Tagged / research

Sharing your research data?

Would you be prepared to share your data with the wider research community or the general public? 

A report published by the Research Information Network has found that UK data centres, which collect, store and supply research data to academics (such as the National Geoscience Data Centre at the British Geological Survey), have boosted research efficiency and improved a “culture of sharing data”.  However, the report adds that work is needed to encourage researchers to submit more data to the centres.

The Royal Society has an ongoing major policy study that looks at the use of scientific information as it affects scientists and society, “Science As a Public Enterprise”.   In theory raw data should be available for validation and further exploration but issues of quality control, appropriate retention policies, and the utility of storage of vast arrays of ‘raw’ data require urgent attention.  The study is primarily focusing on the exchange of information among scientists and other scientifically literate audiences.  A secondary focus of the study is public engagement with scientific information.

The British Academy response to the project is that all data produced through publicly funded research should be made available, provided confidentiality is protected, so that public policy and debate can be based on the best available evidence.  They suggest that opening up data could also have the advantage of aiding interaction between the arts and sciences.

Changes to research schemes at NERC

Funding opportunities

Yesterday the Natural Environment Research Council announced changes to the Consortium and Small grants responsive mode schemes.

The Small Grants Scheme will close after 2011 with the last application deadline being 1st September 2011.

The Consortium Grants Scheme will be modified to operate via one grant round per year rather than two, and an outline stage assessed by members of the Peer Review College will be introduced. The final closing date for submissions to the Consortium scheme in the current format will be 1 December 2011 (concept notes to be submitted by 1 September 2011).  From 2012 additional resources will be committed to the Consortium Grants scheme.

These changes are part of the NERC Delivery Plan 2011-2015 which includes the following targets for Responsive Mode:

  • reduce demand for research grants,
  • consolidate RM schemes and processes, and balances between them, to deliver NERC strategic needs

The full news item can be viewed here.

The R&E Database (RED) and You!

The new version of RED is up and running and can be accessed by all academic staff.

Academic staff can login to RED to review their record of research and enterprise applications and successful projects.  Staff can view projects on which they are listed as a principle investigator or a co-investigator.  There is a facility to print off the reports which can be useful for appraisals.

Academic managers can use the system to review the activity that is going on within their schools.

The data held on RED is updated by the CRE Operations team based on the information provided by the PI and the contract or award letter from the funder.

Simple guidelines on how to access the system are available here.  You can access RED both on and off campus using your standard university login.

If you have any problems with accessing or using the system please contact Susan Dowdle in the Research Development Unit.

links for 2011-08-02

Interesting research related webpages that were bookmarked on the BU Research Delicious pages this week:

 

 

Research Professional – Updates and Improvements

Funding opportunities

In order to add updates and improve their funding website, Research Professional will be unavailable on Tuesday 2nd August 2012 from 6 pm.  It is expected that the funding website will be unavailable for at least 4 hours.

The improvements will include:

  • updating the site to prevent your sessions from timing out
  • changing URLs to make them simpler and clearer (don’t worry – old bookmarks and links you have will still work)
  • standardising the behaviour of the ‘back’ button on your web browser
  • speeding up the performance of Research Professional

After this time, if anyone experiences problems accessing or using Research Professional, please contact Susan Dowdle in the first instance.

Google Scholar’s new citations tracking tool

As the demand for information about the performance of research outputs increases, Google Scholar’s latest online citations tracking tool could prove to be a useful resource. Google Scholar Citations is currently being launched with a small number of users before widespread dissemination, but the early signs are that it could provide a simple way for academics to calculate key metrics and monitor them over time.

According to Google Scholar, the tool will ‘use a statistical model based on author names, bibliographic data, and article content to group articles likely written by the same author’. You can then identify your articles using these groups and Google Scholar will then automatically produce the citation metrics. Three metrics will be available: the h-index, the i-10 index (which is the number of articles with at least ten citations), and the total number of citations to your articles. Each of these metrics will be available for all outputs as well as for articles published in the last five years, and will be automatically updated as new citations are available on the web.

You will be able to update your ‘profile’ of outputs by adding missing items, merging duplicates or correcting bibliographic errors. You’ll also have the choice to make your profile public, the idea being that you’ll make it easier for colleagues globally to follow your research because your outputs will appear in Google Scholar search results.

To get a glimpse of Google Scholar Citations in action, there are some sample profiles available via the Google Scholar blog. You can also register your email address so that you will be notified when the tool is finally available to everyone.

ESRC Update – Demand Management, Restructuring & Collaboration

Funding opportunities

With reduced budgets and the resulting increase in competition, times are tough in the search for RCUK funding.  Dr Richard Shipway attended a number of ESRC events recently and highlighted some key messages from the Council.

There was a 12% cut in real terms to the ESRC’s programme budget and a 23% cut to their administration budget.

The ESRC has indicated they will have 3 priority areas for funding:

  1. Global economic performance and sustainable growth
  2. Influencing behaviour and informing interventions
  3. Vibrant and fair society.

Demand Management

The ESRC aren’t introducing strict demand management measures at this stage but they are monitoring the situation closely.  At the moment they are encouraging universities to regulate internally so there are fewer applications but of a higher quality reaching the Council.  More information on the introduction of their intial measures is available on the ESRC’s website.

The ESRC has a useful section on their website providing grant writing advice to applicants.

BU also has our own internal peer review service to help you with applications.

Restructuring of Schemes

The Council have integrated the post-doc fellowships and first grants sheme to create the new Future Leaders Scheme which is aimed at outstanding early career researchers.  The call has recently been announced and closes on 15th Sept 2011.

International Partnership and Networking Scheme 2011 has been launched.  This is aimed at fostering the development of long-term relationships with overseas social scientists in areas of interest that are of direct relevance to ESRC’s current strategic priorities.  The closing date is 12th Oct 2011.

They will be streamlining their funding with fewer but more flexible research competitions.  Small grants are phased out and standard grant thesholds are increased.  Resources will be focused on larger and longer grants – ambitious social science.

Economic and Societal Impact

Creating, assessing and communicating impact are central to all of the ESRC’s activities.  It is very important to consider this when putting together a proposal to the ESRC.

International Collaboration

The ESRC is very keen to promote international collaboration.  They have a ‘Rising Powers’ programme to encourage collaboration with China, India and Brazil (deadline of 8 Sept 2011).  The Council also allow international academics to be listed as co-investigators on the grants of UK universities, more info can be found here.

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

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

 

Glasgow crowned green ‘super city’ of the future

Research commissioned by the HSBC, has found that thanks to its strong research and engineering capabilities, Glasgow will grow into a renewable-energy “super-city” in the coming decade. The report, Future of Business, was published on 2 June. It is based on a survey of some 500 British entrepreneurs and business managers from small and medium-sized companies.

International Conference on Culinary Arts and Sciences 2011

The International Conference on Culinary Arts and Sciences 2011 was held at BU from 12-14th April. Here Dr Heather Hartwell shares the conference successes…

The very successful International Conference on Culinary Arts and Sciences has just closed and attracted a wide range of international participants from 19 countries. The idea for such a conference was first discussed in late 1993 when the Worshipful Company of Cooks of London established a Centre for Culinary Research at Bournemouth University.  At the time it was felt there was a need for a forum that could bring together culinary artists and scientists who could present their research and generally discuss ideas within multidisciplinary and relaxed surroundings.  These initial thoughts led to the first Conference (ICCAS) which was held at BU in 1996.  It proved to be so successful that further conferences were held at BU in 1998, the University of Cairo, Egypt in 2001, Örebro University, Sweden in 2003, Warsaw Agriculture University, Poland, in 2005 and finally the Norwegian Hotel School, University of Stavanger in 2008.

Since its inception, the conference theme has always been Culinary Arts and Culinary Sciences.  The food and foodservice industries are a large and integral part of most economies but in academia they are invariably treated as separate and distinct disciplines.  These operate in isolation, often blissfully unaware of what each other are doing.  The primary purpose, therefore, has and continues to be to breakdown barriers which might exist and bring talented people together so that each can see, not only what the other is doing, but also to foster a better understanding of some of the issues, problems and concerns they have.  The programme in addition to developing the central thrust of the Conference, that is combining culinary arts and science, also delivered;

Foodservice (Catering and Hospitality)
Topics included: menus, menu planning, food variety and choice, foodservice in society, education, foodservice work and culture.
Food and Cultural Tourism
Topics included: wine and beer tourism and the various interactions between food, drink, culture and identity.
Nutrition, Food Science and Technology
Topics included: foodservice provision particularly with vulnerable groups, wellbeing and food safety.
Food Marketing, Food Habits and Consumer Behaviour
Topics included: eating and drinking habits and the interactions between food, drink and hospitality.

All submissions were subject to peer review by members of the International Scientific Advisory Board and we are grateful for their time and support.

International Scientific Advisory Board:
Prof. John S.A. Edwards, Bournemouth University, UK
Prof. Christina Fjellström, Uppsala University, Sweden
Dr Agnes Giboreau, Institut Paul Bocuse, France
Prof. Barbara Kowrygo, Warsaw Agricultural University, Poland
Prof. Svein Larsen, University of Bergen, Norway, & University of Stavanger, Norwegian School of Hotel Management
Prof. Herbert L. Meiselman, US Military, USA
Prof. Bent Egberg Mikkelsen, Aalborg University, Denmark
Dr Sara S.P. Rodrigues, Oporto University, Portugal
Assoc Prof. Peter Williams, University of Wollongong, Australia

We have always prided ourselves, and others have followed, by being able to publish delegates’ papers to coincide with the start of the conference.  So very often, conference papers never see the light of day until years after the event.  Once again we have published the refereed papers (ISBN 978-1-85899-273-0) and made them available at the time of registration.  Authors of selected papers have also been invited to submit extended versions of their work to Perspectives in Public Health and a special issue highlighting the conference will be published November 2011.

We are extremely grateful to the Worshipful Company of Cooks who have again been the main sponsor of this conference and look forward to 2013 when ICCAS will be held in Portugal and 2015 when it will be held in Auckland, New Zealand.

Conference Secretariat ICCAS 2011:
Dr Heather Hartwell, Assoc Prof
Foodservice and Applied Nutrition Research Group
Bournemouth University
 
Tel: +44 1202 961712
Email: ICCAS2011@bournemouth.ac.uk
Web: www.ICCAS2011.com

Writing competitive proposals event (London)

The Training Gateway is offering a ‘Total Proposals’ workshop in London on 15 June 2011.

Course overview:
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.

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.

This is an excellent opportunity for anyone involved in writing competitive proposals for research and enterprise funding!

Further information, including the booking form, can be found here.

Researchers of the next generation

Guidance

Prof Holger Schutkowski, Deputy Dean in the School of Applied Sciences, joined BU in January. Here he provides his thoughts on training the next generation of researchers.

In a week’s time I will have the great pleasure to open the School of Applied Sciences’ Postgraduate Research Conference. I was delighted that I was asked to give a keynote, not only because it is a nice way of making myself known to students, since I only arrived at BU in January, but also to share some thoughts about the way we do research. Whilst universities require some original research in the final year undergraduate dissertation, and to a much greater extent in Master’s programmes, it is at PhD level where we expect the clear evidence of intellectual independence, of playful recombination of knowledge, which will allow candidates to go beyond current established borders of thought, and to push scientific progress, something that is always happening at the fringes.

Are we able to give advice? Should we? How can we make this happen? The latest deliberations about the future of current PhD systems and their ever-increasing production of graduates is beginning to raise serious concerns and to elicit calls for reforms, quite drastically, indeed (http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110420/full/472261a.html). Interestingly enough, they emphasise co-operation between institutions (consortia) and cross-disciplinary work.

While the former is already part of the RCUK agenda and is likely to shape the future of PhD funding and recruitment in the UK over the next years, the latter maybe can do with further encouragement. Certainly, one way is to encourage our PhD students to decidedly undertake an interdisciplinary project, which essentially means to embrace the boldness of crossing borders, to work across disciplines and to become acquainted with, adopt and modify interpretive frameworks of other, related or cognate subject areas. Often claimed, rarely done, though; unfortunately a recurring problem and certainly not confined to the fledgling researcher.  Another approach is to ensure the research is firmly embedded into a wider and meaningful context, so that these connections across disciplinary borders can be made and the outcomes of the research become accessible and meaningful to the related or cognate subject areas we are trying to include in the first place.

As it happens, this is what I am going to talk about in my presentation, with case studies that necessitate contextualised analysis to demonstrate how we can bring past societies to life through the study of their skeletal remains. But to come back to the state of PhD systems: cross-disciplinary thinking and context awareness is what we want to instil in the researchers of the next generation. But this also requires the intellectual capacity and preparedness for doing so. The students we graduate need to be skilled and prepared for an increasingly competitive job market.

Prof Holger Schutkowski

Deputy Dean

School of Applied Sciences

Journal Impact Factors Explained

Guidance, Research assessment

There is often some confusion around Journal Impact Factors in terms of where they come from, how they’re calculated and what they mean. Hopefully the following will provide a brief explanation.


What are Journal Impact Factors?
Journal Impact Factors are just one of a number of journal analytical measures that form part of an online resource provided by Thomson Reuters on their Web of Knowledge called Journal Citation Reports® (JCR), which covers journals in the sciences, technology and social sciences. JCR provides a facility for the evaluation and comparison of journals across fields within the subject areas covered.

Other publications databases may provide their own tools for bibliometric or citation analysis (such as Elsevier’s Scopus) but Journal Impact Factors are only found on the Web of Knowledge.

A Journal Impact Factor is the average number of times that articles from a particular journal published in the past two years have been cited in the JCR year.

How are Journal Impact Factors calculated?
Journal Impact Factors are calculated by dividing the number of citations to articles published by a particular journal in the JCR year by the total number of articles published in the two previous years. For example, an Impact Factor of 2.5 means that, on average, the articles published in that journal up to two years ago have been cited two and a half times. Citing articles may be from the same journal although most citing articles are from different journals.

The number of articles given for journals listed in JCR primarily include original research and review articles. Editorials, letters, news items and meeting abstracts are usually not included in article counts because they are not generally cited. Journals published in non-English languages or using non-Roman alphabets may be less accessible to researchers worldwide, which can influence their citation patterns.

How are Journal Impact Factors used?
Journal Impact Factors can help in understanding how many citations journals have received over a particular period – it is possible to see trends over time and across subject areas, and they may help when you’re deciding where to publish an academic paper. However, as with all statistics, Journal Impact Factors should be used with caution and should ideally be combined with other metrics depending on how they’re being applied.

Equally, a journal’s Impact Factor is not necessarily a direct indicator of the quality of an individual paper published in that journal. Some published articles never receive any citations, for various reasons, even if they appear in a high impact factored journal.

Journal Impact Factors and the REF
Some of the assessment panels will be provided with citation metrics as part of HEFCE’s Research Excellence Framework (REF) in some subject areas, which will help inform the panel members’ judgements. However, journal impact factors or equivalent journal ranking systems (e.g. the ABS list) will NOT be used at all within the assessment process.

Big Ideas for the Future

Universities Week 2011 is taking place between 13-19 June.Universities Week 2011 logo

The campaign aims to highlight the essential role of UK universities and their impact on the economy, culture, society, the environment and much more.

As part of Universities Week 2011, RCUK and Universities UK are seeking submissions for Big Ideas for the Future. The project is exploring research currently taking place in universities that is likely to have a major impact on the UK and the world in the future.

All research organisations are invited to submit ideas and suggestions can be from any academic discipline. The only rule is that the research must be happening now or imminently and it must be something that will result in a real impact on people’s lives.

The proposed categories for entries are below, but suggestions for others are welcome:

  • Delivering a healthy future.
  • People and environment: sustainability for the next century and beyond.
  • The creation of recreation; how we’ll use our leisure time in fifty years.
  • The future of humanity and society.
  • Getting around: our planet, and beyond.
  • Capital ideas: the future of commerce and business.

The Research Development Unit will be liaising with Marketing & Communications to submit a selection of the excellent research undertaken at BU to Universities Week. If you would like to nominate your research or a colleague’s research then please contact Julie Northam by Friday 8 April.

A selection of the submissions will appear in a report ‘Big Ideas for the Future’ that will be launched during Universities Week on Thursday 16 June.

A selection of Big Idea impact case studies can be read here.facebook

You can follow Universities Week on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/UKUniversities

Academic fury over order to study the Big Society: Researchers ‘over a barrel’ after coalition threat to cut £100m grant from AHRC

“Academics will study the “big society” as a priority, following a deal with the government to secure funding from cuts. AHRC logoThe Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) will spend a “significant” amount of its funding on the prime minister’s vision for the country, after a government “clarification” of the Haldane principle – a convention that for 90 years has protected the right of academics to decide where research funds should be spent.”

This article from the Guardian can be read in full here.

Read further views on this story on Research Professional.

What do you think of this? Let us know by commenting on this post!