Joost Daams, MAMedical Information Specialist

AMC medical library1 October 2012

Resources of scientific knowledge:

the weight of where to search

Introduction

… of WHERE to search:

• Internet as resource of medical information

• Journals & articles

• Books & point of care tools

• Catalogs & digital library

• Bibliographic databases

• Guidelines & other resources of evidence

The weight…

The weight of WHERE to search …(…HOW to search is a different chapter ☺)

• Integrity• transparency• reproducibillity (validity)

Lack of face validity:the curious case of “meat bastards”

… and evidence

Internet as resource of medical information (1)

How physicians get information to diagnose and treat patients

Derived from: http://www.wolterskluwerhealth.com/News/Documents/White%20Papers/Wolters%20Kluwer%20Health%20Survey%20Executive%2

0Summary-Media.pdf, last consulted: 29th

September 2012

Internet as resource of medical information (2)

??????

What about:

• integrity• transparency• reproducibillity (validity)?

What about:

• content• relevance ranking• … and evidence?

Journals & articles (1)

The quality of a journal (≈

article) can be assessed by quality indicators:

1. Established reputation e.g. Radiology is considered to be the top journal among radiologists, regardless of other quality inidcators

2. “Scientometrics” e.g. Journal Impact Factor (JIF), Hirsch-Index, Web “

Sitations”

3. Peer-review (y/n)

4. ICMJE compliancy (y/n)e.g. ethical considerations in the conduct and reporting of research, guidelines for the publication process as wellas the editorial process

Journals & articles (2)

More on the Journal Impact Factor (JIF)

• What it is & application

•

Critique

Temporality biasGeographical/language biasTopicality biasIncentive for self-citationsRange of provided subject topicsAssignment of journals to topicsPoor adaptation of web downloads / web citationsNon-transparent journal inclusion criteria by Thomson ReutersMonolithic organisation

Strengths“

Impact factor is not a perfect tool to measure the quality of articles but there is nothing better and it has theadvantage of already being in existence and is, therefore, a good technique for scientific evaluation.(…) The use of impact factor as a measure of quality is widespread

because it fits well with the opinion we havein each field of the best journals in our speciality.”

(Hoeffel C. Journal Impact factors. Allergy. 1998;53;1225)

JIF2011

=

A/BA = the number of times articles published in 2009 and 2010 were cited by indexed journals during 2011.B = the total number of "citable items" published by that journal in 2009 and 2010. ("Citable items" are usually articles, reviews, proceedings, or notes; not editorials or Letters-to-the-Editor.)

Journals & articles (3)

More on the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE)

• What it is & application

•

Important (major?) achievement

“The ICMJE member journals will require, as a condition of consideration for publication in their journals,registration in a public trials registry”

• … however publication bias is poorly addressed“Editors should seriously consider for publication any carefully done study of an important question, relevant to theirreaders, whether the results for the primary of any additional outcome are statistically significant.”

Journals & articles (4)

Open Access (OA) : a (would-be) idealists’ dream?

•

What it is & application

Golden road or green road?exposure

• What it’s notA priori free access (from the authors’

point of view)Already out there for all disciplinesA priori (not) peer-reviewedAlways protective of author rights

• Does OA influence JIF?Further research is needed: only 1 study indicated increased downloads without a necessary influence on clinical practice, but:

•` Researchers in the sciences do not see access to the scientific literature as an especially important problem

•

Authors consider factors such as journal reputation and the absence of publication fees when deciding where to submit their work. In contrast, free access is not a significant

factor in their submission decissions.

(The impact of free access to the scientific literature: a review of recent research, Davis, Philip M. and Walters, William H. Journal of the Medical Library Association. 2011;99(3);208)

Making a “case” for books

Books & ‘point of care tools’

Can exposure to high concentration of toluene diisocyanate (TDI) cause cognitive impairments?

?

“

In summary, psychometric testing using the Wechsler memory scale (1945) has shown a selective memory defect for relatively long-term recall among the group of firemen who were clinically thought to

be still suffering from organic cerebral impairment four years after the fire.”

Neurological complications after a single severe exposure to toluene di-

isocyanate PAMELA M.LE QUESNE et al. British Journal of Industrial Medicine . 1976;33;72-78

?

Catalogs

Bibliographic databases

Catalogs & digital library

!

Bibliographic databases

Pubmed ≠

Medline:In addition to MEDLINE citations, PubMed also contains:• In-process citations which provide a record for an article before it is indexed with MeSH and added to MEDLINE or converted to out-of-scope status.• Citations that precede the date that a journal was selected for

MEDLINE indexing (when supplied electronically by the publisher).• Some

OLDMEDLINE

citations that have not yet been updated with current vocabulary

and converted to MEDLINE status.•

Citations to articles that are out-of-scope (e.g., covering plate tectonics or astrophysics) from certain MEDLINE journals, primarily general science and general chemistry journals, for which the life sciences articles are indexed with MeSH for MEDLINE.• Citations to some additional life science journals that submit full text to PubMedCentral®

and receive a qualitative review by NLM.• Citations to

author manuscripts

of articles published by NIH-funded researchers.• Citations for a subset of books available on the

NCBI Bookshelf

(a citation for both the book and each chapter or section of the

book).

Source: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/factsheets/dif_med_pub.html

, last consulted 1 October 2012

Why search beyond Pubmed?# journals AND med AND psy AND emb unique

Medline 5,521 2,926

Psychinfo 596 2,208 1,402

Embase 2,360 571 3,982 1,412

Source http://www.ub.unimaas.nl/ub-fdgw/ubtest/co/m-p-e-coverage-overlap.htm, revised 11 March 2009

Guidelines & other resources of evidence

Questions?