Issue 14 of our digest reports on the voluntary principles for sharing articles and where you can find out information on the rules for individual publishers. We highlight a webinar you might like to attend on the updating classification system, a useful article on search strategy formulation and provide a brief round up from the mailing list this month. Contact us at cis-support@cochrane.org if you have any comments, questions or suggestions for future digests.
Sharing papers
Sharing full text material with authors
Cochrane Information Specialists are often asked to share papers with authors, and we thought CISs might welcome some information around sharing papers that are not open access.
STM is the global trade association for academic and scholarly publishers, and in 2015 they conducted a consultation on article sharing, looking specifically at journal articles that are not open access. As a result, they have produced a set of voluntary principles and posted these on their website. These are well worth looking at and discussing with your library, since we believe that Cochrane might fit their definition of a "research collaboration group".
Ruth did some further investigation on who has signed up to these voluntary principles and has been referred to the How Can I Share It? website, which gives guidance on specific publishers and the arrangements they have in place.
If you have any questions, contact us: cis-support@cochrane.org. Thanks to Liz Stovold for pointing us to the voluntary principles.
Upcoming webinars
Updating Classification System
The Updating Classification System (UCS) will be released on 18 July, and CISs may be interested in attending the accompanying webinars, as it may impact on their work (undertaking scoping searches, for example). The UCS guides readers as to whether a Cochrane Review is up to date, likely to be updated in future, or does not need updating at the current time. The system can also help Cochrane Review Groups with prioritisation decisions for individual Cochrane Reviews. The UCS follows a decision framework that asks about the usage and currency of the review question, the availability of new studies or information, and how new information would impact on the review; and also whether new methods will make important changes to the review.
Identifying studies on adverse effects - have your say on the training materials
The Cochrane Adverse Effects Methods Group is working on a methodological development project entitled Development of guidance for the identification and quality assessment of adverse effects in systematic reviews. This is your chance to have your say on the training materials that you feel would be helpful in finding information on adverse effects.
An article has recently been published on search strategy formulation: see part 1 here, and part 2 here. The authors introduce a structured methodology and a framework for learning, which together aim to embody best practice and provide support for many of the common issues in search strategy development.
Thanks to Rene Spijker for the tip!
CPD opportunity
12th International Congress on Medical Librarianship (ICML) and the 2017 European Association for Health Information and Libraries (EAHIL) Workshop comes to Dublin
The theme of the 12th International Congress on Medical Librarianship and the 2017 EAHIL Workshop is Diversity in Practice: integrating, inspiring and innovative. Through a series of plenary and parallel sessions and workshops the scientific programme will cover the following sub themes:
Leadership & Values
Integration
Technology
Education & Learning
Consumer Health
Research & Evidence-based Librarianship
The call for abstracts is now open for oral presentations, workshops, posters and interactive sessions. The meeting takes place in Dublin, 15-16 June, 2017. Registration opens in January 2017.
You will probably have seen the notices that a new version of the Style Manual is now available. The CIS Support Team and the HarmoniSR team had an opportunity to comment on this update.
Note that HarmoniSR standards and the Style Manual don’t align in all areas due to the different functions and requirements they serve for CRS and RevMan.
Sharing best practice: template text for protocols
A priority for the Support Team is to identify ways of sharing best practice amongst the CIS community.
One of the ways we can do this is by collecting template text used by CISs in search methods in protocols and reviews, and back in February we emailed you all to request examples. Many thanks to those who shared their templates. We have anonymized the text that has been shared. The creation of MECIR standards for protocols is underway but in the meanwhile we have checked all of the examples in the attachment against the MECIR conduct and reporting standards for reviews to infer appropriate search methods for a protocol. We have also shared this template text with Elizabeth Royle who has kindly made suggestions and amendments which bring it in line with copy-edit support principles, including those outlined in the new version of the Style Manual.
In the first instance we have collated examples of text used for the search methods for Cochrane protocols. To be clear, using any of the attached text is entirely optional. You don’t have to use whole sections, and can adapt it to meet your circumstances. Our intention in making this document available is to save the CIS community time by sharing examples that meet the standards we need to adhere to e.g. MECIR, and cover the kinds of things that we all need to include.
We’d be grateful for your feedback (via CIS Support cis-support@cochrane.org). We hope to make template text for reviews available in the near future.
Text mining webinars
The series of text mining webinars with Julie Glanville are now concluded, but if you missed anything you can still catch up. The slides and a recording of each of the four sessions are now up on the portal, find them here. Please do not share the materials outside the CIS community.
National Library of Medicine Update
The MLA / CHLA - ABSC / ISLC conference in Toronto (MOSIAC 16) saw NLM give a series of update talks. As posted on the IRMG list recently, these are now available to view online here.
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
