Latest research and knowledge exchange news at Bournemouth University
Received a lovely tweet this Sunday morning from Expertscape, an organisation in the USA, announcing that: ” As part of International Universal Health Coverage Day (Dec 12, 2021), we congratulate Dr. Edwin R van Teijlingen of Bournemouth University — Recognized as an Expertscape Expert in Health Services Accessibility”. Expertscape ranks the world’s top experts in Clinical and Research Medicine.
Congratulations to dr. Pramod Regmi on the publication today of our research article ‘Risk of Kidney health among returnee Nepali migrant workers: A survey of nephrologists‘ [1]. This paper was published today in the Asian Journal of Medical Sciences. It is co-authored with a clinician (a nephrologist) and a migration and health expert in Nepal. This paper reports on the Bournemouth University-led study with kidney specialists in Nepal which was reported in The Sunday Times under the heading ‘Qatar 2022: Dying for the World Cup‘ a fortnight ago.
Last Saturday Dr. Nirmal Aryal (now researcher at the Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust and BU Visiting Faculty) and Dr. Regmi presented this research at a webinar in Nepal which was well attended and shown on Facebook Life.
Yesterday the Journal of Health Promotion published another Bournemouth University co-authored paper on health and migration with the title ‘Perceived threats towards COVID-19 pandemic among Nepali migrant workers returned from India’. Both paper are published Open Access and, as such, freely available across the globe to anyone with internet access!
References:
The process of peer review is widely recognised as the key element of quality control in academic publishing and the scientific community more generally. Peer review is the critical appraisal of one’s work by fellow scholars, who read and comment on your manuscript and offered a verdict on its quality, rigour, originality, style, completeness, etc. etc. 
Peer reviewers are typically experts in your field, if not your topic, or who have expertise in the methods you applied or the population or are you studied. They are also academics often with busy day jobs, who act as unpaid peer reviewers, and as journal editors for that matter. Peer reviewers are with full-time jobs who give up their free time to review for academic journals. A recent article by Aczel and colleagues (2021) reported that reviewers across the globe spent over 100 million hours on peer reviewing for free in 2020, the estimated value of this equated to nearly £300 million in the UK alone. This quantifies in some of my feelings I wrote about a decade ago now in a BU Research Blog with the title ‘Peer review and bust academics’.
However, with the ever-growing number of health and social science journals the requests for reviewing seem to grow relentlessly. This month alone (November 2021) I received twenty or 21 requests to review. I have reviewed three manuscripts for Birth, Nepal Journal of Epidemiology, and The Journal of International Development, but I had to reject or ignore many more (see Table 1). I usually do my reviews over the weekend. One weekend this month I could not review because I had to prepare materials for the external auditor who came to visit Bournemouth University for a project recently completed, and this weekend I could not find the time because I’m proof-reading two PhD chapters (and writing this blog).
I leave you with some food for thought: academics spent time applying for research funding, then apply for the ethical approval, do the research, we write up the findings, and write blogs about the process!
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH)
Reference:
Aczel, B., Szaszi, B., Holcombe, A.O. (2021) A billion-dollar donation: estimating the cost of researchers’ time spent on peer review. Res Integr Peer Rev 6, 14. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41073-021-00118-2.
Bournemouth University is involved in a wider collaboration which organises the Advanced Dementia Research Conference (ADRC 2021). The conference is delivered online today and tomorrow (19th-20th November). ADRC 2021 is led by Dr. Brijesh Sathian, BU Visiting Faculty, based in the Geriatric Medicine Department, Rumailah Hospital, in Doha, Qatar. Saturday morning Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen will be delivering a session on qualitative research, preceded by a session on mixed-methods research from Prof. Padam Simkhada, also BU Visiting Faculty, from the University of Huddersfield.
The programme shown is for Day 2 tomorrow. All sessions today and tomorrow are free to attend! You can register here! Please, note that advertised times a Qatar times which three hours ahead of the UK at the moment.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH (Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health)
Today Bournemouth University’s research on Nepali migrant workers and kidney problems was cited in The Sunday Times. In the preparation for the Qatar 2022 men’s football world cup The Sunday Times published an article under the title ‘Dying for the World Cup‘.
Dr. Pramod Regmi and Dr. Nirmal Aryal were awarded funding from GCRF (The Global Challenges Research Fund) and Bournemouth University’s QR fund. This work resulted in an editorial highlighting that low-skilled migrant workers in the Middle Wast and Malaysia are at a disproportionately higher risk of kidney problems. The working conditions are often Dirty, Dangerous and Difficult (referred at as the 3Ds) include physically demanding work, exposure to a hot environment, dehydration, chemical exposures, excessive use of pain killers, and lifestyle factors (such as restricted water intake and a high intake of alcohol/sugary drinks) which may precipitate them to acute kidney injuries and subsequent chronic kidney disease [1]. And recently, a national survey of nephrologists (kidney specialists) on their perceptions of the size of the problem of kidney health in Nepali migrant workers [2].
References:
Yesterday our team published new paper on academic writing, this time the focus was on the various indices in the field. Academics from three different departments in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences collaborated on the paper ‘Publishing, identifiers & metrics: Playing the numbers game‘ [1]. The three BU scholars, Dr Shovita Dhakal Adhikari, in the Social Sciences and Social Work Department, Dr. Pramod Regmi in the Department of Nursing Sciences, and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen in the Department of Midwifery and Health Sciences co-authored the paper with former BU staff Dr. Nirmal Aryal, now researcher at Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust, Alexander van Teijlingen, PhD student at the University of Strathclyde (Glasgow), and Dr. Sarita Panday, Lecturer in Public Health in the University of Essex.
This a the latest paper in a long line of publications on aspects of academic writing and publishing [2-16].
References:
Writing for publication in peer-reviewed journals is increasingly recognised as important for postgraduate students’ career development. To encourage PhD students to write and submit during their thesis research, more and more UK universities has formally started to accept PhD theses by publication, or a hybrid model of both academic papers and purposely written chapters in a PhD thesis. For example, both the University of Bath and Bournemouth University offer a hybrid thesis [1-2], whilst Bournemouth University offers separately the opportunity to submit a PhD by Publication. The paper included in such theses can be: (1) published; (2) accepted/published online first; (3) submitted; or (4) in final draft form for submission. Published papers, due to the nature of journal word limits are usually much shorter and less detailed than traditional PhD chapter. The specifically written chapters, of the Introduction, Discussion, Conclusion and Recommendations chapter, and occasionally a Methods chapter will provide the reader (read ‘the examiner’) with further insights into the background of the research and offer details the student had to omit from published papers due to word limit restrictions. Students may also opt to offer a short explanatory text before or after individual paper. The overall Discussion chapter should aim to fully contextualise and integrate all papers into the thesis.
It is easy to see that these new format theses may require some adjustment from UK academics examining them. Below I have listed some of the key issue a PhD examiner may want to consider in a PhD by Publication, such as the notion of integration and repetition, how the critique published papers, especially in quality peer-reviewed journals, and the nature and content of purposely written chapters.
Integration/duplication
Individual papers are free-standing, i.e. they must give enough information about the research question and methods to make sense to the reader. This means that four papers from the same study in a thesis may appear as both disjointed and repetitive at the same time. Moreover, details on background and methods are often minimal in papers presenting results. This offers the examiner an opportunity to ask questions such as:
It is worth looking at difference between the included papers. One of my former students included two qualitative papers, both originating from the same dataset (i.e. the same interviewees) but each paper presented the data analysed in a different way. The reviewers of the second paper had suggested a different approach to the analysis and the candidate had decided that it was worth the considerable amount of extra work. This was obviously a topic for debate in the viva.
Peer-reviewed journal articles
It can be daunting for a less experienced examiner to critique an included paper that has been peer-reviewed and published in a prestigious journal in one’s discipline. Perhaps a starting point could be to ask the candidate what the peer reviewers said when the manuscript was first submitted. Did you receive and conflicting comments from reviewers or the editor? The examiner may want to ask for further details of published paper, e.g. “I know you probably had word-length issues for paper X, but why didn’t you expand on the detailed analysis in the Discussion chapter you included in the thesis?” Interestingly, the University of Bath states that “Examiners are entitled to specify corrections to any part of the thesis… including parts submitted for publication, or already published” [1]. The latter does not mean changing the published paper, but perhaps adding a comment or explanation to the Discussion chapter or to the text introducing that particular paper.
In many discipline academic papers as co-authored, hence you would expect co-authored papers in a PhD by Publication. This offers to examiner the opportunity to ask about the candidate’s unique contribution to that paper. Occasionally, one of the included papers may not list the candidate as first author. If this is the case in one of the four or five included papers this is not problem per se, but worth asking the same question to the candidate: “What is your unique contribution to the paper?”
Another potential issue to look out for in a PhD by Publication is so-called salami-slicing [3], especially if the candidate has published several small parts of the thesis study in different small papers where a single paper would have been more appropriate.
Written chapters
The examiner may want to start by focusing on the candidate’s Introduction, Discussion, or Conclusion chapters. Or the overall Methods chapter if there is one. Typically, a PhD by Publication has an Introduction, four or more papers, an overarching Discussion perhaps a short Conclusion. What is often missing is a Methodology and Methods chapter. Since individual papers have only basic methods section of a few hundred words, there is little detail in each paper, let alone nuance in the methods. Often methodological issues and reflections are missed, as are more subtle aspects of research ethics. These are key topics to raise in the viva.
Professor Edwin van Teijlingen
CMWH (Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health)
Acknowledgements: I would like to thank my colleague Dr. Ann Luce, Associate Professor in Journalism and Communication at Bournemouth University for her encouraging me to write this blog post.
References:
Halfway through October I have written several academic references for three people already. This is one of the more hidden aspects of an academic job. Writing a good reference is often time consuming for good reasons, including: the reference needs to be tailor-made for the specific job and the candidate; you may not have seen the candidate for several years and finding relevant details, such as ‘when did the candidate work for your organisation?’ takes time; and last but not least, the employer asking for a reference has its own system. The latter is a more recent addition to the burden of writing a reference. Gone are the days of writing a structured letter about the candidate, a letter which you could tweak for different jobs the candidate applied for. Most employers have their own reference system which may make the job easier them but creates far more work for the writer of the reference.
To illustrate each these points with an example. One reference I write on an online form automatically assumed I was writing as the most recent employer, the electronic form ‘forced’ me to write as if I was the most recent employer and then explain in the text box for another question that I had worked with the candidate some years ago. Another request was for a reference for a former colleague whom I had worked with 15 years ago in Aberdeen. She was returning to a research post and had looking after children and working in clinical practice in the intermediate period. Lastly, a former BU M.Sc. student is applying to several universities for a Ph.D. place and each university offered a different thesis topic and required me to complete its own online form, and, of course, each form is slightly different!
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH
Congratulations to Dr. Pramod Regmi and Dr. Nirmal Aryal on the acceptance of their paper ‘Risk of kidney health among returnee Nepali migrant workers: A survey of nephrologists’ [1]. This paper has been accepted by the Asian Journal of Medical Sciences, after having been rejected previous by another scientific journal . The reason for rejection was the small sample size of 38 nephrologists (=medical specialists in kidney disease). We think one of the reasons for acceptance of this research by the Asian Journal of Medical Sciences is the high proportion (74.5%) of all Nepal’s nephrologists who participated in this national study. Although the absolute number of participants is low there are only 51 kidney experts in the whole country and three-quarters took part in this study!
Dr. Nirmal Aryal was until recently based in the Department of Midwifery and Health Sciences and he will be starting later this month as a Research Associate at Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Trust. Dr. Pramod Regmi is Senior Lecturer in International Health in the Department of Nursing Sciences. This paper was also co-authored with a nephrologist Dr. Arun Sedhai based in Chitwan (Nepal) and a public health expert based at the UN organisation, International Organization for Migration (IOM).
This paper which will be Open Access and hence freely available for any reader across the globe adds to the growing research evidence published by Bournemouth University’s researchers on migration and health, especially of migrants from Nepal [2-21].
Well done!
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH)
References:
Today FHSS’s PhD student Abier Hamidi was notified that the manuscript “HIV epidemic in Libya: Identifying gaps” was accepted for publication by the editor of the Journal of the International Association of Providers of AIDS Care (JIAPAC) published by SAGE [1]. This literature review as part of Abier’s PhD research included 24 studies: Ten primary research studies, six online news articles, five Government reports, one letter to the editor, one manuscript, one online database. The paper concluded that despite the low-quality data, the literature suggests there is an increase in HIV infection rates in Libya. Culturally sensitive research on sexual activities, women, HIV preventative methods and attitudes of the Libyan public will assist in developing an effective National AIDS Programme, reducing stigma, supporting People Living with HIV (PLWHIV) and decreasing infection rates.
Abier’s PhD project is supervised by Dr. Pramod Regmi (Senior Lecturer in International Health) and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH).
Reference:
Congratulations to Dr. Pramod Regmi, Lecturer in International Health & Global Engagement Lead, Department of Nursing Sciences, and Dr. Nirmal Aryal, formerly of the Centre of Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH), whose editorial “Kidney health risk of migrant workers: An issue we can no longer overlook” has been published today in Health Prospect [1]. Further co-authors (Arun Sedhain, Radheshyam Krishna KC, Erwin Martinez Faller, Aney Rijal, and Edwin van Teijlingen) work in India, Nepal, the Philippines and at BU. The study was funded by GCRF. 
This editorial highlights that low-skilled migrant workers in the countries of the Gulf and Malaysia are at a disproportionately higher risk of kidney health problems. The working conditions are often Dirty, Dangerous and Difficult (referred at as the 3Ds) include physically demanding work, exposure to a hot environment, dehydration, chemical exposures, excessive use of pain killers, and lifestyle factors (such as restricted water intake and a high intake of alcohol/sugary drinks) which may precipitate them to acute kidney injuries and subsequent chronic kidney disease.
References
Congratulations to Dr. Shanti Shanker in BU’s Department of Psychology and Dr. Pramod Regmi in the Department of Nursing Science on their paper ‘The Interdisciplinary Team Not the Interdisciplinarist: Reflections on Interdisciplinary Research’ which was accepted over the weekend by the journal Europasian Journal of Medical Sciences. This interesting paper is co-authored with two BU Visiting Faculty, Ms. Jillian Ireland, Professional Midwifery Advocate in Poole Maternity Hospital (University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust) and Prof. Padam Simkhada based at the University of Huddersfield. Co-author Dr. Sharada Wasti is also based the University of Huddersfield.
With interdisciplinary research growing in popularity, researchers, lecturers, journal editors and funders to consider how this is going to work in reality. This paper argues that interdisciplinary working is with in the team, not ‘in a person’. Multidisciplinary teams provide unique opportunities for researchers from different disciplines (and hence different ways of working and thinking) to collaborate with one another. We need to be careful not to try to create interdisciplinarists, or at least, not too many. We need people who are strong in their discipline and open-minded/flexible/reflective enough to see the value of other people’s disciplines.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMWH (Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health)
Reference:
Last night I misread a call from BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth. To be fair the email included two different request to contribute to two different kinds of blog posts with different set of instructions. Of course, I managed not to simply to swap these instructions around, but mix them up properly. The result is the text below that does not fit either of the two calls, I think.
The question I tried to address was: “Tell us how your research published in BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth has links to wider issues than health!. The actual call in the email was: “Tell us about your contribution to the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) – We invite our Editorial Board Members who have research or personal interests related to the SDGs to contribute a blog post to our BMC Series Blog network discussing your work/interests as these relate to the SDGs”. 
My adopted question explains the title ‘Health is not a vacuum’. The short overview of the blog I drafted focused on all the papers I have published in this journal over a fifteen-year period from 2006-2021 [1-11]. Not surprising for a sociologist of health & illness, my argument is that there are nearly always issues wider than SDG 3 ‘Good health and well-being’ in the way health care/service or health policy factors affects maternity care and midwifery. Social, cultural and economic factors affect the way maternity services ares provided, used and perceived. SDG 5 ‘Gender equality’ springs to mind first, but also important is SDG 4 ‘Quality education’, especially of girls, and SDG 1 ‘No poverty’, of course strongly linked with SDG 10 ‘Reduced inequalities’.
Gender is highlighted or at least part of the argument in many of our papers in low- and middle income countries [2,3,5, 7,10,11], but also in a high-income context [1,6]. Education, both health education and education more generally, for example education levels of maternity service users, appears in several papers [1,6,8-11] whilst poverty is a key factors in several papers based on our work in Nepal [2,3,5,6,11]. Several of our papers address issues wider than health that are not strictly speaking SDG, such as paper on cultural differences in postnatal quality of life among German-speaking women living either side of the Swiss-German border [4], and of course, our paper on media and childbirth [6].
Last, but not least, all papers published in BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth are Open Access and freely available online!
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH (Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health)
References:
Today ResearchGate informed Prof. Vanora Hundley and I that our paper in the Nursing Standard of 2002 had reached 90,000 reads. This short methods paper called ‘The Importance of Pilot Studies’ [1] was one of our earlier attempts, nearly two decades ago, to publish more of our work in practitioners journals. This approach has been highly successful in terms of reaching a wider audience. We have written longer, more sophisticated research methods papers on pilot studies over the years, including in the Journal of Advanced Nursing, Social Research Update, and the SAGE encyclopedia on research methods [2-6], but none of these has been read or cited as often as our short paper in the Nursing Standard. 
The term ‘pilot studies’ refers to mini versions of a full-scale study (also called ‘feasibility’ studies), as well as the specific pre-testing of a particular research instrument such as a questionnaire or interview schedule. Pilot studies are a crucial element of good study design. Conducting a pilot study does not guarantee success in the main study, but it does increase the likelihood of success. Pilot studies fulfill a range of important functions and can provide valuable insights for other researchers. There is a need for more discussion among researchers of both the process and outcomes of pilot studies.
References:
Yesterday the international journal Midwifery (published by Elsevier) announced that our paper “Male Involvement in Promotion of Safe Motherhood in Low- and Middle-Income Countries. A Scoping Review” has been published online. [1] This paper is based on Dr. Alice Ladur’s innovative PhD thesis on men’s involvement in their partners’ maternity care in Uganda. This is Alice’s second PhD paper, her first one was published in BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth. [2]
The second international midwifery paper that came out last week is ‘Slovenian midwifery professionalization: Perception of midwives and related health professions’ which appeared in the European Journal of Midwifery. [3] This paper is written with colleagues from Slovenia: Polona A. Mivšek, Majda Pahor, and Valentina Hlebec.
References:Over the 15 months many academics have learnt to use online tools to communicate with colleagues, students, the media, politicians and the general public. The COVID-19 pandemics forced us to introduce (more) virtual classrooms, internet-based tutorials, online marking, Zoom and Teams meetings (and other platforms!) as well as online conferences and workshops, albeit each with their own limitations. In general, we often marvel about the internet and online conference technology as well as value the reduction of our carbon foot print, reaching global audiences and so on.
The past three weeks I attended three international conferences in three countries without leaving my living room, including the postponed 2020 ICM (International Confederation of Midwives) conference. 
Perhaps there is an element of online-working fatigue, but I am beginning to see more and more disadvantages of online conferences. First, the contact with fellow presenters, chairs and the audience is more superficial than at a physical conference. At a conference held in person you meet people over lunch or coffee or people simply stop you in the corridors of the conference centre to discuss or challenge your paper or express their ideas for future studies.
Secondly, many conferences seem to use two online systems and have different ways of running online conferences, at one of the recent conferences the presenters and the audience were in different cyber spaces, so as a presenter you had no idea how many people attended or how the audience reacted to what you have just said. Moreover, in one conference any questions people in the audience had written in the chat box were invisible to the speakers. These questions had to be read out by the chair, who was tasked with linking the two cyber spaces, that of speakers and that of the audience. At another conference the chair largely let the speakers deal with questions in the chat without any direction or guidance, as a consequence I was still answering questions in the chat long after the next speaker had started.
Thirdly, because I was not physically away I didn’t attend as many of the sessions at any of the three recent conferences as I would have liked to. This issue is similar in nature as the ‘old’ problem of attending a face-to-face conference at your own institution. Since you are not away your students, colleagues, etc. manage to find you and expect you to do something else instead of attending the conference. Fourthly, you don’t meet up in person with international colleagues, therefore, you don’t get a chance to discuss long-term ideas, plans, problems over a meal and a beer.
I am still positive about online conferences, but perhaps not as enthusiastic as I was in a BU Research Blog in April last year! In this blog I pointed out that Donald Nicolson in his book Academic Conferences as Neoliberal Commodities raised the question about return of investment of a conference [1-2] not just for the conference organisers (and funders) but also for individual academics. Internet-based conferences are cheaper than face-to-face conferences although often not free, two of my three international conferences had a registration fee, moreover there is the opportunity cost for the academic in attending a conference, especially if one does not receive the traditional benefits of meeting like-minded people in person.
Some thought for Sunday morning.
Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen
CMMPH
References:
Congratulations to Mrs. Sulochana Dhakal Rai on the publication today of her PhD article ‘Classification of Caesarean Section: A Scoping Review of the Robson classification‘ in the Nepal Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology [1]. Sulochana’s PhD project in the Centre of Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH) is supervised by Dr. Pramod Regmi, Dr. Juliet Wood and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen at BU and she is supported in Nepal by Prof. Ganesh Dangal [Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Kathmandu Model Hospital] and senior obstetrician Dr. Keshar Bahadur Dhakal [Karnali Province Hospital, Nepal]. Sulochana has already published two earlier papers from her PhD thesis research [2-3].
References:
Today Prof. Vanora Hundley, based in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences, gave a well-received presentation on ‘Changing the narrative around childbirth: whose responsibility is it?’ at the 32nd ICM (International Confederation of Midwives) Virtual Triennial Congress. Prof. Hundley presented online a BU collaboration published in the journal Evidence-based Midwifery [1]. This presentation is part of a larger body of interdisciplinary work between media and heatlh scholars at Bournemouth University [see 2-6].
The finding that UK midwives fear the media resonates with experiences from many other countries and professional groups. There is a need to change media discourse in fictional and factual representations of childbirth, and midwives have a critical role to play in this, but to do this they need to equip themselves with the skills necessary to engage with the media. Guidelines on responsible media reporting could ensure that media producers portray pregnancy, midwifery
and maternity care as naturally as possible.
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