Tag: Cardiff University

Cardiff hosting, and NPNR news

This is the week that both Mental Health Nurse Academics and the COCAPP team come to Cardiff. MHNAUK’s meeting on Friday will take place in the Council Chamber in the Main Building, which is really rather grand. Visiting COCAPPers can look forward to a more everyday venue for our Thursday meet-up. This will be in Eastgate House (which is where I’m based).

Other news of note in the world of mental health nursing education and research is the impending move of this autumn’s Network for Psychiatric Nursing Research conference from Oxford to Warwick. The annual NPNR bash has taken place in Oxford pretty much since it was launched in the 1990s. I gather from my Twitter-using pals who sit on the scientific and organising committees that we can expect a relocation for an event scheduled, this year, for September 5th and 6th. It occurs to me that Warwick University is well-placed for delegates travelling from all parts of the UK, and indeed from around the world.

Gold and green

Further to my earlier open access blogs, here and here, having finally worked my way through the unexpectedly heavy traffic around the University Hospital of Wales I spent the first part of today in an open access workshop, facilitated by colleagues from Cardiff University’s library and information services. I was struck by the speed with which things are changing. I learned that Cardiff researchers now have a good chance of securing University funding to support the open access publication of papers arising from RCUK-funded studies. Whether this applies to all papers submitted to all journals with all varieties of open access (‘gold’, ‘green’ or ‘hybrid’) I’m not sure about. I hope it does, because I’d hate to think that researchers end up making decisions on where to publish based solely on their need for financial support to cover their APCs.

I also learned that, as things stand, there is no University financial support for the open access publication of papers from projects completed with funding from the NIHR or NISCHR. This is because neither is a Research Council, even though both run highly competitive funding schemes of particular interest to health and social care researchers. Bids to both bodies can include requests for funds to cover APCs, but this is a cost which can quickly add up. If everyone adds APC fees to their grant proposals then fewer studies will be funded, as the money to support paid-for ‘gold’ open access publication has to come from somewhere. The cost-free ‘green’ open access model, using institutional repositories, is an option here: but generally I am, again, driven to the conclusion that APC tariffs urgently need to come down.

Getting back to it

IMG_1414A quick post following a half-term break. Cornwall proved to be a fine place to spend last week. It is, truly, a most beautiful part of the country. Here’s a photo of the beach at St Ives to prove it.

Now it’s back to it. This week I’m working on two projects, and in the case of one will hope, by Friday, to be clearer on local arrangements for making payments to service user researchers. There’s some work to be done on preparing NHS R&D applications, too. Over the next week or so I also need to put some time aside to respond to Cardiff University’s consultation on the reorganisation of schools within the College of Biomedical and Life Sciences. The idea has been formally proposed that the School of Nursing and Midwifery Studies (where I work) and the School of Healthcare Studies (home to the academic occupational therapists, physiotherapists, radiographers and operating department practitioners) might merge. A move of this type has been on the cards for some time, so no surprises there.

New year…

Cardiff University Colleges and SchoolsHappy new year. 2013 promises plenty. I’m committed to two externally funded research projects, collaborating with outstanding folk located both in, and out, of Cardiff University. In the fullness of time I’ll perhaps blog about these studies when there’s more to say. I’ll be supervising people working on their doctorates, and as always will be teaching and assessing across the range of academic levels. I’ll be working up grant applications (there’s one in the pot at the moment), writing papers (including the one I’ve mentioned before), and contributing to various types of ethics and scientific review processes. I also have a number of external examining roles to fulfil, at doctoral and pre-registration undergraduate level.

In the year ahead I suspect there will be some interesting organisational changes to adjust to as Cardiff University refashions itself, and as the new College and School structure (which I’ve reproduced to the left of this post, with an added oval to highlight where I work) takes shape. As it happens, the University is making headlines at the moment. Just before the Christmas and New Year break Cardiff’s collaboration with the Open University (and others) to develop ‘MOOCS’ (Massive Open Online Courses) was widely reported. As I understand it, MOOCS are free-to-access courses made available via the web to pretty much anyone with use of a computer and an internet connection. I’m not sure how, if at all, people are able to work towards achieving formal academic awards in this way but I very much like the idea of freely available knowledge. Meanwhile, in this week’s Times Higher Education there’s a report on the new Vice Chancellor’s plans to develop the University’s international presence.

REF 2014In 2013 there’s also the small matter of the Research Excellence Framework (REF). I think the REF (like its predecessor the Research Assessment Exercise, or the RAE) is a flawed process, but it remains a (very) big deal for the UK’s universities. In this cycle, formal submissions will be made at the end of the year. Panel members will then have their work cut out in 2014, reading and assessing the quality of outputs (typically, journal papers), judging the impact of completed research beyond the realms of academia (for example, on policy and practice), and reviewing the institutional environment for research activity. Universities will be ranked on the results, and money will flow (or not). For an ambitious, research-led, Russell Group university like Cardiff this is an exercise of great import. It’s also significant for the professions of nursing and midwifery, which have spent the last decades upping their evidence base. In the last RAE, the outcomes of which were made known at the end of 2008, nursing and midwifery research fared pretty well. Let’s hope this can be sustained.

Outside of work I’ll keep running, hoping to stay injury free. As a meticulous record keeper I track my miles. So far for 2013 it’s 22-and-a-bit, and the aim is to manage 1,000 in total. This I achieved in 2012, and more besides. There’s also an increasingly good chance that this year will see Cardiff City climb out of the Football League Championship. I’m liking this, and it’s something I follow (with season tickets) with one of my boys. And, for those interested in the health and well-being angle of all this, check out the work of Alan Pringle and his colleagues on using football as a means to promote mental health, particularly amongst young men. Alan gave a fantastic talk on this at last year’s Network for Psychiatric Nursing Research conference.

That’ll do for now, I think: enough of the rambling.