Tagged / event

Windows of Opportunity Event

Research news

What is it all about?

It is well known that banks aren’t lending; equity is scarce; and traditional investment returns can often be poor. WoO aim to demonstrate that there is another way…

Windows of Opportunity is a series of FREE events to inform entrepreneurs, businesses and investors about the new types of money and new investment opportunities that exist today.

Who is it for?

Our overarching goal is to make sense of the range of investment and funding options for potential or existing investors and entrepreneurs or young businesses.

  • Entrepreneurs
  • Startups
  • Businesses
  • New Investors
  • Established Investors
  • Angel Investors

If you are an entrepreneur, a startup, a new or an established investor you can’t afford not to know about this and attend one of these FREE Events!  Details of the next event are below.

Growth Accelerator is partnering with School for Start Ups on a series of free educational events about types of finance and ways to obtain investments, including the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS).

Sheffield Event details: Sheffield, Sheffield City Hall , Fri 12 October 2012

More details about the Windows of Opportunity and other event locations can be found here: http://www.schoolforstartups.co.uk/woo/

Public Health: Knowledge into Action

BU research

1 day conference  – 26th June 2012

Jointly hosted by BU and the NHS

Public health is at a crossroads … moving back into local authorities where it began with the appointment of the first medical officers for health.  This move presents opportunities to improve health and wellbeing by taking a more integrated approach. The purpose of this one day conference was to discuss these opportunities and identify action that can be taken to improve health and wellbeing using the best available evidence.  The event was very successful and well attended and included local public health practitioners, local councillors and BU staff.

For further information please contact: Ann Hemingway, Public Health Academic at Bournemouth University – ahemingway@bournemouth.ac.uk or Lindley Owen Consultant in Public Health NHS Bournemouth and Poole – Lindley.Owen@bp-pct.nhs.uk

Presentations

Forthcoming event on Older People and one on Bioeconomy in the EU

EU

Older People in an Inclusive Europe Event: Coventry University is organising an event entitled ‘Older People in an Inclusive Europe’, which will take place in Brussels on 8 October 2012.The event will include presentations and debates within the broad context of research related to the ageing society, including a presentation from the European Commission on ‘Horizon 2020: Delivering a Better Society for Older People in Europe’. The event will also launch Coventry University’s Age Research Centre and its Ageing Society initiative.
Conference on Partnering for the Bioeconomy in European Regions: The EC is hosting a conference on the role of EU regions in implementing the EU’s Bioeconomy Strategy (published in February 2012). This will take place in Brussels on 12 October 2012. The event is intended to provide information and highlight the opportunities for regional stakeholders on the local initiatives and investment possibilities in the EU bioeconomy research and innovation areas.

Want to find out how to turn a proposal into a winning proposal?

Guidance, Research news

Then attend the Missenden Centre’s excellent ‘Winning Research Funding’ workshop on Friday 16 March in London.

Attendees are invited to take a draft or previously unsuccessful application to the workshop for advice on how to turn it into an award-winning proposal!

Further details are available from: www.missendencentre.co.uk/s1

If you are interested in attending then we have funds in the RDU budget to cover your course fees and travel. Let me know if you are interested! 🙂

The second brilliant external REF event at BU!

Research assessment, Research news

On Wednesday this week BU hosted a REF Team-supported event for universities in the south of England explaining the content of the recently released REF Panel Working Methods and Criteria documentation. This was the second REF event that has been hosted at BU in the past 12 months. The first event was held in May 2011 and you can read about it here: http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/research/2011/05/25/the-excellent-hefce-ref-event-at-bu/

The event, attended by over 150 delegates from 32 institutions, outlined the similarities between how the four Main Panels will review submissions, as well as focusing on the differences between the panels particularly in how they will define and assess impact in the context of the REF.

Chris Taylor, Deputy REF Manager, spoke about the technical aspects of the REF, e.g. the timetable, element weightings, and institutional REF codes of practice, and then looked at each of the three elements of the REF in depth – impact, outputs and environment.

Prof Stephen Holgate, Chair of Main Panel A, then delivered a very interesting presentation on the similarities between the four Main Panels which have been vastly improved since the sector-wide consultation on the Panel Working Methods documentation last autumn. The Panels have put in a significant amount of work to ensuring their working methods will be as simple, transparent and similar as possible which is excellent news.

After break there were four concurrent sessions, each focusing on one of the Main Panels. Event attendees could choose to attend one session. The session were led by:

  • Main Panel A – Prof Stephen Holgate (Chair of Main Panel A)
  • Main Panel B – Prof Philip Nelson (Chair of the General Engineering sub-panel)
  • Main Panel C – Prof John Scott (Chair of the Sociology sub-panel)
  • Main Panel D – Prof Bruce Brown (Chair of Main Panel D)

After the concurrent sessions, all presenters took part in a Q&A session back in Kimmeridge House.

One of the key messages of the day was that the sub-panels will not make use of journal impact factors, journal ranking lists, or other journal scoring information to inform the review of outputs. Citation data will be provided by the REF Team to sub-panels:

  • Main Panel A: Sub-panels 1-6
  • Main Panel B: Sub-panels 7-11
  • Main Panel C: Sub-panel 18

Research collaboration (e.g. links with other institutions, business and industry, international collaboration, etc) was also highlighted at numerous points throughout the event as being of particular importance in the environment element of the assessment.

Regarding impact, Prof Holgate stressed that the assessment of impact was not necessarily linked to the size of the population affected but to the reach and significance of the impact – for example, a 4* impact case study could be for a drug that cured three people or 3 billion people.

Also interesting was the focus on 4* research being that which is transformative research and that this could be the synthesis of knowledge and the identification of a new way of doing things. A review paper could therefore be assessed as 4* if it meets this definition. Prof Holgate remarked: “we are in an era of transformation. We want game changing outputs to be submitted to the REF”.

The event was closed by Prof Matthew Bennett at 1pm after which point event attendees networked over lunch. Feedback from attendees so far has been very positive!

If you attended the session then we’d love to know what you thought! Let us know by adding a comment to this post.

The slides will be available shortly via the Blog.

Need to publish a paper quickly for the REF?

Research news

open access logo, Public Library of ScienceThen come to our free Open Access event this Wednesday in the EBC!

Publishing via an open access route often results in much faster publication times, meaning your research is out in the public domain much more quickly than traditional subscription journal routes.

BU fully supports open access publishing and has recently launched a central Open Access Publication Fund to enable academic staff to access funds to easily publish via open access outlets.

We’re holding an open access publishing event this Wednesday between 10am-12:30pm in the EBC (7th floor).

You can access the programme here: BU Open Access event programme

It is free for BU staff and students to attend. Refreshments and lunch will be provided.

To reserve a place at the event please contact Anita Somner by email.

We look forward to seeing you there! 😀

Tourism, Climate Change & Sustainability top of BU’s agenda

BU research

BU’s International Centre for Tourism and Hospitality Research (ICTHR) is delighted to be hosting the second global conference to explore real-world issues.

The international conference: ‘Tourism, Climate Change and Sustainability’ will take place from 13-14 September 2012. The emphasis of the event is to discuss and disseminate conceptual ideas and contested relationships between climate change, sustainability and tourism and examine worldwide responses and exchange cutting-edge research.

Dr Maharaj Vijay Reddy and Dr Keith Wilkes are the organisers of this conference, who are also editing a book jointly on this title for Earthscan London. The book launch will also take place during the conference next year.

This conference will feature keynote presentations from high-level policy makers from international agencies UNWTO and UNESCO MAB, the European Commission, leading research institutions and the private sector. Among these distinguished speakers are:

  • Mr Luigi Cabrini, Director UNWTO Sustainable Tourism, Madrid.
  • Dr Ishwaran Natarajan, Director UNESCO Division for Earth & Ecological Sciences, Paris.
  • Dr Richard Butler, Emeritus Professor, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow.
  • Dr Stephan Harrison, University of Exeter & Oxford University Centre for the Environment.

Breakout sessions are planned to enable speakers to interact on a more personal level with delegates as well as for attendees to present their research on these important topics. In addition, leading publishers will be present throughout the duration of the conference to meet with delegates and discuss future publishing opportunities.

Dr Maharaj Vijay Reddy commented “we are pleased to announce this event on a globally crucial title. It will facilitate cutting-edge debates, timely knowledge exchange and networking”.

Dr Keith Wilkes says hosting the second ‘Tourism, Climate Change and Sustainability’ conference is “very exciting and, coupled with the high-calibre keynote speakers, is further evidence of the position of BU as a driving force at the forefront of global tourism research, teaching and professional practice”.

The first call for abstracts was released recently.

EPRSC announces new open access policy

Guidance, Research news

open access logo, Public Library of ScienceThe EPSRC has introduced a new policy on access to outputs arising from funded research:

EPSRC Council has agreed to mandate open access publication, with the proviso that academics should be able to choose the approach best suited to their field of research. This mandate is now being implemented: EPSRC requires authors to comply with this mandate and ensure that all published research articles arising from EPSRC-sponsored research, and which are submitted for publication on or after 1st September 2011, must become available on an Open Access basis through any appropriate route. As now, publication costs may be recovered either as ‘directly incurred costs’ (if incurred before the end date of the relevant research project) or as indirect costs (and hence factored into the fEC indirect cost rate for the relevant research organisation).

This change in policy means that the EPSRC will now accept that researchers have met their open access requirements if they make their research outputs available via either the Gold OA or Green OA route.

Gold Open Access (pay-to-publish) – peer-reviewed papers published in fully Open Access journals which do not charge subscription fees, or in ‘hybrid’ subscription journals which enable free access to ‘pre-paid’ articles. Subject to certain criteria the publishing fees may be met from direct or indirect costs on EPSRC Research Grants.

Green Open Access – research is published in traditional subscription journals and authors self-archive their papers (as accepted for publication) in a digital online repository, such as BU’s institutional repository BURO. The publisher’s policy is a crucial issue as far as Green OA is concerned. Some publishers have repository-friendly policies, but others embargo deposit of full texts until a year or more after initial publication. SHERPA-RoMEO has a comprehensive list of publishers and their policies to check before deciding where to publish.

The EPSRC’s policy states that the costs of Gold OA can be met from the grant as a direct cost only where that cost is incurred during the period of the grant. If work is published after the grant is complete, then the institution must stump up the cash to publish or use a portion of the indirect costs to fund this. Earlier this year BU launched the BU Open Access Publication Fund to support researchers in making their research freely available.

Find out more about Open Access publishing at BU’s FREE Open Access publishing event on Wednesday 26 October between 10am-12:30pm in the EBC. To book your place please email Anita Somner.

Centrally funded places available on bid writing workshop (GIC Ltd, London, 29 November)

Research news

29th November 2011, London

GIC Ltd are running a one-day seminar called Total Proposal which will demonstrate the techniques that will make your proposals the ones which win!

Success depends on delivering a winning proposal – a strong selling document which the client will want to buy.  The seminar gives institutions not only the practical tools of proposal preparation, such as bidding plans and checklists, but also shows a range of winning techniques and “selling” devices that will positively differentiate your proposal from those of your competitors.

Half the day is dedicated to practical exercises and a “real life” proposal case study.

Preparing a competitive proposal is a time and resource intensive exercise. As the complexity of tender dossiers, terms of reference and compliance requirements have increased, so have the costs of not winning the business.

Attendees will:
– Refresh their approaches to the preparation of proposals
– Acquire new presentation techniques
– See how to give proposals a competitive edge
– Learn how to maximise the evaluation scoring of proposals.

Colleagues from CRE Operations attended the course earlier this year and found it extremely useful.

Places are £295 (+ VAT). The RDU has funding to support up to five BU academics to attend the workshop. If you are interested in attending please contact Julie Northam as soon as possible to book a place.

Reminder of the Open Access event on 26 October

BU research

open access logo, Public Library of ScienceCome and find out all about open access publishing!

To celebrate the launch of BU’s new Open Access Publication Fund we’re holding an open access (OA) publishing event on 26 October between 10am-12:30pm in the EBC (7th floor).

The aim of the event is to dispell some of the myths surrounding OA publishing and alleviate concerns about publishing through this route, whilst discussing the benefits and opportunities of making your work freely available.

The event will open with a keynote presentation from one of the world’s leading OA experts Dr Alma Swan, followed by a presentation from Willow Fuchs from the Centre for Research and Communications at Nottingham University who will be speaking about the SHERPA open access projects. The event will also feature talks from two BU academics: Prof Edwin van Teijlingen who has published via OA journals and is an OA journal editor, and Prof Peter Thomas who has also published via OA outlets. There will also be the opportunity to find out more information about the new BU Open Access Publication Fund, and how you can access funds for OA publication costs.

Dr Alma Swan is one of the leading figures in the field of OA publishing. She is the co-founder and director of Key Perspectives Ltd, a consultancy firm specialising in scholarly communication, and holds honorary positions with the University of Southampton and the University of Warwick. Alma is Convenor for Enabling Open Scholarship, the global organisation of universities promoting the principles of open scholarship in the academic community. It is a great honour to welcome her to BU!

The event will take place on Wednesday 26 October between 10:00-12:30. It is free for BU staff and students to attend. Refreshments and lunch will be provided.

To reserve a place at the event please contact Anita Somner by email.

We look forward to seeing you there! 😀

Got a burning question on biodiversity?

Research news

Live, interactive UN webcast: The UN Decade on Biodiversity 2011-2020.

On Tuesday 20th September there will be a live and interactive web TV programme from New York, where two of the key figures driving the response to the planet’s loss of biodiversity will be answering your questions about the UN Decade on Biodiversity (UNDB).  You can submit questions to the panel before the programme here. 

The panel will be Ahmed Djoghlaf, who is Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and Monique Barbut who is CEO and Chair of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), whose funding will be vital in assisting developing countries to implement the CBD’s Strategic Plan.  They will discuss the CBD’s bold plans and the importance of taking action now to avert even more serious loss of biodiversity; how the entire UN system is driving to make the UNBD a lasting success, and the role of the GEF.

Biodiversity is of vital importance to us all. It is the basis for a wide range of ecosystem services on which we depend for food security, human health, clean air and water. Biodiversity contributes to local livelihoods and economic development and is essential in the fight against poverty. 

Despite its huge importance, the planet’s biodiversity is being lost at an unprecedented rate.  The main causes, including habitat and climate change, overexploitation and pollution, are constant or increasing in their intensity. As a result ecosystems such as forests, coral reefs and the rivers of our world are declining in most parts of the world and many species moving closer to extinction. The earliest and most severe impacts of biodiversity loss are felt by the poor, but ultimately all societies and communities will suffer.

Faced with this reality, in May 2010 the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) urged that concerted and effective action was needed if we were to avoid reaching irreversible global ecological tipping points. Five months later the CBD adopted the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 to inspire and drive change by every country.

In support of this Plan, the United Nations General Assembly declared 2011 – 2020 as the UN Decade on Biodiversity (UNDB). Through the Decade, the entire UN system will work to support implementation of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity and its 20 ambitious yet achievable targets, collectively known as the Aichi Targets.  The UNDB will encourage every government, business and individual to take biodiversity into account in all their planning and actions. 

Ahmed Djoghlaf, Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and Monique Barbut, CEO and Chair of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) will be live online at http://www.studiotalk.tv/show/live-interactive-un-webcast-the-un-decade-on-biodiversity-20112020  at 5pm UK time (12.00 EST / 16.00 GMT / 18.00 CET) on Tuesday 20th September.

For more information visit: www.cbd.int/2011-2020

Come and meet the Research Development Unit! THIS WEEK!

Research news

This Thursday between 11am-1pm we will be commandeering a space in the Atrium and available to talk to all of you lovely people about Research!

If you want to know about the new BU internal research funds (the Open Access Publication Fund and the Research Development Fund), the internal peer review service (RPRS), UK, EU and international funding opportunities, the REF, BU’s new research management system, the changes we’re making to RED, Research Professional, the emerging BU Research Themes, publishing and research outputs, in fact anything at all to do with research then now is your chance!

Drop by and have an informal chat with us. There might even be  a cake in it for you 🙂

Research is cool – come and find out how to get involved!

BU Open Access Publication Fund launch event – 26 October

Research news

open access logo, Public Library of ScienceCome and find out all about open access publishing!

To celebrate the launch of BU’s new Open Access Publication Fund we’re holding an open access (OA) publishing event on 26 October between 10am-12:30pm in the EBC (7th floor).

The aim of the event is to dispell some of the myths surrounding OA publishing and alleviate concerns about publishing through this route, whilst discussing the benefits and opportunities of making your work freely available.

The programme is still being finalised but the event will open with a keynote presentation from Dr Alma Swan, and will also feature a talk from Prof Edwin van Teijlingen (HSC) who has published via OA journals and is an OA journal editor. There will also be the opportunity to find out more information about the new BU Open Access Publication Fund, and how you can get involved.

Dr Alma Swan is one of the leading figures in the field of OA publishing. She is the co-founder and director of Key Perspectives Ltd, a consultancy firm specialising in scholarly communication, and holds honorary positions with the University of Southampton and the University of Warwick. Alma is Convenor for Enabling Open Scholarship, the global organisation of universities promoting the principles of open scholarship in the academic community. It is a great honour to welcome her to BU!

The event will take place on Wednesday 26 October; refreshments and lunch will be provided.

To reserve a place at the event please contact Anita Somner by email.

We look forward to seeing you there! 😀

Come and meet the RDU!

Research news

On Thursday 8 September between 11am-1pm we will be commandeering a space in the Atrium and available to talk to all of you lovely people about Research!

If you want to know about the new BU internal research funds (the Open Access Publication Fund and the Research Development Fund), the internal peer review service (RPRS), UK, EU and international funding opportunities, the REF, BU’s new research management system, the changes we’re making to RED, Research Professional, the emerging BU Research Themes, publishing and research outputs, in fact anything at all to do with research then now is your chance! Drop by and have an informal chat with us. There might even be  a cake in it for you 🙂

Research is cool – come and find out how to get involved!

Great events to launch the Digital Hub

Research news

We had two great events this week both hosted by the Digital Hub at Bournemouth University. The Digital Day on the 19th July took place at Kimmeridge House on Talbot Campus and the Digital Dinner at the Chewton Glen.

Both events were attended by the Vice Chancellor of the University, Professor John Vinney and by a range of businesses – large and small who had come to hear how Bournemouth University’s Digital Hub could provide them with knowledge and expertise to help them take advantage of the opportunities presented by the creative and digital economy.

There was a wide range of expertise on display – all of which you can find out more about on the Digital Hub website.

Delegates also had the pleasure of hearing an inspirational keynote speaker, Tiffany St James who, among a staggering array of roles, has advised the UK government on its social media and runs a series of workshops for The Guardian on digital media. Tiffany’s slides are available for download on this site. The event trended on Twitter (London) for 30 minutes #BUdigihub – testimony to the interest online and the live Twitter feed at the event.

Investigating academic impact at the London School of Economics: Blogs, Twitter and bumblebees!

BU research, Research assessment


The 'Current Thinking in Assessing Impact’ panel discussion during the LSE impact event on 12 June.

As someone who is still getting to grips with exactly how impact might be defined and operationalised for the REF, I went along to the Investigating Academic Impact Conference at LSE on the 12th June looking forward to learning more about precisely how we could create more effective impact case studies for the REF.  The day was opened by Patrick Dunleavy from the Impact of Social Sciences Project at LSE with the challenging statement that we needed to think about impact as a long-term, integral part of our research work and that simply trying to maximise impact for the REF was a short-term strategy.

What followed were sessions on how to use blogging, Wikipedia and Twitter to help enhance your electronic footprint and to engage with the public in new ways.  Following their own advice, all the presentations are now available, along with blogs and tweets, at http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/presentations/.  On the site there is a comprehensive (200-page) handbook detailing exactly how to increase your citations and how to achieve external impacts and, for those with a shorter attention span, there are some short how-to guides.  These include standard information about citation tools (such as ISI Web of Science and Scopus) as well as more esoteric measures of citation impact (such as the G-index and H scores).

There are also simple tips on how to get more widely read:

  • make sure your titles are informative
  • work on cross-disciplinary projects
  • build dissemination plans
  • have a distinctive name (many thanks to my parents on this one!).

The Impact of Social Sciences project at LSE has created a great resource which means that if you didn’t attend the day it doesn’t matter – the information is there for you to browse and look at anyway.

In the unexpected way that often happens at conferences, there are single pieces of information that are particularly memorable.  For this one it was the importance of the bumblebees!  At both the recent BU Research Impact Event and the LSE conference, one particular case study from the REF impact pilot exercise was singled out for particular praise. This was an elegant case study submitted by the University of Stirling on the conservation of bumblebees which was able to show tangible and far-reaching impact (for further details see http://www.hefce.ac.uk/research/ref/impact/ under Earth Systems and Environmental Sciences).  This is a great concrete example of how good impact case studies might be formulated and from which those still struggling with impact might be able to gain insights.

Perhaps one final message from the day was that, of course, if you wished to have academic impact then the best starting point of all is to have good research to talk about!

Siné McDougall

 

AHRC to hold four broadcast media training events in July and September 2011

Research news

Following on from the recent AHRC/Radio 3 New Generation Thinkers pilot scheme and the over-subscribed AHRC Broadcast Media workshops , the AHRC will be running four further broadcast media training events across the UK in July and September 2011.

These events will allow early career researchers in the arts and humanities to benefit from a day of radio/broadcast training.  

Each workshop will be led by at least three production and editorial staff from national broadcasters, including Radio Five.

Each day-long workshop will consist of:

· an introduction to programme-making;

· what you need to do to become the expert that programme producers will value;

· best practice tips based on experiences of academics already successful in broadcast media;

· developing and pitching your programme idea based on your research

· one to one sessions with a broadcaster for those who want detailed feedback on their programme idea.

With each workshop having only forty spaces available we will be allocating those spaces to the first forty people to email applying for a space. The four workshops will take place as follows:

1 – London July 8th

2 – Northumbria University July 11th

3 – London September 16th

4 – Manchester Metropolitan University September 19th

To apply to attend one of these workshops you need to email Jake Gilmore (j.gilmore@ahrc.ac.uk) and put your preferred venue and date in the subject line e.g. London July 8th.