Tagged / publication

Paper published on ‘living evidence’

international, open access, Publishing, Training, writing

The Nepal Journal of Epidemiology published today carries an article on so-called ‘living evidence’ as an on-going synthesis approach that provides up-to-date rigorous research evidence [1].  This short research methods paper argues that living evidence is particularly useful in rapidly expanding research domains, uncertain existing evidence, and incorporating new research evidence that may impact policy or practice, ensuring that health worker, managers and health-policy makers have access to the best, i.e. the most recent evidence.

The Nepal Journal of Epidemiology is an Open Access journal, and hence freely available to researchers across the globe.  The paper has been co-authored by researchers from the Denmark, Qatar, Mauritius and the UK.

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health (CMWH)

 

Reference:

  1. Sathian B., van Teijlingen E., do Nascimento I.J.B., Khatib M.N., Banerjee I., Simkhada P., Kabir R., Al Hamad H. (2023) Need for evidence synthesis for quality control of healthcare decision-making. Nepal Journal of Epidemiology 13(3):1288-1291.  DOI: 10.3126/nje.v13i3.61004

Challenges and New Directions in Journalism Education

Fusion, Industry collaboration

“What journalism should we teach?” “How can the academy drive and lead change in practice?” These questions run like a red thread through a new publication produced by a collective of BU academics. Challenges and New Directions in Journalism Education (Routledge) draws on original and innovative contributions from educators, practitioners and students – including BU alumni. Its aim: to inform our understanding of journalism pedagogy in the context of ongoing shifts in journalism practice that often run deeper than merely technological change. Some observers describe journalism as broken – accused of elitism and often branded as too far removed from the reality of people’s lives. Beleaguered by a persistent crisis of trust, journalists and journalism are often portrayed as core to the problem, rather than the solution. Inclusivity remains an urgent issue with news organisations and industry councils, such as the National Council for the Training of Journalists intensifying protocols in a bid to create more diverse newsrooms.

Against this background, Challenges and New Directions in Journalism Education engages with a series of key themes and objectives: These include discussions around safeguarding, sustainability, journalism’s ‘democratic deficit’, integrating media literacy, podcasting and the ‘post-pandemic’ context. Each chapter draws on a research-informed approach: primary data, case studies and examples to describe and unpack the topic, and concludes with practical suggestions for journalism educators. The core tenet is the importance of listening — to the voices of students, the requirements of industry and to each other.

The book is accompanied by a podcast, in which the chapter authors expand on the final section of the book – Reflections. “ Journalists don’t often have time to reflect on their practice” says the book’s editor, Professor Karen Fowler-Watt “their work is tomorrow’s ‘fish and chip wrapper’ – so it was refreshing to have the time and space to discuss with each other the findings of our chapters and our own thoughts about the process of writing this book”. The book concludes with a Manifesto for Change, drawn up by the authors — it is intended to spark a conversation within and between industry and the academy.

The podcast (deftly edited by Jason Hallett) also includes the findings of a ‘call and response’ exercise with final year students of BA (Hons) Multimedia Journalism. Each chapter author devised a question for the students to debate and produce a call to action in response – this exercise was discussed further with journalism.co.uk. Senior reporter Jacob Grainger devoted the latest podcast to an interview with Karen Fowler-Watt, who is a former BBC journalist, about the book project, the students’ responses and ways of growing the next generation of journalists. They also discuss how journalism schools and news organisations can work together towards the shared goal of producing journalists that are ready to hit the ground running in industry. Never has this been more important than now – the conversation is only just beginning!


Challenges and New Directions in Journalism Education is published by Routledge.
Editor: Karen Fowler-Watt
Chapter authors – Members of the Journalism Education Research Group (JERG):
Andrew Bissell; Jaron Murphy; Graham Majin; David Brine; Michael Sunderland; Jo Royle; Max Mauro and Julian McDougall; Fiona Cownie; De-Graft Mensah (BBC Newsround presenter and BU alumnus); Daniel Henry (ITV News reporter).

The 2 part podcast: I Challenges and II New Directions is available under ‘Support Materials’ for the book.
The journalism.co.uk podcast is available here.

Proofreading your article accepted for publication

international, open access, Publishing, writing

It is always a pleasure to see your own paper in print.  If all is properly organised at the publisher, the first time you see you paper as it will look in its final version when you receive the proof copy.  It is the authors’ task to proofread this final copy and pick up any mistakes you may have made or the journal has made putting your word file into the journal’s layout.  More and more journals now ask you to do the proofreading and editing online.  The first message here is that proofreading is exact business and most certainly time consuming.  Moreover, feeding back mistakes you may find in the proofs is not without its trials and tribulations.

Yesterday we received the proofs for a paper accepted by BMC Health Research Policy & Systems [1]. The BMC is part of the publisher Springer , and it uses an online proof system eProofing to which the authors get temporary access, to read and correct text.  This system looks good online, but beware the online version you get to edit does not look the same as the version that will appear in print.  The draft print version generated by eProofing has line numbers which don’t appear online when you are editing the proofs.  So we had to write on the online system separately that we found a set of quotes glued together, as the system does not allow authors to change the lay-out (for obvious reasons). In this case,  we had to write details like: “There needs to be a space after first quote line 421.”  What might look okay in the eProofing version didn’t do so  in the print version, where it was it is wrong.  This is illustrated in the example picture below.

 

Last month we battled with the proofs of another BU paper forthcoming in the journal Women and Birth [2], which is part of Elsevier.  Again, it has an online system for proofs.  This system does not allow the authors to correct mistakes in in the line spacing.  So we ended up writing to journal manager, not the editor, things like: “There is a very big gap between the end of section 3.7. and Overview of findings section – please could the text be rearranged to get rid of this big gap.”  We also asked for a summary section to be kept on one page, not having an orphan two words on the next page, but that appeared to be too difficult a request.  We think we a little flexibility, i.e. a human intervention the lay-out could have been improved.  See illustration below with text as it appears in the current online-first version.

We like to stress our advice to set plenty of time aside to read and edit the proofs, and to send details instructions to the journal manager or editor about what needs changing.  Changes include typos, grammar and style, but also lay-out of text and illustrations, boxes in the text, tables and figures.  “It is also important to check tables and figures during the proof-reading as the formatting can often go astray during the typesetting process” as we highlighted by Sheppard and colleagues [3].  Also double check correct spelling of names of co-authors and the final author order in the proofs.  Many years ago, I received the proof of pages of a midwifery article [4].

I dutifully read and edited  the proof of the actual text, but I never check the short introduction with the authors’ names which an editor had added to the final proofs.  When the paper came out in print to transpired that this editor has changed the author order, i.e. my name was first, probably because I had submitted the paper on behalf of my co-author.  This cause some problems with my co-author, made all the worse since I am married to her.

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health

References:

  1. Wasti, S.P., van Teijlingen, E., Rushton, S., Subedi, M., Simkhada, P., Balen, J., Nepal Federalisation of Health Team (2023)  Overcoming the challenges facing Nepal’s health system during federalisation: an analysis of health system building blocks. Journal of the Health Research Policy & Systems. (forthcoming).
  2. Arnold, R., Way, S., Mahato, P., van Teijlingen, E. (2023) “I might have cried in the changing room, but I still went to work”. Maternity staff managing roles, responsibilities, and emotions of work and home during COVID-19: an Appreciative Inquiry, Women & Birth (online first) 
  3. Sheppard, Z., Hundley, V., Dahal, N.P., Paudyal, P. (2022) Writing a quantitative paper, In: Wasti, S.P., van Teijlingen, E., Simkhada, P., Hundley, V. with Shreesh, K. (eds.) Writing and Publishing Academic Work, Kathmandu, Nepal: Himal Books, pp.78-87.
  4. van Teijlingen E., Ireland, J.C. (2014) Community midwives on the go. Midwives 1: 54-55.

An Appreciate Inquiry into NHS Maternity Services

NHS, writing

 

 

Congratulation to Dr. Rachel Arnold and her Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health research team on the publication yesterday of their paper ‘I might have cried in the changing room, but I still went to work’. Maternity staff balancing roles, responsibilities, and emotions of work and home during COVID-19: An appreciative inquiry [1].   This paper focuses on how to support staff and enhance their well-being in a small UK maternity service.  The underpinning methodological approach is appreciative inquiry using interviews with 39 maternity staff and four group discussions exploring meaningful experiences, values and factors that helped their well-being.

The key findings are that maternity staff members were highly motivated, managing a complex melee of emotions and responsibilities including challenges to professional confidence, mental health, family situation, and conflict between work-life roles. Despite staff shortages, a demanding workload, professional and personal turmoil, and the pandemic participants still found meaning in their work and relationships.  The authors go on to argue for a ‘whole person’ approach, since this approach provided insight into the multiple stressors and emotional demands staff faced. It also revealed staff resourcefulness in managing their professional and personal roles. They invested in relationships with women but were also aware of their limits – the need to be self-caring, employ strategies to switch-off, set boundaries or keep a protective distance.  Overall, the paper concludes hat staff’s well-being initiatives, and research into well-being, would benefit from adopting a holistic approach that incorporates home and family with work. Research on emotion regulation strategies could provide insights into managing roles, responsibilities, and the emotional demands of working in maternity services. Emotion regulation strategies could be included in midwifery and obstetric training.

This paper was proceeded by a more methodological paper on the application of Appreciative Inquiry in this study [2].

 

References:

  1. Arnold, R., Way, S., Mahato, P., van Teijlingen, E. (2023) “I might have cried in the changing room, but I still went to work”. Maternity staff managing roles, responsibilities, and emotions of work and home during COVID-19: an Appreciative Inquiry, Women & Birth (online first) 
  2. Arnold, R., Gordon, C., Way, S., Mahato, P., van Teijlingen, E. (2022) Why use Appreciative Inquiry? Lessons learned during COVID-19 in a UK maternity service, European Journal of Midwifery 6 (May): 1-7.

Fitness to Practise paper published

NHS, Publishing, writing

Congratulations to Megan Jadzinski, Sara White, Sue Way and Dominique Mylod on the acceptance of their paper ‘How are Fitness to Practise processes applied in UK Higher Education Institutions? – A systematic review’ by the international journal Nurse Education in Practice.  All authors are based in the Faculty of Health and Social Science, or were as Prof. Sue Way retired recently.

Well done,

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery & Women’s Health