Holly E Phillips

Leveraging Change to Integrate Library and Informatics Competencies into a New CTSC Curriculum: A Program Evaluation

This program evaluation reports on the curricular development and integration of library, biomedical informatics, and scholarly communications (LBS) skills into a required informatics course for a new graduate degree program in the University of New Mexicos Clinical and Translational Sciences Center (CTSC). The course built on the opportunity presented by the new degree program to integrate LBS competencies rarely included in most traditional clinical research training programs. This report tracks the experiences and evaluations of two cohorts of graduate students who have completed the course. This article presents lessons learned on curricular integration and offers thoughts for future work.

Institutional Repository Access Patterns of Nontraditionally Published Academic Content: What Types of Content Are Accessed the Most?

The authors analyze monthly Internet access to traditionally unpublished academic content in one universitys institutional repository (IR). Content selected for analysis include materials supplementary to peer-reviewed publications, poster images, graduate course research papers, and presentation slides. The content types represent academic output that would not likely be otherwise collected and made freely available were it not for its availability in an IR. The average first-year access rates per month are similar across content types, and evidence of access persists over time, indicating the value of this content to others and the utility of posting nontraditional academic materials in an institutional repository.

The translational sciences: a rare open access opportunity.

Health sciences librarians serve society by making needed health-related information available to our users. The Medical Library Associations (MLAs) slogan, “Professionals providing quality information for improved health”; the 2010 revised MLA Code of Ethics [1]; and the American Library Associations code of ethics [2] all reflect our professions central purpose. One formal research study on the core values of librarians and information professionals also verified that, on the international scale, our profession seeks to provide access to quality information [3].

Real-Time Peer Review: An Innovative Feature to an Evidence-Based Practice Conference

Many health sciences librarians as well as other professionals attend conferences on a regular basis. This study sought to link an innovative peer review process of presented research papers to long-term conference outcomes in the peer-reviewed professional journal literature. An evidence-based conference included a proof-of-concept study to gauge the long-term outcomes from research papers presented during the program. Real-time peer review recommendations from the conference were linked to final versions of articles published in the peer-reviewed literature. The real-time peer review feedback served as the basis for further mentoring to guide prospective authors toward publishing their research results. These efforts resulted in the publication of two of the four research papers in the peer-viewed literature. A third presented paper appeared in a blog because the authors wanted to disseminate their findings more quickly than through the journal literature. The presenters of the fourth paper never published their study. Real-time peer review from this study can be adapted to other professional conferences that include presented research papers.

Evidence-Based Scholarly Communication: Information Professionals Unlocking Translational Research

The Evidence-Based Scholarly Communication Conference (EBSCC) was held March 11-12, 2010 in Albuquerque, NM. The conference addressed the perceived gap in knowledge and training for scholarly communication principles in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) Program. The EBSCC brought together librarians and information specialists to share evidence -based strategies for developing effective local scholarly communication support and training and, it is hoped, to form new coalitions to address this topic at the local and national levels. This brief communication summarizes the need for the conference, highlights the general sessions in order of presentation, and introduces the EBSCC research papers appearing in this issue of Evidence Based Library and Information Practice (EBLIP). It also includes a description of a unique peer-review process methodology pioneered at EBSCC.