Author Archives: Miggie Pickton
Researcher help desks – Spring 2016
Your New Year’s resolution for 2016: visit Nick and Miggie at their weekly researcher help desk!
This terms dates are as follows:
Avenue Library MG1:
- Tuesday 19 January – 10am to 12 noon
- Wednesday 3 February – 10am to 12 noon
- Thursday 18 February – 2 to 4pm **updated
- Tuesday 1 March – 2 to 4pm
- Friday 18 March – 9:30 to 11:30am
Park Library R2.20:
- Wednesday 13 January – 2 to 4pm
- Monday 25 January – 10am to 12 noon
- Thursday 11 February – 2 to 4pm
- Tuesday 23 February – 10am to 12 noon
- Thursday 10 March – 2 to 4pm **updated
- Tuesday 22 March – 2 to 4pm
Or as ever, get in touch via phone, email or in person: Miggie, Nick
Last updated 26/01/16
CFP: 19th annual Dilemmas for Human Services International Research Conference
Submitted by Dr Hala Mansour
Northampton Business School is holding the 19th annual Dilemmas for Human Services International Research Conference from 12-14 September 2016. The link for the call for paper to the Conference 2016 is here.
The Dilemmas conferences date back to 1995, and are organised by researchers working at Keele University, Staffordshire University UK, the University of East London UK, Luleå University of Technology, Linköping University, and Linnaeus University, Sweden and now Northampton Business School. Theme of this year’s conference is change management and most of the discussion will be around managing change from different perspectives (Challenges, Ethics, Gender,……).
UK Data Service 2016 – free webinars
The UK Data Service has just released its 2016 programme of webinars. These introduce different aspects of the service and explain their key datasets.
For some specialist training from data management experts without leaving the comfort of your own desk try one of these:
Introductory webinars:
- Introduction to the UK Data Service – 21 January, 20 April, 12 October
- Finding and accessing data in the UK Data Service – 9 March, 28 April, 19 October
- Key issues in reusing data – 4 February, 4 May, 26 October
- Data management basics – 11 February, 12 May, 3 November
Research Support Hub: 2015 in review
A very Happy New Year to all our readers!
We’ve just received the WordPress 2015 annual report for the Research Support Hub.
There are some intriguing (if of dubious value) stats:
- The Hub’s busiest day was February 5th, with 448 views (mostly accounted for by Images of Research voting)
- The most popular day of the week for posting was Thursday (with 59 posts)
- The 2015-2016 PGR and ECR skills development programme attracted the most views in 2015, with Increasing your citation count and SPSS software now available in 2nd and 3rd place
- Facebook was the Hub’s top referring site
- Visitors came from 148 countries
BIS announces review of the REF
“Universities and Science Minister Jo Johnson today (16 December 2015) launched a UK-wide review of university research funding to cut red tape so that universities can focus more on delivering the world-leading research for which the UK is renowned.
Following the decision to protect the £4.7 billion annual science and research budget in real terms during this Parliament, the Research Excellence Framework (REF) review will help ensure the government gets the most return from its investment.
The review will be chaired by the President of the British Academy and former World Bank Chief Economist Lord Nicholas Stern.”
Read more here: Government launches review to improve university research funding
Piirus – connecting researchers
If you are looking for a new research partner or wishing to extend your research network then Piirus may the place to start.
Open to anyone with an academic email address, once you have signed up and entered your own details, Piirus enables you find other researchers with similar interests to your own. Think of it as a research dating service for potential collaborators!
Why not take a look? I’d be interested to hear how you get on.
Important: new open access policy for the University
At last week’s meeting of the University’s Research and Enterprise Committee, members approved a new open access policy for the University. Aligned with, and supporting, HEFCE’s open access policy for the REF, the University policy states:
The University supports the principle of open access and expects researchers to share their research outputs freely, subject to legal, ethical, commercial or contractual constraints.
From 1st April 2016:
• All researchers will record bibliographic details of their research outputs in NECTAR within three months of the date of acceptance for publication, presentation or other dissemination in the public arena.
• The authors of journal articles and conference proceedings will upload the accepted full text copies of their work to NECTAR within three months of acceptance for publication.
• The full content of other research outputs should be deposited In NECTAR as soon as possible.
• All full content will be made openly available immediately or following the expiry of an agreed embargo period.
The Metric Tide: Are you using bibliometrics responsibly?
Recent years have seen an increase in the use of metrics for research assessment. Whether using citation data to support REF scores, calculating an h-index to compare researchers or research groups, or choosing a journal according to its impact factor, researchers, their managers and their funders have become increasingly reliant on quantitative evaluation.
On the face of it, an h-index is an attractive proposition: just one number to sum up both the quantity and the quality of a researcher’s output. Likewise, a journal’s impact factor distils the reputation of the journal into a single metric. Unfortunately, for evaluating the quality of research, many would say that these are reductionist at best and, at worst, fundamentally flawed.
The future of printed academic books
If you haven’t previously read ‘The Conversation‘ then let me introduce you to this excellent blog with this post on the future of academic print books.
Written by Donald Barclay, Deputy University Librarian at the University of California Merced, the article highlights the impact of falling budgets and rising prices on academic book sales and proposes the open access monograph as a viable alternative. But first, he argues, academic distrust of digital publication has to be overcome…
Engineering seminar:
Submitted by Professor Stefan Kaczmarczyk
Title: The influence of probe fill factor during boiler tube inspection using electro-magnetic non-destructive testing
Speaker: Dr Jonhson Angelo, Federal University of ABC, Brazil/ Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Northampton
Date: Monday 23rd November 2015
Time: 13:00 – 14:00
Venue: NW101, Avenue Campus
The aim of this talk is to show the importance and influence of the probe fill factor during inspection of boiler tubes when using electromagnetic non-destructive testing techniques. This is demonstrated by the results of finite element (FE) modelling and simulation test.
UON Graduate School Blog 