Opening up policy

This blog post was written by James Lush, the Biochemical Society’s Policy Manager

I’ve written a post at the Society of Biology’s (more public-focussed) blog on ‘Opening up policy’, in which I touch on participation, the representativeness of public samples, opening up democratically, social considerations and engaging with experts.

You can read it here.

Returning role models

This blog post was written by James Lush, the Biochemical Society’s Policy Officer

I write this (referring to yesterday as I couldn’t post it then) whilst sitting in one of Bath’s many fine pubs (I recommend a spot next to the fire in the Pulteney Arms, next to Henrietta Park), reflecting on today’s inaugural Daphne Jackson Trust (DJT) Research Conference. It is often remarked that the Trust does wonderful work helping women (and, since 2003, men too) return to SET careers following careers breaks. As it celebrates its 20th anniversary, with its profile ever rising under the leadership of the charismatic Dr Katie Perry, the Trust is putting more emphasis on demonstrating the research output of its fellows. This, Katie told me, is the best way of getting buy-in from the higher echelons of university management, and also reminds the scheme’s advocates – such as myself – that the Trust’s aims are not only extremely valuable at an individual level, but also for the UK science base. I’ll not go into the issues around the benefits of operating in diverse research teams here, but needless to say the DJT schemes certainly contribute in this way, if only at a relatively low level (for now) considering the number of fellowships available. With the conference showcasing the research of fellows from more areas of SET than I am usually accustomed to seeing, I personally found the day very interesting, and it was fantastic to see such a great turn-out.

Whilst in conversation with Professor Alistair Fitt (Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University and a mathematician by research interest) and Professor Rob Eason (a Trustee of the DJT and deputy head of school in the Optoelectronics Research Centre at the University of Southampton), we noted that the balance of current fellows seems weighted towards biologists. We speculated that this was probably because there are more women (whilst the scheme is open to men and women, women are more likely to have a break to return from) from a bioscience background who had a research career to ‘return’ to. The percentage of female A-level physics students has lagged at around one in five for the past quarter century. Nevertheless, schemes such as the DJT fellowships are contributing to an increasing bank of role models (for more on this theme see last week’s post on Ada Lovelace Day) to help inspire the next generation of women to pursue research careers, as Daphne Jackson – herself a physicist – did. I hope that this, combined with the cultural changes which should accelerate as this issue continues to be discussed, will make a difference borne out by the numbers in years to come. One such role model on display at the conference was Dr Tzanka Kokalova, after whose presentation it was remarked that she might well end up with a Nobel Prize should her research in nuclear physics bring the ‘right’ results. Having given up physics at 16 (like many others I never had a specialist physics teacher due to the national shortage) much of the science was beyond me, but Dr Kokalova’s engaging personality made her an interesting speaker and certainly someone to look out for.

All in all, the day represented a successful divergence of the DJT’s programme of activities. I look forward to next year’s event (which will hopefully give me a chance to explore another of the UK’s lovely cities outside of London!) and to hearing more interesting research stories from engaging returners.

Athena SWAN awards need more judges

This blog post was written by James Lush, the Biochemical Society’s Policy Officer

The Athena SWAN Charter is rising in profile all the time, especially now that research funding is starting to be dependent on institutions possessing the associated awards. The Equality Challenge Unit, who administer the scheme, expect a considerable increase in applications for the next round of awards, which will be judged in early 2013.

Athena SWAN awards are awarded to universities or individual departments who demonstrate a commitment to embedding best practise regarding gender equality, with a focus on STEM subjects. To date, only two Gold applications (Silver and Bronze awards may also be applied for) have been successful – the Chemistry departments at the Universities of York and Edinburgh are invited to take a bow.

My experience of sitting on a judging panel in the previous round was very positive. There is a time commitment – I may have been slowed down by the fact that it was my first time – up to eight applications are discussed by each panel, and these fairly weighty documents must be read in advance in preparation for a day-long panel discussion session in London. In return, you get expenses paid, lunch (featuring sushi when I attended) and an invite to the awards ceremony. Crucially, however, you also get an insight into the practises of a variety of universities and departments – best practise to learn from and a closer look at the more dubiously received policies that some institutions have in place. For panellists based in universities, this can be a useful way of reflecting on their own institutions.

I have written fairly extensively on the subject of gender equality in science, both in this blog and in our members’ magazine, The Biochemist. But it is through respected and practical schemes such as the Athena SWAN Charter (which the Biochemical Society co-funds) that the difference is really made.

If you have an awareness of the issues facing women in STEM and are interested in becoming a panellist, please email athenaswan@ecu.ac.uk to sign up or ask for more details. Panellists are taken from a wide range of backgrounds and men are especially invited to step forward, as they are currently in the minority on judging panels.

Women in Science debated in the House of Commons

This blog post was written by James Lush, the Biochemical Society’s Policy Officer

Yesterday, Valerie Vaz, MP for Walsall South, organised an adjournment debate on women in science [transcript here]. I recommend you read it. She set out clearly what many others fail to do: that the matter of equality and diversity is not only a social justice issue, but also of vital importance to our competitiveness, and the government needs to do more about it.

Ms Vaz, a Biochemistry graduate, referred to a recent survey run by the Biochemical Society, which sought to bring to light the main problems facing our members, and some solutions to these. Issues associated with having a family – including childcare and the detrimental effects of taking maternity leave or working flexibly/part time within the traditional academic career and funding structures, featured highly in the responses. Furthermore, more female than male academic staff are on fixed-term contracts, and Ms Vaz reported that the gap is increasing.

Such issues are a considerable problem at an individual level, but also pose a great risk to our competitiveness, as diversity in research (as well as a well-motivated community) is benficial for research and innovation. Within academia, some universities and departments are doing a lot to address these imbalances, as I was recently exposed to when I joined an Athena SWAN judging panel for the first time. However, I also realised that some don’t “get it”.

Accountability

If we are to be an ‘innovation leader’ and secure the future strength of our science base, we need action now.  I hope to raise this at Monday’s Science Question Time event on science and growth. Mr Willetts has shown signs that he buys into his role in solving the problems (attending the debate was a good sign), and said yesterday that he is to be accountable for mainstreaming the expertise developed by the UKRC, which used to be funded by the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills. Willetts points to his direction to the Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering to instigate a new diversity programme (the subject of the last Policy Lunchbox event). However, as the Royal Society of Chemistry points out, the funding for these programmes is relatively small. He needs to be doing more to promote change, and develop clear targets and a strategy. But I, and others, aren’t sure he gets the whole picture.

@jlush2 thank you. I think you are right.

—
Meg Munn (@MegMunnMP) June 14, 2012

Final note

Mr Willetts took the opportunity the debate presented to draw attention to BIS support for Vitae, which provides careers support for researchers. He highlighted its role in helping postdoctoral researchers, that oft-neglected community, and his acknowledgement of their need for support is welcome. However, Vitae itself may be heading the way of the UKRC, as the latest Research Fortnight cover story reports: ‘Funding councils throw Vitae £3m lifeline – But careers body still loses more than half its core funding’. Indeed, one of the activities that will lose core funding, RF reports, is the GRADschools programme for postgraduate researchers. Maybe not something to be shouting about then.

Further reading: MPs debate women in STEM (Campaign for Science and Engineering blog)

Improving diversity and tackling inequality in science

This is an edited version of a post which first appeared at the British Ecological Society’s blog

Equality and diversity in science was the focus of last week’s Policy Lunchbox, run at Charles Darwin House by the Biochemical Society and British Ecological Society.

Sarah Hawkes, Head of Scientific Engagement at the Royal Society (RS), gave a presentation about her work on the Society’s new four-year programme (scroll down), which focuses on removing the barriers to increasing diversity in the scientific workforce.

The science sector in the UK – and the RS itself – have been the subject of criticism for the notable lack of women amongst their ranks, particularly in more senior positions. In the UK, men are six times more likely than women to work in science, technology, engineering or maths (STEM) subjects, and of the 46 Fellows appointed at the RS in 2012, only two were women.

The RS’s new programme, funded by the UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, aims to address this gender imbalance – as well as tackling other issues of diversity incorporating ethnicity, disability and socio-economic status – across both academia and industry. The idea is to learn from and build upon the number of equality initiatives which already exist to work towards three objectives:

1. Defining and understanding the scientific workforce;
2. Identifying barriers to entry and progression within the scientific work force, which a view to removing them, and;
3. In the long-term, increasing the diversity of the scientific workforce.

The programme will involve data gathering and a large scale policy study, significant work to engage with the scientific community, organising diversity events and activities, and engaging with the Athena SWAN initiative (which the Biochemical Society co-funds) and actors within education.

The scheme has strong backing from Sir Paul Nurse, PRS, who made a statement recently saying that “we must have an environment in which all scientists, including those from previously underrepresented groups, have an equal chance to excel”.

Much of the work so far has been to establish the programme and begin to embed it within the RS’s work. An initial scoping study has been carried out to identify existing data on the diversity of the scientific workforce and knowledge gaps that need to be filled. As part of this work, the programme is exploring the possibility of joining up existing datasets to reveal long-term trends, which may indicate whether the suggestion of some commentators – that it is ‘just a matter of time’ before equality will come about in science anyway – is true (I would propose that it certainly won’t any time soon, without more significant intervention).

A consultation and engagement conference held at the end of March also provided vital feedback from the scientific community, identifying the barriers and issues people working in the field experience. Areas including careers guidance, career trajectories, improving awareness of STEM careers, the importance of role models and widening Athena SWAN were suggested and will be used to shape the RS programme’s work. Further consultation and a large scale policy study this summer will also investigate whether the diversity issues in science are replicated in other sectors and help identify evidence to make a ‘business case’ for improving diversity. This is an increasing focus in Europe too, as the recent Gendera conference brought to light.

Consideration will also be given to different measures of ‘excellence’ within science, as women are particularly affected by the challenge of maintaining a reputation through publications. This is due to factors including maternity leave and the potential loss of association with a publication record if names are changed in marriage.

The programme will focus initially on the academic sector but, building on Sarah’s previous experience working on the Athena SWAN Charter, it is hoped the RS programme will collaborate with the Charter to broaden its scope beyond universities to pilot work in research institutes and, perhaps in the future, industry. This will also help any best practices from industry be absorbed more widely. Unilever, for example, drew praise at the 2011 European Gender Summit for its active approach to diversity.

Of course, in addition to reaching out to pursue diversity externally, the RS must address the significant gender imbalance within its own Fellowship which, in the last 10 years, has elected only 43 women as Fellows out of a total of 438 (at the Biochemical Society, we acknowledge a similar problem with our awards, which we are working to address). Although low, this is an improvement compared to previous decades and now with the significant support of Sir Paul, Sarah feels progress will be made faster. A major barrier to overcome is the fact that Fellows are elected based on nominations by existing Fellows, which means the demographic is likely to perpetuate without interventions.

Sarah suggested that Learned Societies can help the RS programme, and more broadly make progress with addressing diversity issues, by participating in satellite expert groups which the programme is hoping to establish and informing Sarah of their own diversity initiatives, or providing examples of role models and case studies. There may also be the opportunity to work collaboratively, to run joint mentoring schemes for example, and the RS may provide some funding for this. This is definitely worth keeping an eye out for.

More details of the RS’s work on equality and diversity are available on their website. Our thanks again to Sarah for giving such an interesting presentation, which is available here, and for dealing with all of our questions, especially the toughies from me!

Challenges of journal access in Africa

This blog post was written by James Lush, the Biochemical Society’s Policy Officer

Earlier this month, the Biochemical Society hosted the Publishers for Development (PfD) meeting entitled (deep breath!) Getting Research to Researchers in Developing Countries – Examples from East and Southern Africa, The Complex Picture of Availability, Access and Use as part of our support for capacity building. Representatives of several major publishing houses came together with a variety of experts and those working on the front line of access – from both the UK and Africa – at Charles Darwin House to discuss the unique challenges of journal access.

To very briefly summarise, we heard that the key issues in African tertiary education institutions are the lack of:

• bandwidth
• awareness of availability
• information literacy
• knowledge of what counts as scholarly
• communication with and appreciation of libraries.

It may come as a surprise that these five main problems of access do not actually include not having the rights to see publications. Kondwani Wella, Librarian at the Kamuzu College of Nursing (University of Malawi), confirmed this, saying that access itself is actually “not too bad”. This is thanks in part to programmes from organisations like the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (one of the partners behind PfD), the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers, Research4Life and EIFL, although awareness of programmes is not as universal as might be hoped. Kondwani told us about the roots of this problem; highlighting a lack of librarian awareness of the value of resources held, as well as a lack of respect for (or in some cases, a complete lack of) librarians in institutions. Such problems can be tackled at a local level through collaborations and training schemes, with particular success when principals (vice-chancellors) are engaged. Organisations like the Association of Commonwealth Universities (the other key partner behind PfD) are also involved with this effort. However, fundamentally, Kondwani noted that if journals are not available to researchers and students in an online format that works for Africa, long-term, sustainable access will not ever result.

Bandwidth

The complex design of publishers’ websites is a significant problem, hindering usability for inexperienced African users and also dramatically increasing the time it takes for homepages to load. The key issue in this regard is with internet speed, or the lack of it. Alan Jackson from Aptivate told us that in order to provide a good web experience, pages should take no longer than 10 seconds to load. Given the limited bandwidth available for users at African universities, he estimates that the maximum size a page should be is 25kB (explanation here). Crucially, however, numerous publishers break this golden rule; Science, for example, weighs in at 72kB. Aptivate’s website has some useful tips for designing low bandwidth pages here. One successful solution we heard about is the adaptation of mobile website platforms to work as low-bandwidth versions. Cambridge University Press has implemented this system, creating this fast-loading homepage. The website detects whether the user is using a PC or mobile phone and adjusts the screen size accordingly. This dramatically increases usability.

Improving access makes an enormous difference to the professional lives of individuals; how they work and think, their research impacts and their reputation – and the reputation of their environment. For researchers in developing countries to succeed in research on the global stage, the challenges are many. But creating usable interfaces seems a simple place to start.

You can read more about the rest of the meeting in the PfD press release that followed the event, and on their website. They can also be contacted via Twitter.

Update 08/05/2012
PfD have just launched their Bandwidth Challenge, using a quote from this very blog…

Science placements and social mobility

 

This blog post was written by James Lush, the Biochemical Society’s Policy Officer

On Friday 19 August I went to a meeting at the Science Council with the Social Mobility Foundation (SMF), an organisation which helps school children (approximately 650 this year) from low-income backgrounds get into high quality universities and jobs. Their work relies on both a network of mentors (who email support and advice through the decision periods around AS and A-level) and also organisations being willing to take in these students for a week of work experience before their A-level year. In law, banking and accountancy, we were told that securing these placements was easy. But in science and engineering, it’s a very different matter.

This is a cause for concern. David Johnston, the SMF’s Chief Executive, told us that when they try to place pupils with a genuine career interest in science or engineering, they cannot persuade enough organisations to provide placements for all of them.  The age of the students and issues related to health and safety are cited as key reasons. As a result, the remaining students are placed with consultancy companies like Accenture, organisations in the financial sector or London law firms (although the scheme also runs in Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Nottingham and Leeds).  Many of these companies are very eager to offer these pupils shadowing places, and provide them with a structured and beneficial experience.  The danger here is that these high-achieving pupils – all of whom are predicted ABB at A-level – could be put off staying in science both by this process and by company loyalty, when they have to potential to be a major contributor to the UK’s future intellectual capital through a career in STEM. At 17, this experience could have a huge impact on their future choices.

These pupils are exactly the kind of talented individuals that STEM organisations should be looking to encourage and recruit in the future. It’s concerning that STEM organisations could be missing out on some of our top students in the future, as a result of the industry finding it difficult to support this scheme. The scheme has shown to be good for the pupil, industry more broadly and potentially beneficial for the employer too. In previous years, over 80% of respondents to the employer evaluation form said the student(s) they hosted were of the calibre they would look to employ after university. Arguably, this scheme could be seen as simply ‘doing the right thing’, but considered more broadly it also fits in with current government policy paradigms as set out in the Social Mobility Strategy and Education White Paper.

So is this criticism of the industry fair?  Is a week too short for STEM organisation to effectively engage? Can the health and safety barriers be overcome? Are concerns around the age of SMF students a genuine barrier to science and engineering companies? Do these barriers alone explain why banks and law and accountancy firms have been so much more willing to help the SMF?  And if so, how can they be removed? Let us know what you think.

To find out more about the SMF visit
http://www.socialmobility.org.uk/
. If you’d like to become a mentor, or think your organisation could help offer internships next year and in the future, please get in touch with David Johnston, Chief Executive of the SMF on 020 7953 4007.