Issue 17 of the digest reports from the 2016 CILIP Health Libraries Group Conference in Scarborough, with some interesting presentations and posters to consider. We also answer a question about how to reference supplementary materials, give you an important update to MECIR, and circulate a useful paper. For those of you going to Seoul, we'd like to wish you a safe, comfortable journey.
News from the IS profession
CILIP Health Libraries Group Conference 2016
The UK Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) Health Libraries Group held their biennial conference in Scarborough this year. All the presentations and posters have been made available via the CILIP website here. Of particular interest will be Judy Wright's presentation on searching for overviews of reviews, Morwenna Rogers's comparison of Google Scholar, Scopus and Web of Science for forward citation searching, and Alison Bethal's look at developing a table to display a search summary. There was a poster available on this too, see it here. For more posters from the conference, see here.
The Health Libraries Group have made a virtual issue of their journal available free of charge to tie in with the conference theme. Visit this link to access the articles.
MECIR Update
Updated MECIR standards now available
A new set of revised and updated MECIR standards was released on the 14th October. This now includes standards for protocols and planning. Changes to the standards take account of the screening undertaken by the Cochrane Editorial Unit, and user feedback.
Catch up with the new standards on the Cochrane Methods website. You can download a booklet here, pages 13, 15-17, 31-32, 45-46 will be of particular interest to CISs.
Cochrane Library - changes are coming
New developments in the Cochrane Library
You may have seen in the Review and Methods digest (14 October) that significant changes are coming to the Cochrane Library.
An enhanced Cochrane Library with greater functionality is being rolled out from early 2017. Changes include:
Enhancements to display and new features for Cochrane reviews
Linking of the CDSR and CENTRAL
An improved search interface
A new Spanish version of the Cochrane Library, incorporating translated Cochrane Review content from La Bibliotheca Cochrane Plus
Cochrane Clinical Answers will be incorporated
A federated search feature will enable searches of other systematic reviews via Epistemonikos
The DARE, HTA, EED databases will be removed
The Cochrane Methodology Register will be archived and migrated to the Cochrane Methods website
About the Cochrane Collaboration (the module text) will be retired
Round up from the mailing list
Useful paper
Liz Doney circulated an open access paper via the mailing list:
The contribution of databases to the results of systematic reviews: a cross-sectional study, BMC Medical Research Methodology 2016 16:127.
It considers the potential impact of selective database searching on results of meta-analyses. Read the paper here.
If you are involved in research on information retrieval topics, and have a paper you'd like to share, we'd love to hear about it. Let us know at cis-support@cochrane.org and we'll publish a link to the publication in our next digest.
Questions from the helpdesk
How do I reference supplementary material in a Cochrane review?
This question came up for cases where there is an online only supplementary document, related to a clinical trial (such as an appendix, or a disclosure form). These materials are not covered in the examples given in the new Style Manual. The example sent to the Support Team was this Supplementary Appendix, to this article from the New England Journal of Medicine, which also has a linked protocol.
We received the following response from John Hilton, at the CEU:
Firstly, supplementary materials can be just extra material from the article or they can be accompanying/linked materials. The former would have the same authors, date and underlying source, but would be designated as supplementary material somehow. The latter would have different authors, title, date, etc and ideally should be recorded that way. The NEJM article mentioned has both examples: the “Supplementary Appendix” is basically part of the article, whereas the “protocol” is a separate (but linked) publication.
Secondly, as mentioned in the Style Manual, if in doubt you can refer to NLM’s Citing Medicine. It’s a vast resource so can be hard to navigate, and I couldn’t find anything (yet!) about supplementary materials, but I found this section that is relevant http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK7282/#A32843
So for the NEJM example I would suggest something like this
For the supplementary appendix: - use journal reference type:
Ramsey BW, Davies JA, McElvaney NG, Tullis E, Bell SC, Dřevínek P, et al. CFTR potentiator in patients with cystic fibrosis and the G551D mutation. New England Journal of Medicine 2011;365:1663-72. Supplementary appendix.
Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated. Clinical study protocol: a phase 3, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group study to evaluate the efficacy and safety of VX-770 in subjects with cystic fibrosis and the G551D mutation. 2010 July. Version 5.0. EudraCT number: 2008-007416-15. www.nejm.org/doi/suppl/10.1056/NEJMoa1105185/suppl_file/nejmoa1105185_protocol.pdf (accessed 15 September 2016).
A reminder to all attending the Colloquium to sign up for the PICOthon, which is being held on Monday 24th October at 16.00. Please bring your laptop or tablet/ipad as you will need to access the tools for annotating. If anyone has any queries please contact Deirdre Beecher. See you in Korea!
CRS Training
If you are attending the CRS Web training event on Saturday 22nd October, please remember to bring along a laptop or tablet if possible. There will be opportunities for hands-on work with the software. The workshop starts at 9.30 in the Jacuna room at the Grand Hilton.
Contact us...
Don't forget, previous editions of the Cochrane Information Specialist Support Team digest are available on the CIS Portal (Archie login required)
Contact the Support Team for help with any Cochrane Information Specialist related issue (including CRS technical support): cis-support@cochrane.org
The Cochrane Information Specialist Support Team:
Liz Doney I Sam Faulkner I Ruth Foxlee
Anne Littlewood I Doug Salzwedel
