BU Research Blog | research | Bournemouth University

December 12, 2016

Congratulations to Dr. Regmi new publication

BU research, Global engagement, international, open access, PG research, policy, Public engagement, Publishing, Research communication, Research news, Uncategorized, writing Edwin van Teijlingen

Congratulations to Dr. Pramod Regmi in FHSS on the publication of the editorial ‘Need and Scope of Global Partnership on Public Health Research’ published this week. [1] As a global partnership, it is our intention to make a tangible impact upon major public health challenges, whilst strengthening the participating institutions in a sustainable manner. Our collaboration came to a consensus on a number of priority research areas, based on our strengths and collective experience and on our knowledge of the key global issues for the next decades (Table 1). The paper is led by BU Visiting Faculty Prof. Padam Simkhada and co-authored by another BU Visiting Faculty Dr. Bibha Simkhada. The editorial is in an Open Access journal hence freely available to any researcher or practitioner (or policy maker) with internet-access in our collaborating countries.

Table 1 : Key areas of research focus of the consortium

Reproductive, maternal and child health
Rural and urban comparisons (Equity and health)
Nutrition
Environment and health
Health systems and health workforce
Health, lifestyle and substance use
Non-Communicable Diseases
Preventable road traffic injuries and safety
Disability

Reference:

Simkhada, P., Poudel, A.N., Simkhada, B., Sumnall, H., Jones, L., Bista, S., McVeigh, J., Gaidhane, A., Zahiruddin, Q.S., Chowdhury, M.E., Bhuiyan, M.B.A.S., Iliyasu, Z., Pant, P.R., Kurmi, O., Hill, R., van Teijlingen, E., Regmi, P. (2016) Need and Scope of Global Partnership on Public Health Research, The Journal of Datta Meghe Institute of Medical Sciences University 11(3): 260-262.

December 6, 2016

Four new FHSS publications

BU research, Featured academics, open access, Publishing, Research news, Uncategorized, writing Edwin van Teijlingen

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

Prof Edwin van Teijlingen

References:

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

December 6, 2016

HSS staff achieve eHealth publication

BU research, Featured academics, open access, Research news ahmedo

Dr Carol Bond (Principal Academic Digital Health) and Dr Osman Ahmed (Lecturer in Physiotherapy) have recently had their work on online health information sharing published in the Journal of Innovation in Health Informatics.

Building upon their prior work on online communities, this study took a qualitative approach to explore the information shared by online discussion boards and how users shared this information. The study used diabetes forums as an exam, with key findings showing that much of the information sharing came from experience (including sharing their experiences from interactions with healthcare professionals). Drs Bond and Ahmed are now developing this work further by exploring similar patterns using other social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, etc).

This paper is available online at:

https://hijournal.bcs.org/index.php/jhi/article/view/853

Bond, CS; Ahmed, OH. Can I help you? Information sharing in online discussion forums by people living with a long-term condition. Journal of Innovation in Health Informatics, 2016;23(3):620-626.

December 5, 2016

How to Write a 4* Article

BRIAN, BU research, Guidance, Publishing, REF Subjects, Research assessment, Training, writing sastringer

Prof. Mark Reed

A fortnight ago Prof Mark Reed, Professor of Socio-Technical Innovation at Newcastle University and the man behind Fast Track Impact, tweeted some thoughts on how to write a 4* paper for the REF. He went on to explain his thinking in more detail in a guest post on the Research Fundementals blog, the post is published here with the authors permission.

_____________
How do you write a 4* paper for the Research Excellence Framework (REF)? It is a question I’ve asked myself with some urgency since the Stern Review shredded my REF submission by not allowing me to bring my papers with me this year to my new position at Newcastle University.

Obviously the answer is going to differ depending on your discipline, but I think there are a few simple things that everyone can do to maximize their chances of getting a top graded research output.

I’m going to start with the assumption that you’ve actually done original, significant and rigorous work – if you haven’t then there is no point in reading any further. However, as I am increasingly asked to pre-review papers for colleagues across a range of disciplines, I am seeing examples of people who write up work as a 2* or 3* paper that has the potential to get a better score. I should point out that I believe that there is an important role for 1* and 2* papers, and that I regularly write these on purpose to address a problem of national significance and frame it for the specific, narrow audience that is likely to be able to benefit most from my work. However, whether I like it or not, as a Professor in a research-intensive University, there is an expectation that I will be submitted as a 4* researcher, which means I need a few 4* papers as well.

You can see some more detailed thoughts on what I think makes 4* for different types of paper in this Tweet:

How to write a 4* paper for #REF pic.twitter.com/7P8fKw1pfU

— Mark Reed (@profmarkreed) November 23, 2016

As you’ll see from the discussion under that tweet though, my more detailed thoughts probably only apply to Units of Assessment across panels A-C, and probably isn’t relevant to the arts and humanities.

Having said this, I think there are a number of things we can all do to maximize the chances of our work being viewed favourably by REF panelists.

Write to the criteria: when I was learning to drive, my instructor told me that in the test I should make sure I moved my head when I was looking in the rear view mirror, to make sure the examiner noticed I was using my mirrors. We’re all used to writing to the criteria of funding calls, and in fact we are all perfectly used to writing papers to the criteria of our target journals. In the last REF, research outputs were judged against three criteria: originality, significance and rigour. Whatever the interpretation of these criteria in your discipline, have you made it explicit to REF panelists reading your work exactly what is original, and why it is so original? Have you explained and effectively justified the significance of your work? And have you included evidence that your methods, analysis and interpretation is rigorous, even if you have to use supplementary material to include extra detail about your methods and data to get around journal word limits?

Get REF feedback before you submit your work for publication: find out who is going to be reviewing research outputs for REF internally within your Unit of Assessment at your institution and ask them to review your work before you submit it. They may be able to make recommendations about how you might improve the paper in light of the REF criteria. Sometimes a little bit of extra work on the framing of your research in relation to wider contexts and issues can help articulate the significance of your work, and with additional reading and thinking, you may be able to position your work more effectively in relation to previous work to demonstrate its originality more clearly. Adding a few extra details to your methods and results may re-assure readers and reviewers that your approach is indeed rigorous. This is not just about doing world-leading research; it is about demonstrating to the world that your work is indeed world-leading. For me, these criteria are nothing new and are worth paying attention to, whether or not we are interested in REF. Meeting these three criteria will increase the chances that you get through peer-review and will increase the likelihood that your work gets cited.

Analyse and discuss good practice in your own area: the only way to really “get your eye in” for REF is to actually look at examples of good and poor practice in your own area. Below, I’ve described how you can design an exercise to do this with your colleagues. You can do it yourself and learn a lot, but from my own experience, you learn a lot more by doing this as a discussion exercise with colleagues who work in your area. If you can, take notes from your discussion and try and distill some of the key lessons, so you can learn collectively as a group and more effectively review and support each others’ work.

How to organize a discussion to work out what makes a 4* paper in your area:

Identify top scoring institutions for your Unit of Assessment (UOA): download the REF2014 results, filter for your UOA (columns E or F), then filter so it only shows you the outputs (column J), and then filter for 4* (column L), showing only the institutions from your UOA that had the highest percentage of 4* outputs. Now for those institutions, look across the table (columns L-P) to see which has the highest proportion of outputs at either 3* or 4*. For example, an institution may have 80% of its outputs graded at 4* and 15% graded at 3*, meaning that 95% of its outputs were graded at 3-4*
Download a selection of papers from the top scoring institutions: go to your UOA on the REF website, find and click on the institutions you’ve identified in step 1, under “view submission data”, click on “research outputs”, copy and paste output titles into Google Scholar (or your search engine of choice) and download the articles. You may want to select outputs randomly, or you may want to go through more selectively, identifying outputs that are close to the areas your group specialize in
Repeat for low scoring institutions so you can compare and contrast high and low scoring outputs
Discuss examples: print copies of the high and low scoring outputs, labeled clearly, and in your next UOA meeting, let everyone choose a high and a low-scoring example. Given them 10-15 minutes to quickly read the outputs (focusing on title, abstract, introduction, figures and conclusions so you’re not there all day) and then ask the group (or small groups if there are many of you) to discuss the key factors that they think distinguish between high and low scoring outputs. Get your group(s) to distill the key principles that they think are most useful and disseminate these more widely to the group, so that anyone who wasn’t present can benefit.

It would be great if I could tell you that these are my “three easy ways to get a 4* paper” but doing work that is genuinely original, significant and rigorous is far from easy. If you have done work that is of the highest quality though, I hope that the ideas I’ve suggested here will help you get the credit you deserve for the great research you’ve done.

December 3, 2016

New edition qualitative research book

BU research, Featured academics, Publishing, writing Edwin van Teijlingen

Congratulations to BU Professor Emerita Immy Holloway and FHSS (Faculty of Health & Social Sciences) Visiting Faculty Professor Kathleen Galvin on the publication of the latest edition of Qualitative Research in Nursing and Healthcare [1]. This new edition offers insights into both the abstract ideas in qualitative research and its practical procedures. Structured into four sections, the new edition looks at the initial stages, methods of data collection, qualitative approaches and analysis of collected data. Professor Galvin is Professor of Nursing Practice in the College of Life, Health & Physical Sciences, at the University of Brighton. Both Immy Holloway and Kate Galvin are affiliated with BU’s Centre for Qualitative Research (CQR), the longest running research centre in FHSS.

Congratulations!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Reference:

Holloway I & Galvin K. (2017) Qualitative Research in Nursing and Healthcare. Wiley-Blackwell 4th ed.

November 28, 2016

Winner of “The strength of young graduates contest”.

BU research, PG research, Research news, student research Francesco Ferraro

Last Friday a postman knocked at my parent’s house in Italy.

He carried a parchment, from The National Strength and Condition Association.

On it is written that my Master Degree Thesis won “The strength of young graduates contest” as second best Italian research in its field.

The study of 2015, is titled: “THE BIOMECHANICS EVALUATION IN STUDYING THE MOTION – COGNITION RELATIONSHIP” and can be summarised as follow:

using a system of 8 QTM cameras and a force plate, I measured the effect of different tasks upon the static balance in 20 young volunteers.

To do so, I asked them to perform four tasks in a randomised order, while I was recording their centre of pressure (with force plate) and centre of mass (with 3D motion capture system).

Tasks were:

Open Eyes (OE). The participants were instructed to hold a steady position, standing up with their feet together, for 30s.

Closed Eyes (CE). Same position as OE, but participants were instructed to keep their eyes closed for 30s.

Cognitive Dual Task (COGN-DT). Holding the same steady position, I asked them to countdown aloud, backwards in threes from a number that I randomly chose.

Motor Dual Task (MOT-DT). Same position, but for this task volunteers were instructed to move their fingers (of the right hand) and touch their thumb alternately, for 30s.

What the result told us was that the COGN-DT was causing more perturbation, followed by the CE task.

Special thanks go to the people who helped me at the MotionLab in Naples (Giuseppe Sorrentino, Laura Mandolesi and Pasquale Varriale), and to my current supervisors (Alison McConnell, Tom Wainwright and James Gavin) who believed in me by giving me the opportunity to be here today.

Looking forward, with hope to collect more milestones.

Thanks.

November 24, 2016

Latest Funding Opportunities

Funding opportunities eknight

The following is a snap-shot of funding opportunities that have been announced. Please follow the links for more information:

Arts and Humanities Research Council

Follow-on funding for impact and engagement scheme

These support innovative and creative engagements with new audiences and user communities that stimulate pathways to impact within the area of arts and humanities. Grants are worth up to £100,000 over a maximum period of one year. Smaller grants of up to £30,000 may be awarded for shorter or higher risk activities.

Maximum award: £100,000

Closing date: None open call

Research grants – early-career route

These enable individual researchers to collaborate with, and bring benefits to, other individuals and organisations through the conduct of research related to the arts and humanities, and support researchers at the start of their careers in gaining experience of managing and leading research projects. Provides grants for projects with a full economic cost (fEC) between £50,000 and £250,000 for a varying duration up to a limit of 60 months.

Maximum award: £200,000

Closing date: None open call

Research grants – standard route

These support research projects by enabling individual researchers to collaborate with, and bring benefits to, other individuals and organisations through the conduct of research related to the arts and humanities. The standard route provides grants for projects with a full economic cost (fEC) between £50,000 and £1,000,000 for a varying duration up to a limit of 60 months.

Maximum award: £800,000

Closing date: None open call

Economic and Social Research Council

COMING SOON: UK in changing Europe – Brexit priority grants

*** The Economic and Social Research Council will shortly be inviting applications for its UK in changing Europe – Brexit priority grants. Applications are expected to open at the beginning of December and to close on 25 January 2017. Call information will be published when applications open. The following information is subject to change. These grants support additional activity, including research synthesis and potential new short-term research activity, related to the process of the UK leaving the EU. The grants will be between £100,000 and £300,000 (100 per cent fEC, with the ESRC contributing 80 per cent fEC) and for a duration of up to 18 months. The ESRC expects grants to commence on 1 April 2017.

Be aware this is a pre-call and there may be further conditions announced in the full call.

Maximum award: £240,000

Closing date: 25 Jan 17 (forecast)

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

Whole energy systems scoping studies

The EPSRC/Energy systems catapult will fund up to eight studies across the six areas identified. Scoping studies are expected to be up to a maximum of nine months in duration and up to £60k (80% FEC) in value. Funding could be used for researcher time, travel, workshops and other engagement activities to further develop consortia and larger programmes of work. Interdisciplinary collaboration and consortia building within applications is strongly encouraged as is partnership and engagement activities with organisations outside of academia e.g. Government, regulators and industry.

Maximum award: £60,000

Closing date: 19 Jan 17

Medical Research Council

Health systems research initiative fourth call – providing evidence to strengthen health systems in low- and middle income countries

This is the fourth annual call for the Health Systems Research Initiative. Up to £6million is available for funding proposals under this call. Innovative proposals are sought from across the public health, social and biomedical sciences and must clearly identify what health system challenge is being addressed. Proposals must situate this clearly-defined challenge within an understanding of the broader health system linkages and describe how and why findings from the project have the potential to improve the health of people living in low and middle-income countries. Funding is available for research only; we will not fund the routine delivery of health services.

Maximum award: Not known

Closing date: 24 Jan 17

Improving cross-sector comparisons – beyond QALY

This supports research into the possibility of creating a measure of quality of life or wellbeing, which would have utility across health and social care. Grants may be awarded for any period of up to five years.

Maximum award: Not known

Closing date: 21 Jun 17 (recurring)

Methodological research for health and care systems modelling – identifying and measuring spillover effects

Funding supports research into methodologies for developing models which may enable identification, measurement and understanding of spillover effects in health service and public health systems.

Maximum award: Not known

Closing date: 21 Jun 17 (recurring)

Methods research to support the use of observational data in clinical decision making – highlight notice

Funding supports the development of innovative methods for identifying, synthesising, interpreting and presenting observational data for use in guidance development and clinical decision-making, both at the national level and for individual patients, and in particular, how one may interpret and rationalise data from different sources.

Maximum award: Not known

Closing date: 21 Jun 17 (recurring)

Royal Society, GB

Royal Society/Leverhulme Trust senior research fellowships

These enable academic researchers to be relieved of all their teaching and administrative duties and to concentrate on full-time research in all areas of the life and physical sciences, including engineering, but excluding clinical medicine. A total of seven fellowships are provided each year. The fellow’s employing institution receives reimbursement for the full salary costs for the fellow. Research expenses of up to a maximum of £2,500 are available to cover the cost of consumables, equipment and travel.

Maximum award: Not known

Closing date: 18 Jan 17 (recurring)

Wellcome Trust, GB

Research bursaries

These support individuals working on small- and medium-scale research projects based on library or archive collections supported by the trust. Bursaries are usually worth between £5,000 and £25,000 each, and may contribute towards travel, subsistence and research expenses.

Maximum award: £25,000

Closing date: 31 Mar 17 (recurring)

If you are interested in submitting to any of the above calls you must contact your RKEO Funding Development Officer with adequate notice before the deadline.

For more funding opportunities that are most relevant to you, you can set up your own personalised alerts on Research Professional. If you need help setting these up, just ask your School’s/Faculty’s Funding Development Officer in RKEO or view the recent blog post here.

If thinking of applying, why not add notification of your interest on Research Professional’s record of the bid so that BU colleagues can see your intention to bid and contact you to collaborate.

November 22, 2016

Most read article (Early Career Researcher)

BRIAN, BU research, Research news sashraf

The first article published by FOM academic Samreen Ashraf has become the ‘Most Read’ article on Research Gate compared to those published by other authors in her department.

The paper focuses on consumer trust in Islamic banks. The authors differentiate between the definitions of trust and confidence in the paper. Specifically, it addressed the questions: to what extent are trust and confidence active influencers in the decision-making process, are they differentiated or are they one of the same? Also how does the Pakistani collective cultural context further complicate the application of these concepts? These questions were addressed by using qualitative methods.
This study provided further insight into consumer behaviour within financial services and specifically Islamic banking and has contributed to the theoretical understanding of the concepts of trust and confidence.

For those interested in reading the paper the full reference is: Ashraf, S., Robson, J. and Sekhon, Y., 2015. Consumer trust and confidence in the compliance of Islamic banks. Journal of Financial Services Marketing, 20(2), pp.133-144.

Alternatively, the paper can be accessed via Research Gate!

November 17, 2016

New Paperback Edition – Stories of the Hard Copy

BU research, Fusion, Guidance, Public engagement, Research news Christopher Pullen

I just wanted to share some good news, I have just found out from Edinburgh University Press that just after a few months of the hardback release of my book Straight Girls and Queer Guys: The Hetero Media Gaze in Film and Television (that was written while on study leave, funded by Fusion) that they are going to bring it out in paperback. As we all know getting your academic book published in paperback is not necessarily an easy task. Many publishers want to publish in hardback as the first edition, as this achieves a higher value of sales when offering the books to libraries. Also I have to confess myself that a hardback edition often is a handsome prospect, as the product may well last longer, and you can put in a place of pride on your bookshelf collection. That said, a paperback edition is very desirable, as students might be able to afford their own copy, and maybe general audiences might take interest. Some publishers leave it a while before they will consider the prospect of a paperback edition. For example my second book Gay Identity, New Storytelling and The Media originally came out in hardback edition, and it took almost three years before they considered a paperback edition. This however was not an easy prospect, I had to argue why the book should come out in paperback, including collating reviews that were made of the book, and also finding lecturers and teachers that were using the book in university or schools, and then presenting affidavits. At the same time sometimes you do get a paperback edition as a first edition. I was fortunate that my first book (way back in 2007) Documenting Gay Men, Identity and Performance in Reality Television and Documentary Film did actually come out in paperback, and I remember the excitement in seeing a copy of my very first book in this form, thinking of high sales and a wide readership. Whilst this book might not have achieved the attention that I thought it would, I am very excited that it seems to be used widely in education, as every now and then I get payments for photocopying use of that very book from the publishers themselves. Roll on a few years, and some eight books later, which includes my most recent book Pedro Zamora, Sexuality and AIDS Education: The Autobiographical Self, Activism and The Real World which I understand may well come out in paperback, often it is hard to come to terms with expectations in publishing form/output. For example one of my main concerns, rightly or wrongly, is that I possibly over value the notion of the ‘hard copy’ over the E-Book. Also I do see a return to the hard copy, particularly evident if you go into HMV (or even some supermarkets) and you see the proliferation of Vinyl. From Taylor Swift and One Directon to Daft Punk, contemporary popular music artists are revisiting this wonderful hardcopy form. Concerning academic books, probably the best compromise is having both the prestigious hardcopy (hardback) alongside the affordable hardcopy (paperback), working alongside the virtual copy (E-book). This meets expectations and pleasures in cultural form – which maybe connects to nostalgia, at the same time keeping an eye on a changing word, that thrives on access and sharing.

November 15, 2016

Latest Funding Opportunities

Funding opportunities eknight

The following is a snap-shot of funding opportunities that have been announced. Please follow the links for more information:

Academy of Medical Sciences

COMING SOON: Starter grants for clinical lecturers

The Academy of Medical Science will shortly be inviting applications for its starter grants for clinical lecturers. The next call is expected to open in January 2017. The following information is from the previous round and is subject to change. These grants enable research-active clinical lecturers to gather data in order to develop and strengthen their research careers and bids for longer-term fellowships and funding. Grants are worth up to £30,000 each over one to two years.

Maximum award: £30,000

Closing date: 05 Mar 17 (forecast, recurring)