additional external roles as Qualification Assessors for ARMA this year – Jenny for the Certificate in Research Administration and Julie for the Certificate in Research Management. Julie was also appointed by Vitae as a peer reviewer for the EC HR Excellence in Research award.

Dr Dubey receiving the Hind Rattan Award10. Venky Dubey and Neil Vaughan (SciTech) – Venky Dubey and Neil Vaughan had an exceptional year in 2014. Their epidural simulator project (in collaboration with Poole Hospital) was short-listed for a THE Award (Outstanding ICT Initiative of the Year). Neil won the much coveted EPSRC ICT Pioneers ‘Transforming Society’ award, and Venky was awarded the Hind Rattan Award from the NRI Welfare Society of India in recognition of outstanding services, achievements and contributions to the chosen field. Translated as “Jewel of India”, the award is one of the highest granted annually to a non-resident Indian and is considered to be equivalent to an OBE.

Roll on 2015!

The REF results are in! BU’s research recognised as world leading

BU research, REF Subjects, Research assessment

REF logoAfter many years of preparation, numerous mock exercises and thirteen long months of waiting, the REF results are finally published today! And the news for BU is excellent!

62% of BU’s research has been recognised as internationally excellent, with 18% rated as world-leading. This is a significant uplift on our RAE 2008 scores and has been achieved whilst also submitting considerably more staff to REF 2014 (161.8 FTE, an increase of 45.5%). This highlights the growing research volume and quality at BU and is testament to the significant investment that has been put into research over the past decade. The assessment recognised BU as a leading university in both the UK and south west region.

Key achievements for BU overall include:

  • BU was in the top half of all institutions that submitted to the REF (69th out of 154) based on the proportion of research rated of international standard
  • BU was 11th out of the 69 post-1992 universities based on the proportion of world-leading research
  • BU was fourth in the south west based on the proportion of world-leading research, behind Bristol, Bath and Exeter
  • 30% of BU’s research impact was rated world-leading
  • 58% of BU’s research outputs were rated internationally excellent or world-leading
  • 63% of BU’s research environment was rated internationally excellent or world-leading
  • The THE has ranked BU 69th overall, an increase from 75th in 2008, and 69th for impact – http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/ref-2014-results-table-of-excellence/2017590.article

Key achievements for our research areas include:

  • Tourism (UOA 26) was rated as joint-first in the UK (out of 51 institutions) based on its internationally-recognised research
  • Art and design (UOA 34) is in the top quartile in the UK for its world-leading research, and is ranked first in the south west (out of 7 institutions)
  • Communication, Cultural and Media Studies (UOA 36) is in the top third of institutions in the UK (17th out of 67) for its world-leading research, and 7th in the UK for its world-leading impact
  • Psychology’s (UOA 4) outputs scored particularly well with 73% rated as internationally excellent or world-leading, placing BU 27th out of 82 institutions in the UK
  • Research impact was rated highly in General Engineering (UOA 15) which scored 73% internationally excellent, placing it fourth out of 29 post-1992 institutions.
  • BU submitted considerably more staff to Allied Health Professional, Dentistry, Nursing and Pharmacy (UOA 3) than in the last assessment exercise (9.2fte in 2008 and 21.4fte in 2014) and achieved a significant uplift in the proportion of its research that was rated internationally excellent and world-leading (40% to 54%).
  • Geography, Environmental Studies and Archaeology (UOA 17) is in the top quartile in the UK (joint-17th out of 74 institutions) based on the proportion of research rated of international standing, making it also 1st out of 20 post-1992 universities
  • Business and Management Studies (UOA 19) scored particularly well in terms of impact, resulting in it ranking 9th in the UK (out of 101 institutions) for its world-leading impact

HEFCE, on behalf of the four funding councils, publish the results of the REF today. You can browse the results here: www.ref.ac.uk.

Congratulations to all – this is a milestone achievement 🙂

Research Council success rates published! Exciting news!

BU research

RCUK logoThe Research Councils have published their success rates for the period April 2013 to March 2014. The key message is that their demand management measures are working; most Councils have seem a decline in the number of applications submitted and the success rates stabilising, despite a decrease in the amount of funding allocated.

In 2012-13 BU’s success rate with Research Councils was 8%, despite 12 applications being submitted. This year we have submitted the same number of applications (12) and our success rate has increased to 33% – which is excellent news! This is against a sector average of 30%. The successful awards were:

  • AHRC – Cultural and Scientificat Perceptions of Human-Chicken Interactions (Prof Mark Maltby)
  • AHRC – Music Publishing (Prof Ruth Towse)
  • AHRC – Research Network: Researching Readers Online (Dr Bronwen Thomas)
  • NERC – Dynamics and Thresholds of Ecosystem Services in Wooden Landscapes (Prof Adrian Newton)

BU has had more grants awarded from the Research Councils over the past year, however the stats only show against the lead institution so successful bids where BU is the collaborating institution are not shown against BU in the data.

BU is especially keen to reduce the number of bids submitted to Research Councils whilst significantly increasing the quality of those which are submitted. BU initiatives, such as the internal peer review scheme and the Grants Academy, have been specifically established to support you to design, write and structure competitive, fundable research proposals and to maximise your chances of being awarded funding.

Read more about the demand management measures that the Research Councils have put in place here: Demand Management

AHRC  – Cultural and Scientific Perceptions of Human-Chicken Interactions (Mark Maltby)
AHRC – Music Publishing (Ruth Towse)
AHRC – Research Network Researching Readers Online (Bronwen Thomas)
NERC – BESS Grant (Adrian Newton)

Congratulations to PhD student Rachel Arnold

BU research, PG research, Publishing, Research news, student research, Uncategorized

HSC postgraduate student Rachel Arnold just had the first paper from her research in Afghanistan accepted by the scientific journal BJOG.  Her paper analyses the culture of a Kabul maternity hospital to understand its impact on the care of perinatal women and their babies.    A heavy workload, too many complicated cases and poor staff organisation lead to a low quality of maternity care. Cultural values, social and family pressures influenced the motivation and priorities of healthcare providers.

The centrality of the family and family obligations in Afghan society has emerged as a major theme. Another theme is the struggle for survival – as health care providers work to support their families, to maintain the power that they have, and to survive within a hospital system where fear rather than compassion appears to drive and motivate.  Rachel presented some of the key issues at the 2013 GLOW conference in Birmingham.   Rachel is supervised by Professors Immy Holloway, Kath Ryan (LaTrobe University, Australia) and Edwin van Teijlingen.

Rachel’s paper Understanding ‘Afghan healthcare providers: a qualitative study of the culture of care in a Kabul maternity hospital’ can be found here.  The paper is Gold Open Access.

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health