A new global health blog, just for you…

In a previous blog I linked to a piece by Guardian health journalist Sarah Boseley, in which she says that if you’ve got a good health story for her just pick up the phone and pitch it. Even better, Sarah has now started a new Global Health Blog on the Guardian website, so there is an even more obvious outlet for her to use your materials – and somewhere for you to comment on other stories, from any and every development angle. This week Sarah wrote about microbicides to prevent HIV infection, noting that although a major disappointment in progress was all over the news in December, the Wellcome Trust has just given a grant of £2.7 million to other researchers to look at a new angle on microbicides. Check it out!

Getting health research into policy and practice

The DFID-funded Research Programme Consortia working on sexual and reproductive health, HIV and AIDS are trying to help solve some complicated problems. It’s not just that the drug treatments are new and changing all the time. There are many different potential strategies for preventing infection too, some for babies, some for children, some for adults. In addition to treating the disease – and the other diseases that so often co-infect people with HIV – they are trying to change behaviour and influence policy. A very tall order.

There are many peer-reviewed health journals, but there isn’t such a well-worn route to sharing the lessons that these consortia have learned about that other very tricky area – getting policy into practice. Jo Crichton from the Realising Rights RPC and Sally Theobald of Realising Rights and Addressing the Balance of Burden in AIDS (ABBA) recently co-edited an issue of ID21’s insights to highlight this very thing.

The insights issue focuses on innovative approaches to communicating research on sexual and reproductive health, HIV and AIDS globally. The articles are all based on case studies presented during a meeting at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, in the UK, in May 2009. (See also the briefing paper from that workshop, written by Sally, Jo and Olivia Tulloch from ABBA and Kate Hawkins from Realising Rights.)

Politics influences how open decision-makers are to using evidence-based research in formulating policy or making decisions. For example, in the field of sexual and reproductive health, social or religious attitudes and interest groups play a powerful role in politics and can encourage decision-makers to ignore new research evidence. The role of research in policy processes can also be hampered by weak capacity to assess and use research evidence or a lack of appreciation of how research can identify health problems and unmet needs, develop effective interventions, and improve the accessibility and targeting of services.

Researchers from many different research projects contributed articles to this issue, including Sinead Delany-Moretlwe, Eleanor Hutchinson, Johnny Gyapong, Wambura Mwita, Rose Oronje, Sabina Rashid, Nana Ole Lithur, and Kate Hawkins.

New science policy blog at ‘New Scientist’

Roger Highfield, editor of New Scientist, has started a new blog, ‘The S Word’, covering science and policy.  Science policymaking for international development hasn’t appeared yet, but it’s early days. Log in – or perhaps that should be blog in – comment on his blogs, and send him your material!

From the blog:

Welcome to The S Word! This new online forum is where you’ll find New Scientist’s coverage of science and policy – getting under the skin of politics to show how science is changing our world.

Why did we call it The S Word? Despite the central role that science plays in our world, politicians often seem reluctant to engage with it – in fact, many seem keen to avoid mentioning it at all. That results in policy-making that flies in the face of scientific evidence and serves us all badly.

New Scientist is among those who hope to persuade politicians that “the s word” belongs at the heart of political debate. This blog is our contribution to that effort.

WikiHoles – Plugging the information gaps

Those of us with a good internet connection and questions to ask often turn to Wikipedia. It’s a useful reference tool in a number of ways, and is pretty reliable if you want to know how many provinces there are in Panama (nine, and five indigenous Comarcas), the demonym of people from St. Kitts (Kittitians), or the official name of a country, properly spelled (Republic of The Gambia, with a capital T). But there are big gaps. ‘Food miles’ has its own page, but ‘Fair miles’  does not. The article on the English town of Lyme Regis (population 4,500) is 2,525 words long,  but the article on Paramaribo (population 250,000), the capital city of Suriname, is 607 words long . Lyme is a very special place, it’s true, but Paramaribo certainly can’t be fully or fairly described in 607 words.

Mark Graham, a Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, has just blogged about and done some great maps illustrating the huge disparity in ‘geotagged’ articles on Wikipedia. He concedes that not all articles are appropriate for geotagging, but still – the relative lack of information about many regions is astonishing.

While the United States has almost 90,000 articles, Anguilla has 4, and most small island nations and city states have less than 100. He says that ‘Almost all of Africa is poorly represented in Wikipedia. Remarkably there are more Wikipedia articles written about Antarctica than all but one of the fifty-three countries in Africa (or perhaps even more amazingly, there are more Wikipedia articles written about the fictional places of Middle Earth and Discworld than about many countries in Africa, the Americas and Asia).’

Mark’s map of the number of articles per country really makes you think (and on his site he also maps for area and population).

Inevitably one of the reasons behind this disparity is the poor internet connectivity and lack of computers in most of the under-represented countries. According to the Internet World Stats website , Africa has 14.6% of the world’s population, but only 3.9% of its internet users.

While the number of articles about Africa and developing countries in general will grow as access increases, do make a space in your communications strategy to make sure that your partners’ institutions, their partners, and the key facts about your research issues have all got a home on Wikipedia. When a country has only got four articles, even one new one increases its presence by 20%!

New guidance on research communications

DFID is a recognised leader among donors in its efforts to support and develop better research communications. A recent report ‘Learning Lessons on Research Uptake and Use: Donor review on research communication’ looked across a range of donors for examples of good practice and emerging lessons. Its aim was to see what these donors’ priorities and strategies had in common, so that we could begin to harmonise and make the most of the tactics and techniques that we’ve learned do work.

While examples of good practice and innovative initiatives were found, there was still an overwhelming lack of strategic approaches: ‘Despite many promising initiatives, most donors do not appear to have a strategic approach to research communication, and do not seem to make best use either of their own or other donors’ experiences. Responsibility for research communication is generally dispersed between different departments within an agency, which are at times not always aware of each others’ programmes. These range from embedding research to supporting specific research communication programmes. There is varied understanding of the term “research communication”.’

There is also a continuing emphasis by both funders and researchers on the supply side – producing and disseminating publications – with a weak understanding of and capacity to support the demand side of research communication.

For its part, DFID is trying to give research projects more guidance about research communication. A Guidance Note on Research Communication for DFID-Funded Research that was developed to help the newest research programme consortia is online now in R4D’s Communications Corner. Research programme consortia will be expected to employ skilled senior communications specialists, and to follow the 10 Guiding Principles outlined in the notes.

CGIAR Science Communications Awards 2009

Do you know of an outstanding bit of science communication by a CGIAR project or partner? If so, why don’t you give them a pat on the back? Nominations for their annual award are due 30 November, 2009.

CGIAR’s Award for Outstanding Communications is designed to highlight the importance of communicating the results of scientific research. It will be awarded to a communications campaign that has effectively and accurately communicated an agriculture science initiative to a target audience. Communications professionals, scientists, researchers, extension workers or others working in this area are eligible for nomination.
Nominees may be individuals or teams working for a CGIAR Center, Challenge Program or a partner institution/organisation that has worked or is working with a CGIAR Center or Challenge Program. The medium for communications may take any form including print, broadcast, video, website, blog, or podcast. The nomination must be endorsed by a CGIAR Center Director general and the communication must have taken place between January 1, 2008 and June 30, 2009. All nominations received will be reviewed by a panel of communications professionals against the following criteria:

• Campaign design in terms of promoting CGIAR objectives
• Campaign outcomes and impact such as audience reached, shift in behaviour or change in policy or practice
• Creativity and innovation in communications

Several of the other CGIAR Science Awards also have communications themes, rewarding good partnerships, support teams, scientific articles, and journalism:

• Promising Young Scientist
• Outstanding Scientist
• Outstanding Scientific Support Team
• Outstanding Partnership
• Outstanding Scientific Article
• Outstanding Communications
• Outstanding Agricultural Journalism

Capturing and using effective information exchange patterns

Few logframes effectively capture all – or even many – of the ways in which researchers are exchanging information. The absence of this element results in high strategic losses to research projects. Without planning to ensure that all members of the project are clear about when and how they are contributing to different parts of the wider communications strategy, then many – particularly younger and less experienced researchers – will not be able to make the most of opportunities. Equally disappointing is that during evaluations research projects will not be getting credit for much of the good communications work that they do, because it is not captured in the planning, monitoring and evaluation reports.

A new report from the Research Informatin Network (RIN) and the British Library tracked how life sciences researchers exchanged information, and what implications this has for research funders. Although it did not look at research in international development – which has its own additional communications challenges – Patterns of information use and exchange: Case studies of researchers in the life sciences highlights many findings that are common to all research. They found a great deal of information exchange going on, but also found that different fields of research have distinct patterns of exchange, both formal and informal, and that these patterns are intricately structured – the report describes them as ‘baroque’. No simple linear or cyclical structure prevailed. The authors’ key conclusion is that ‘the policies and strategies of research councils and information service providers must be informed by an udnerstanding of the exigencies and practices of research communities if they are to be effective in optimising the use and exchange of information, and in ensuring that this is scientifically productive and cost-effective’.

RIN is about to fund a second series of case studies that analyses in detail how humanities researchers discover, use, create and manage their information resources. It will aim to:

• develop an in-depth understanding of humanities researchers’ approaches to discovering, accessing, analysing, managing, creating, refining and disseminating information resources;
• provide comparisons between the behaviours and needs of researchers in different subjects/disciplines, research teams or institutional contexts; and
• identify barriers to more effective performance in using, creating, managing and exchanging information resources, and suggest how they might be overcome.

Given that information exchange works so differently in each field, it is hard to imagine how research councils can respond to the needs of researchers until those researchers are able to describe effectively their own patterns – what they look like, how they work, and why particular areas are more effective in influencing policy than others. What would an investment in understanding and mapping your own project’s or field’s patterns add to the creation of a meaningful and effective communications strategy, and the logframe objectives and indicators to go with it?

How – and how well – do the UK media report climate change?

If you are in the UK you will be aware of much recent controversy about the reporting of climate change. When the science is firmly behind the conclusion that human activity is affecting our climate, how should the media deal with demands to ‘present both sides of the story’.  An event at the Science Museum’s Dana Centre on 24 November in London will discuss this issue, and participants will include Antonia Senior, Editor of Eureka, The Times, Tim Gallagher, Executive Producer, Sky News, Martin Wright, Editor in Chief, Green Futures, Forum for the Future
Ben Jackson, Environment Editor, The Sun, and James Randerson, Editor of environment.guardian.co.uk.

Find booking information here.

Open Access – What can DFID do?

There was a great deal of interest in the recent ‘Open Access Week’. DFID-funded researchers are asking themselves both what is expected of them and what they could do.

Towards a DFID Research Policy on Open Access, a recent report by Peter Ballantyne for DFID, scopes how DFID Research could take forward an open access policy that will lead to greater public access to the research outputs it finances. It is not a policy for DFID; it provides some building blocks for such a policy.

The report provides a snapshot of the current situation across a wide range of projects. It is based on a series of face-to-face and electronic exchanges with people involved in research access and communication. It also draws on the large online literature and debate – but can hardly do justice to all the richness encountered.

Ballantyne highlights some open-access views and concerns among DFID research partners, points to a few cases and examples, and summarises ways DFID Research could make a difference:

1. Take a broad ‘open knowledge’ perspective. It is about more than journal articles.

2. In general:

• Require systematic deposit of outputs and metadata in open-archiving systems and repositories, including in a ‘UKPubDev Central’.
• Require appropriate acknowledgement of DFID funding.
• Encourage use of ‘open licenses’ that recognise authorship and enable re-use.
• Encourage use of open formats and standards.
• Encourage the development of open platforms and initiatives.

3. For different categories of outputs:

• Encourage publication in open-access journals (or hybrid journals).
• Provide funds for any open-access charges.
• Encourage authors and publishers to license articles for re-use, with attribution.
• Establish a complete ‘UKPubDev Central’ repository of DFID-supported outputs.
• Capture metadata centrally.
• Deposit outputs in proper institutional or subject repositories.
• Require that outputs and metadata acknowledge DFID sponsorship.
• Require that significant web content is permanently archived and accessible.
• Encourage the use of social media to report and communicate research.
• Require that projects develop a data curation and accessibility plan.
• In health and medicine, DFID to join the UK PubMed Central (UKPMC), adopting its policies on deposit and licenses already established.

4. In addition:

• Adapt DFID research contracts to mandate these provisions.
• Require each funding proposal to present an ‘accessibility plan’ or framework.
• Include funds for open access in proposed budgets.
• Include accessibility in regular reports of projects.
• Encourage content contribution to any specialised repositories or services.
• Support preferential access initiatives for developing countries.
• Support open-access journal publishing initiatives in developing countries.
• Contribute to awareness-raising efforts that explain open access and how it helps DFID and its partners achieve their scientific and developmental goals.
• Engage other research funders.
• Create an ‘open access to R4D’ fund to support and recognise initiatives.

An outstanding question is if and how such a policy should be applied retrospectively. It is important that current workflows and behaviours are quickly changed to ensure that all future outputs are captured and can be accessed for posterity. But actions are also needed across the community to ensure that what has already been created will remain accessible.

Explosive adventures in podcasting

‘It’s more complicated that that’ must be the official war cry of scientists and researchers. I have a great deal of sympathy for you, having read some brutal misrepresentations of interesting work. Sometimes it’s not so much distortion or inaccuracy, but simply the soul-destroying moment when someone’s work is presented without any of the excitement that must inspire them as a researcher.

So here’s a bit of inspiration from the chemistry team at the University of Nottingham. Admittedly, it helps considerably if your work includes lots of opportunities to blow things up (on purpose).

In September, 2007 Nottingham Science City took the bold decision to appoint a filmmaker-in-residence, Brady Haran, which led to Test Tube. He was determined to show science in a new light – warts and all. ‘I didn’t just want pretty pictures or a constant stream of “breakthroughs”, he said. ‘I wanted to show what real scientists are like and how they work. Along with the spectacular, this can include disappointments, hardship or just some hard slog on a tedious experiment.’

Remember that periodic table that you probably learned at school, even if you didn’t go on to study science at a higher level? It seems to have grown since my day, but I will be relearning it now, because the Nottingham team have made a video for every element in the table, and I’m going to watch them all. Not today, but it’s very handy to have such a large selection on hand, just waiting for that moment when you’re trying to avoid a really tedious bit of work yourself.

One of the greatest charms of these videos – apart from the delightful Professor Martyn Poliakoff’s genuine mad-scientist hair and fabulous ties – is that they aren’t overplanned. They don’t try to tell you everything there is to know about each element, but you are still left thinking ‘hmmm, I never knew that’. And they keep you coming back for more. Two of my favourites are Sodium and Potassium.

But they aren’t doing these videos just to make you jealous that your job isn’t quite so volatile. There is a very interesting explanation of this year’s Nobel prize for chemistry, and one of the team celebrate having a paper published in a peer-reviewed journal by explaining to viewers what it’s all about.

There’s even an international development angle, when Pete Licence (who really likes to blow things up) travels to Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia, where he is Adjunct Professor and lectures on sustainability and green chemistry.