Supporting Libraries in Developing Countries, Academic Diversity and Nursing Leadership

The Elsevier Foundation is awarding $600,000 in new grants to 12 institutions from around the world whose initiatives promote the work of libraries and scholars in science, technology and medicine. The grants were announced on January 14.

The grant recipients have been selected from 250 applicants worldwide for their innovation and potential for impact in the developing world, academic workplace and nursing community. Since 2002, the Elsevier Foundation has awarded more than 60 grants worth millions of dollars to non-profit organizations working in these fields.

“We view each of these projects as an opportunity to partner with innovative organizations around the world, supporting their critical efforts to address the global nursing shortage, the role of women in science and the developing world’s access to research and health information,” said YS Chi, Vice Chairman of Elsevier and CEO of Science & Technology. “We are delighted by the breadth of the 2009 Foundation grant awards which promise to make both immediate and long term contributions to our science and health communities.”

The Foundation grants were awarded in three categories: Innovative Libraries, New Scholars and Nurse Faculty Leadership Development:

Innovative Libraries

Under the Innovative Libraries in Developing Countries program, six new grants are being awarded to institutions across Africa and Asia. The grants seek to demonstrate how information resources can be used to address a variety of development issues – emergency management, the environment, boosting authorship and research skills and the distribution of clinical care information.

• JINAN University Library, China: “Developing a Service-Oriented Database of Cases of Emergency Management.”
• Medical Library Association: “‘Librarians Without Borders’ E-Library Training Initiative Grant.”
• Library of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), Nepal: “Transformation of ICIMOD’s Traditional Library into a Mountain Learning and Information Centre.”
• Thai Nguyen University, Vietnam: “Supporting Research Communities in Writing, Publishing and Sharing Their Works in Thai Nguyen University and the Northern Mountainous Area of Vietnam.”
• Makerere University, Uganda: “Enhancing Access to Current Literature by Health Workers in Rural Uganda and Community Health Problem Solving.”
• Book Aid International: “Increasing Access to Relevant Health Information for Primary Healthcare Providers Through the Development of Local Resources and Effective Health Sections in Kenyan Public Libraries.”

New Scholars

Four new grants are being awarded to a range of international institutions pioneering new approaches to childcare, mentoring, networking, and policy advocacy. The grants seek to support scholars during the early stages of their demanding careers in science and technology:

• Third World Organization for Women in Science: “Women Scientists in the Developing World Awards.”
• University of Massachusetts Amherst: “STEM Family Travel Program.”
• The University of Groningen, the Netherlands: “Special Childcare Program.”
• University of California, Los Angeles: “Enhancing the Academic Climate for STEM Women Scholars through Family-Friendly Policies.”

Nurse Faculty Mentored Leadership Development

A new grant has been awarded to two institutions that support retaining and building the next generation of nurse faculty. The grant aims to alleviate the nurse faculty crisis by providing knowledge, skill development opportunities and support to retain new nurse educators who have transitioned into the role.

• Sigma Theta Tau International (STTI) and the International Council of Nurses (ICN): “The International Summit on Nurse Faculty Migration.”

Preparing nurse educators to confront a critical nurse shortage

The shortage of nurses in the United States could exceed one million by 2020, due largely to the scarcity of trained faculty, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association.

US nursing schools turned away more than 42,000 qualified applicants in 2006-07 because of shrinking nursing faculty, a lack of facilities, too few clinical training placements and limited funds, JAMA reported.

To help retain nurse faculty and prepare the next generation, the Elsevier Foundation awarded a $200,000 grant to the Sigma Theta Tau International Foundation for Nursing (STTI) – the honor society of nursing – to support the Nurse Faculty Mentored Leadership Development Program.

The pilot program kicked off April 17 with a three-day workshop at STTI’s headquarters in Indianapolis. Early career nurse educators with an advanced degree will get professional mentoring for 18 months from established nurse faculty leaders. Mentor/mentee pairs will come from different institutions.

Research shows that new faculty members who have worked successfully with a mentor have higher job satisfaction, with increased promotions and mobility than those without mentors. Mentored faculty are also more productive in obtaining competitive grants, leading professional organizations and publishing in scholarly books and journals.

A separate group of expert nurse program faculty designed the curriculum, which includes:

• Development of an individualized leadership progression plan
• Participation in online discussion forums with faculty
• Mentor/mentee collaboration to create an innovative educational project
• Dissemination of project results through the Virginia Henderson International Nursing Library

“The Elsevier Foundation understands the global nursing shortage can’t be successfully addressed without building and retaining the next generation of nurse faculty,” said David Ruth, Executive Director for the Elsevier Foundation. “Transitioning from nursing practice into a faculty role isn’t easy, so we hope our joint effort to expand mentoring programs can go a long way to help new nurse faculty succeed.”

Director of Strategy Nick Fowler addresses the challenges and future of UK research at the HEPI Autumn Conference

At the Autumn Conference of the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI), senior UK higher education leaders and policy makers gathered to zoom in on the Research Excellence Framework (REF), a new system for assessing research quality and determining research funding in the UK. REF is set to go live in 2014, and with SciVerse Scopus as the sole bibliometric provider, Elsevier will play a major role in what should be a driver of a dynamic and internationally competitive research sector. However, Elsevier’s role in measuring, managing and improving UK research goes far beyond the REF. As one of the conference’s main speakers, Director of Strategy Nick Fowler discussed Elsevier’s increasing involvement in the future of the UK’s research sector.

Fowler started his speech by referring to the report ‘International Comparative Performance of the UK Research Base - 2011’, that the Department for Business, Information and Skills commissioned from Elsevier and recently released. “One of the main conclusions of the report is that the UK is a global research leader, but its ability to sustain its position is far from inevitable against the backdrop of emerging research nations. While R&D spending and the number of researchers remain essentially flat in the UK, emerging players like China, India and Brazil are growing these critical research inputs rapidly. China now spends almost five times as much as the UK spends on research. Its spending is growing on average by 18% per year, more than twenty times faster than the UK. This explains why China has rapidly become the second largest source of scientific articles after the US, and is expected to become the world’s leader by 2020. Similarly, Brazil and India are growing their outputs at double-digit annual rates, and together they now publish almost as many articles as the UK.”

He continued: “So how can UK universities sustain and advance their positions in research in the face of these intensely competitive dynamics? There are four levers that institutions are applying:

• The first lever is to improve the institution’s funding win-rate. This could mean winning more from national sources, whether as institutional block grants from the REF, or via researchers’ competitive bids for grants.
• The second lever is to attract the best researchers, both from the UK and beyond, whether established or early career researchers.
• The third lever is to improve the efficiency of the research process to which funding and human capital are applied such as through collaboration.
• The fourth lever is to have better information about inputs, throughputs, and outputs to increase the ability to monitor and manage research performance. Better information about outputs and outcomes also helps universities demonstrate their strengths, and thereby improves their ability to compete for funding and talent.

To illustrate Elsevier’s ongoing involvement in strengthening the UK’s research sector, I’d like to expand on the fourth lever. Against the backdrop of intensifying international competition, UK universities lack robust information to manage their research activities even though they have performed extremely well historically. This was a conclusion of a JISC-funded study that Imperial College London conducted in collaboration with Elsevier last year. It found that universities and funding bodies lack standardised information to measure, monitor and manage their research activities. It found that universities have worked in isolation, re-inventing the wheel and missing opportunities to collaborate with each other, with funding bodies and with suppliers to implement robust indicators of their inputs, throughputs and outputs. This has given rise to inefficiencies in the research system. Universities also lack an objective basis upon which to compare themselves to inform their decision-making.

This is a remarkable situation. It is as if UK universities are vessels sailing on the Ocean of Research without nautical instruments to guide them. Meanwhile, conditions are becoming stormier and powerful well-fuelled new players have entered the race.

The JISC-funded study called for stronger integrated working between funders, universities and suppliers: over the past year significant progress has been made. For example, eight UK universities are now working in partnership with each other and with Elsevier on a voluntary, self-funded open project. The universities (Bristol, Cambridge, Imperial College London, Leeds, Oxford, Queen’s University Belfast, St Andrew’s, and UCL) comprise almost 40% of Research Council awards and account for almost 40% of UK-authored articles each year. The project aims to develop a broad set of metrics that can provide a holistic picture of an institution’s research activities in ways that are consistent and comparable. It is called Project Snowball because it aims to create a snowball effect: by building consensus on the metrics’ definitions, calculations and sources, it seeks to provide a core that others can bind onto over time. A report on Snowball’s progress is openly published. Further details about the metrics, definitions, and calculation methodologies will be made available for all to use in the coming weeks.

Of course, these metrics will need to be complemented by other types of information. Just as the recently-published BIS report used case studies of UK research strengths to add insights to data, Snowball metrics will benefit from other information to provide a more rounded picture, as for example case studies are being used by the Research Councils and by HEFCE to describe research impact. And even then, this information will need to be interpreted wisely: no amount of metrics or case studies can substitute for sound judgement. Metrics and case studies should inform judgement-based decision-making but should not replace it.

To compete effectively in the intensely competitive landscape of global research, UK universities will need to have better information to develop strategies that maximise their research outcomes and to leverage their inputs. They will need to invest in systems to deliver that information. They will then be better equipped to know where they are located in relation to one another and to get to their desired destination as the seas get rougher and more competitive. With robust information and the tools to deliver and query it, UK universities will be able to mitigate the risk of being cast adrift as their non-UK counterparts navigate themselves to safe harbours.”

The HEPI Autumn Conference

The Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) is the UK's only independent think tank devoted exclusively to higher education. Founded in 2002, its mission is to improve higher education in the UK by creating a better informed policy environment - informed by research and analysis, as well as drawing on experiences from other countries. HEPI runs a range of events selected to maximise their effectiveness in reaching out to their target audiences, among which the annual HEPI Autumn Conference.

Research Excellence Framework – driving a competitive UK research sector

This year’s HEPI Autumn Conference – Assessing impact, rewarding excellence: REF 2014 and beyond – took place at the Royal Society of London on 22 November and centered around the Research Excellence Framework (REF), a new system for assessing quality and determining research funding, which is set to go live in 2014. The UK funding bodies want the REF to become a driver of a dynamic and internationally competitive research sector “that makes a major contribution to economic prosperity, national wellbeing and the expansion and dissemination of knowledge.” In September this year, four UK Higher Education Funding Bodies, representing England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, had decided to use Elsevier’s SciVerse Scopus as the sole bibliometric provider for the 2014 REF. At the HEPI Autumn Conference a range of senior HE leaders and policy-makers, who have been central to shaping the strategic direction of the new funding framework, gathered to discuss the process of moving into the implementation phase of the REF.

Elsevier and Carbon War Room to Unlock Renewable Fuel Market for Airlines and Investors

Sir Richard Branson has unveiled the world's first online market information service which analyses the leading companies set to produce commercial scale renewable fuel for aviation.

RenewableJetFuels.org is a joint initiative between Elsevier and Carbon War Room, a non-profit founded by Branson that harnesses the power of entrepreneurs to unlock gigaton solutions to climate change. The initiative was officially announced on 5 December during a press conference at the Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa, which included Jan Paul Grolle, Managing Director Alternative Energy at Elsevier.

Launched and maintained by Carbon War Room and powered by Elsevier Biofuel TechSelect™, RenewableJetFuels.org will scrutinise renewable jet fuel supply chain companies. The database is designed to contain the top 2000 bioenergy-related companies. Investors, engineers, operators and fuel buyers can use this data to compare suppliers on technical performance, economic viability, carbon footprint, and overall sustainability.

Initial results show that only one third of the companies claiming to have the potential to deliver large-scale amounts of low carbon renewable jet fuel are credible from an economic, scalable and sustainability perspective, in their current state. In the next five years, some renewable jet fuel companies could be producing enough renewable fuel to replace 10-20% of the fuel of a typical mid-sized airline.

"One important way to reduce carbon output from airlines all over the world is to have viable renewable alternatives to jet fuel. The Carbon War Room saw that there was a gap in information regarding the available options and an opportunity to mobilize airlines to come together to support the most promising solutions through investment," said Sir Richard Branson. "This unique approach by the Carbon War Room and Elsevier is providing a wonderful platform for airlines and renewable jet fuel suppliers to come together to accelerate the delivery of cleaner approaches to air travel."

Elsevier Biofuel TechSelect™, which constitutes the main database behind RenewableJetfuels.org, was designed to contain up to 2,000 bioenergy supply chain companies, incorporating a range of technologies including waste-to-energy and algae. Hundreds of interviews with decision makers in alternative energy brought to light the lack of reliable information that keeps viable technologies from being implemented. This is especially the case in the biofuels industry. By offering information selected, structured, and reviewed by experts, Elsevier aims to remove those barriers.

"The development of tools such as Elsevier Biofuel Techselect™ illustrate the transition of our company from being a content provider to an information solutions provider, and the increased relevance of our products and services to researchers and professionals in the corporate world," said Ron Mobed, CEO Science & Technology, Elsevier. "And it is especially exciting to make these tools available to support the deployment of alternative energy technologies and help address issues that truly matter on a global scale. No single organization can tackle these issues alone, and by partnering with Carbon War Room we can make our information resources available to corporate decision makers who need high quality information to make well-informed decisions."

Eleven Women Scientists Announced as Winners of the Elsevier Foundation OWSD Awards

The Elsevier Foundation, TWAS — the academy of sciences for the developing world, and the Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World (OWSD) recognized 11 women scientists from Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean for their research excellence. The announcement was made at the International Symposium on Women in Science and Engineering (WISE 2011), held in conjunction with the International Year of Chemistry 2011 and hosted by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation and Institut Kimia Malaysia (IKM) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Each winner will received a cash prize of $5,000.

"Once again, the standard of the winners selected for the OWSD Awards for Young Women Scientists from the Developing World has been outstanding," said Professor Fang Xin, President of OWSD. "For us, this is not a surprise, as we are well aware of the excellent contributions that women are making to science. The aim of the OWSD Awards, therefore, is to honor the work of these young researchers, bringing it to the attention of the scientific and policy-making communities in their countries, and to highlight their successes so that they may act as role models to other girls and young women who might be considering a career in science."

Lubna Tahtamoouni, winner from The Hashemite University in Jordan said: "Over the years, I came to recognize that it is difficult for women to do science since they have to juggle their career, marriage, motherhood and other social obligations. Winning such an award made me more confident about my decision of pursuing a career in science. Women need recognition, especially young women to give them that head start and confidence. This award is celebrating women."

Through a grant from the Elsevier Foundation, the OWSD Awards for Young Women Scientists from the Developing World were expanded to cover three disciplines in each region: Biology, Chemistry and Physics/Mathematics. The grant was made as part of the Elsevier Foundation New Scholars program, which supports programs for women scholars during the early stages of demanding careers in science and technology.

"We know from experience how important it is to fight the steady loss of talented women in science caused through lack of support during critical family building years, lack of networking opportunities and mentorship — or simply a lack of recognition and opportunities," said David Ruth, Executive Director for the Elsevier Foundation, remarked. "Congratulations are in order to our eleven winners and the excellent research they have undertaken over the past years. Each of these scientists represents a powerful role model to colleagues and the next generation of women scientists in the developing world."