Does OpenSigle exist for its own sake?

The Internet Resources Newsletter, issue 165, arrived in my inbox and I read, with interest, that Sigle (System for Information on Grey Literature in Europe) had been reincarnated, courtesy of the Institut de l’Information Scientifique et Technique (INIST) and dubbed ‘OpenSigle‘.

My first thought was, this is great–they have finally made searching for grey literature less gruesome. And look, it even covers subjects such as autistic spectrum disorders and pregnancy (although documents on ‘feeding the pregnant hill ewe’ kept managing to creep in). So it is there, and it is topically relevant. To those interested in “fundamental and applied sciences, technologies, humanities and social sciences” at least.

That is where my positive regard faded. After clicking on a few references, I soon realised that the database simply let you know that the documents *existed*–they did not provide links to full text or even summaries. Typing the document’s title into Google revealed that, yes, the full text document was freely available, and also that it had been superseded (in this case it was a Department of Health best practice guideline on safeguarding children) by a more recent document.

While OpenSigle may be useful to members of INIST, who are presumably able to order these documents with a click of the mouse, it does not prove to be a useful, or a time-saving tool for me. Maybe the whole concept of a time-saving grey literature search tool is oxymoronic.

While I currently do not do very much grey literature searching, the best approach I have found, in the past, is to get to know your topic area by doing general internet searches, looking at resources that have been reviewed (such as the Canadian EBMSources, based at Laval) and checking with Intute, a free database of resources that subject specialists have selected and evaluated.

Virtual Research Environments (VREs)

Judith Wusteman’s editorial in JOLIS discusses virtual research environments and perhaps optimistically, the informaticist’s central role in “VRE development, training and use.” Importantly, ‘development’ comes first in this list. Wusteman acknowledges the facilitator/technologist split and the reluctance of informaticists to take on a role that is too techy.

Here is something that pains us time after time: usability that appears to have been glued on crookedly by a six-year old. Glued on, that is, to the shiny chrome shell of something innately unfit for purpose. Something expensive that will land on the rubbish heap like so many other projects. If collaboration between the information camp and the technology camp does not work (and it hasn’t really yet, has it?) then we simply need to acquire the skills to do our own focus groups, set up our VREs and do our own evaluation.

While Wusteman states that research has shown that “VRE developments need to be driven from within research communities” rather than services from outside sources, is it not true that many informaticists are within these communities? I can’t fathom how any researcher can function without the assistance of an informaticist, whether in the form of a reference librarian or a systematic searcher (and everything in between).

I definitely agree with the semi-closing statement that “…librarians find the process of determining user requirements intrinsically more important and interesting than do many traditional computer scientists.” Well, we do and I hope to see an increasing presence of both psychology (think cognitive psychology, user-centred design and The Design of Everyday Things) and techie skills in LIS syllabi, conferences and continuing education courses.

See the info side at the Research Libraries UK/SCONUL page on e-research.

NICE wins plaudits in the US; still hated here

The Health Care Blog reports on a recent talk given by Andrew Dillon, the head of NICE, to a bunch of high-powered folks from, amongst other places, California Dept of Managed Health Care, Kaiser Permanente, Mercer etc. Apparently, with a wonderful turn of phrase, “NICE is only well known in the US as being the agency that stops new wonderful treatments getting to blighted Brits who are instead left to die in the streets.” It’s a refreshingly balanced view about NICE that perhaps only an outsider (to the UK) could provide. It points out that, contrary to what you may believe from reading the Daily Mail, most recommendations are positive (72%), and very few wholly negative (3%). The remaining 25% have been positive AND negative, in that some uses of the drug or device have been approved but not all the ones that it was marketed for.

There is much good that can be said about NICE, but their budget is about to triple from £32m to £100m per year, and that is an awful lot of money. While the review might argue that “The Brits realize that the NHS has to do what it can with what it’s got, and that in order for everyone to be covered, everyone has to chip in” I do wonder if public support for NICE and the whole concept of cost-effectiveness as it currently stands for NICE decision makers will last in the UK. Legal challenges seem to occur frequently, and public support is on the wane. As one comment on a recent news story about NICE’s decision on new drugs for Alzheimer’s: “I wonder, how many Alzheimers sufferers could be treated if NICE were scrapped?”

HLG Poster on Ovid SP redesign and how we adapted

Let me warn you that the following might count as shameless self-promotion. I have caved and uploaded a PDF of a poster that I presented at last month’s Health Libraries Group conference.

The poster reports the results of an online survey I’ve done (in May) to ask the opinion of expert searchers on the (then) recent redesign and relaunch of Ovid SP. My focus was on ease of use, whether a change has had an impact on the user’s search, accuracy, and what users have done, if anything, to adapt to the new interface.

While the survey was successful in reaching plenty of people via email discussion lists (listservs in IS parlance), it was less successful in enticing participants to complete the entire survey. Less than half of participants completed it.

Results were quite heterogeneous–some folks liked the redesign, some stated that the changes had had ‘no impact’ on their searches, but then admitted that the changes were ‘annoying’ and some said that they found the new design more time consuming or that it made poor use of ’screen real estate’.

Doing the survey has been a fun process that has brought me in touch with informaticists far and wide. It also let me try my luck at condensing some very diverging thoughts on Ovid SP in a meaningful way.

Ovid SP has again changed its configuration as of yesterday, to put the Search History back, to above the text box, where it was in Ovid Gateway. Hopefully, the 31% of folks who ‘accidentally scrolled down instead of up’ when entering lines of their search can now go back to normal. And as for the 53% who ‘have learned to look for it at the top’–it appears to be moveable, so you could move it back to where it is most comfortable.

Reference Manager has moved from the left hand side of the page to right under the limit options–and it can be minimised. Will the folks who look for it at the bottom of the page (where it was in Ovid Gateway) be pleased?

Thank you, all, for your input in the survey. And feel free to let me know how you are getting on with the recent changes to the Search History and Reference Manager. There is also a new multi-field search–but that is asking a bit too much in the way of changing my comfortable habits!

Ovid

PDF Poster on Adaptations to the redesign of Ovid SP

NICE has met its equal, but in wiki form …

NICE has met its equal, but in wiki form! I was looking at the list of medical wikis that Alan had recently mentioned and saw PubDrug. What informaticist doesn’t require an unbiased, free drug resource? When I had a look, I only saw 17 drugs listed. However, those at Pubdrug have highlighted their 4 year plan. By next year, their goal is to have records for 1500 prescription drugs. They are involving 4th year Pharm D. students in preparing the content. Funding comes from grants and schools of pharmacy. All records and tables undergo a rigorous ‘certification’ (i.e. peer review) process whereby a member from the editorial board and a content developer check the accuracy and completeness of information provided.

As a systematic searcher, I very much look forward to seeing this resource come to fruition. I wonder if they have considered input for non-US schools of pharmacy? As I had discovered not so long ago, it is not ‘acetominophen’ in the UK, but ‘paracetamol’, and there is surprisingly little out there to point out drug name discrepancies.

Medical wikis: A happy diversification

Good heavens. David Rothman has a list of Medical Wikis, and there are loads of them! Honestly, I never knew… a quick count of bullet points would suggest there are 65 of them. Some general, some specialised. Takes me back to the Cambrian explosion again (I’ve decided I’m going to start seeing the Cambrian explosion everywhere, while I research my book). I wonder if 99% of them will actually die out, or rather go the way of 99% of blogs and just sit there being ignored, gathering dust in a cold corner of the online world?

Needless to say, we’re in the 1% here.

Should your French by up to it, by the way, there’s a list of French language medical wikis ici.

Health2.0 going down the pan?

Following on from Danielle’s post about just what is Health 2.0, and whether it’s a fad or perhaps something meaningful and disruptive, a posting on Consumer-focused Health Care entitled Whither Health 2.0? suggests that things are not going swimmingly for many of the Health2.0 companies out there. These companies claimed that they would overhaul healthcare, and put to an end the dominance of very Web1.0 companies such as WebMd. Instead, one of Health2.0 flagbearers, is looking down the barrel; traffic has tailed off, they’ve hired a bank to ‘explore options’ (uh oh) and it all looks a bit gloomy. Xoova (formerly Doctors Direct) is also apparently in trouble; in fact, their website gives you a “page load error” – not good. As with the previous internet bubble, one suspects that 99% of new disruptive Whatever2.0 companies will wither and die simply because they make no money. Some will survive, and they will lay the template for future developments. It’s like the Cambrian explosion all over again. Hey, I wonder if anyone has written one of those silly yet best-selling (and profit making) business book that draws a (learning) parallel between the Cambrian explosion and modern business… hmmm.

I know that Alan has a penchant for blog …

I know that Alan has a penchant for blogging on new or overlooked health wikis, but I thought I’d add one that I have come across today. Ganfyd (= Get a Note from your Doctor) has a decent premise: it is a medical wiki that only registered medical practitioners are able to edit…and invited non-medical experts.

I looked up ‘meningococcal septicaemia’ and it linked me to ‘meningococcal disease’ (same difference, for my purposes). The topic page provides a clickable table of contents and sections that the Health Protection Agency (HPA) would be jealous of. Web resources (TRIP, NLH, Bandolier and 9 others) add a convenient, time-saving function. There is a ’see also’ list for similar topics.

But it leaves me asking “Where are the references”? This puts it only slightly above Wikipedia, and still no better than eMedicine, in my book.

Medicine 2.0: definition

The UBC Academic search Blog has also blogged on an open source paper by Hughes et al in JMIR about web 2.0 and more specifically, ‘Medicine 2.0′.

Have you heard of ‘Medicine 2.0′? I have not. Apparently, there are between 100,000 and 400,000 mentions of it on the internet (depending which search engine is used). Health 2.0 was found to be more popular, with 0.5 to 1.7 million mentions of it on the internet.

Because even the term ‘web 2.0′ is quite new–apparently, it has only been around since 2004, we can expect a myriad of definitions for it, as well as [topic name] 2.0, this paper suggests. My belief is that slapping ‘2.0′ after a topic is a way of making it sound shiny and new.

They come up with the following definition for Medicine 2.0:

Medicine 2.0 is the use of a specific set of Web tools (blogs, Podcasts, tagging, search, wikis, etc) by actors in health care including doctors, patients, and scientists, using principles of open source and generation of content by users, and the power of networks in order to personalize health care, collaborate, and promote health education.

We are therefore stakeholders in not only Web 2.0, but also Medicine 2.0! But what does this mean? Well, for starters, they point out that more research is needed in Medicine 2.0 (such as studies on blogs or wikis). Best practice models can grow out of this. Hint: we need to be conducting said research.

What we need is more authority control over what we call whatever is happening in medical or healthcare information online. Medicine 2.0, Health 2.0, or MedInfo 2.0? Some folks are even changing the number, I suppose to suggest that whatever they have is more advanced than the rubbish we’ve got. How shall slick marketers be dealt with? And how is Medicine 2.0 to be differentiated from ‘eHealth’ and similar terms? Right now, the definition seems to depend on one’s personal opinion or preferences!

To conclude, McLean et al’s paper, in the MJA is a nice, accessible (and open-source) one that tries to summarise medicine’s presence on the web, and provides a useful glossary at the bottom.

Open access boosts readership but not citations

An RCT in the BMJ suggests that while open access articles might get viewed more often, they are not cited more than articles published in paid-for journals. The intervention was “random assignment on online publication of articles published in 11 scientific journals to open access (treatment) or subscription access (control).” The researchers (from Cornell) then measured how many times articles were viewed, downloaded, and cited. After one year, while open access articles were downloaded more, they were not more likely to be cited. The authors suggest that “The citation advantage from open access reported widely in the literature may be an artefact of other causes.”