From paper to electron: how an STM journal can survive the disruptive technology of the Internet.
(33/1217)
The Internet represents a different type of technology for publishers of scientific, technical, and medical journals. It is not a technology that sustains current markets and creates new efficiencies but is, rather, a disruptive technology that could radically alter market forces, profit expectations, and business models. This paper is a translation and amplification of the research done in this area, applied to a large-circulation new science journal, Pediatrics. The findings suggest that the journal of the future will be electronic, have a less volatile cost structure, be supported more by services than by content, be less able to rely on subscription revenues, and abandon certain elements of current value networks. It also provides a possible framework for other publishers to use to evaluate their own journals relative to this disruptive technology. (+info)
Solutions to challenges facing a university digital library and press.
(34/1217)
During the creation of a university digital library and press intended to serve as a medical reference and education tool for health care providers and their patients, six distinct and complex digital publishing challenges were encountered. Over nine years, through a multidisciplinary approach, solutions were devised to the challenges of digital content ownership, management, mirroring, translation, interactions with users, and archiving. The result is a unique, author-owned, internationally mirrored, university digital library and press that serves as an authoritative medical reference and education tool for users around the world. The purpose of this paper is to share the valuable digital publishing lessons learned and outline the challenges facing university digital libraries and presses. (+info)
Bayesian communication: a clinically significant paradigm for electronic publication.
(35/1217)
OBJECTIVE: To develop a model for Bayesian communication to enable readers to make reported data more relevant by including their prior knowledge and values. BACKGROUND: To change their practice, clinicians need good evidence, yet they also need to make new technology applicable to their local knowledge and circumstances. Availability of the Web has the potential for greatly affecting the scientific communication process between research and clinician. Going beyond format changes and hyperlinking, Bayesian communication enables readers to make reported data more relevant by including their prior knowledge and values. This paper addresses the needs and implications for Bayesian communication. FORMULATION: Literature review and development of specifications from readers', authors', publishers', and computers' perspectives consistent with formal requirements for Bayesian reasoning. RESULTS: Seventeen specifications were developed, which included eight for readers (express prior knowledge, view effect size and variability, express threshold, make inferences, view explanation, evaluate study and statistical quality, synthesize multiple studies, and view prior beliefs of the community), three for authors (protect the author's investment, publish enough information, make authoring easy), three for publishers (limit liability, scale up, and establish a business model), and two for computers (incorporate into reading process, use familiar interface metaphors). A sample client-only prototype is available at http://omie.med.jhmi.edu/bayes. CONCLUSION: Bayesian communication has formal justification consistent with the needs of readers and can best be implemented in an online environment. Much research must be done to establish whether the formalism and the reality of readers' needs can meet. (+info)
GeneClinics: a hybrid text/data electronic publishing model using XML applied to clinical genetic testing.
(36/1217)
GeneClinics is an online genetic information resource consisting of descriptions of specific inherited disorders ("disease profiles") as well as information on the role of genetic testing in the diagnosis, management, and genetic counseling of patients with these inherited conditions. GeneClinics is intended to promote the use of genetic services in medical care and personal decision making by providing health care practitioners and patients with information on genetic testing for specific inherited disorders. GeneClinics is implemented as an object-oriented database containing a combination of data and semistructured text that is rendered as HTML for publishing a given "disease profile" on the Web. Content is acquired from authors via templates, converted to an XML document reflecting the underlying database schema (with tagging of embedded data), and then loaded into the database and subjected to peer review. The initial implementation of a production system and the first phase of population of the GeneClinics database content are complete. Further expansion of the content to cover more disease, significant scaling up of rate of content creation, and evaluation redesign are under way. The ultimate goal is to have an entry in GeneClinics for each entry in the GeneTests directory of medical genetics laboratories-that is, for each disease for which clinical genetic testing is available. (+info)
Manuscript peer review: a helpful checklist for students and novice referees.
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The ability to contribute consistent, fundamentally sound critiques is an essential element of the scientific peer review process and an important professional skill for investigators. Despite its importance, many students and junior scientists do not have an adequate working knowledge of how to effectively critique research manuscripts. Part of the problem, in our view, is that novice referees often lack a comprehensive understanding of the basic issues that should be considered in evaluating scientific articles. Specifically, they tend to overemphasize certain limitations (usually methodological), while missing other key points related to the scientific method that should be weighed much more heavily. In our journal club and graduate courses we have been using a "checklist" to help graduate students and postdoctoral fellows critically analyze original research papers. In this article we present these guidelines in the hope that they will serve as a helpful resource for students and other novice reviewers when critiquing scientific manuscripts. (+info)
Capturing zebras: what to do with a reportable case.
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We had attempted to publish a report of an unusual manifestation of an uncommon disease discovered at autopsy. The case report was not accepted for publication because we had failed to order a highly specific test that would have unequivocally confirmed the diagnosis we entertained and subsequently wrote about. After much deliberation about this case and an extensive review of the literature, we now believe that there is a preferred approach to dealing with a reportable case. Because physicians seldom encounter cases that are reportable, we felt that sharing the important lessons we learned from our missed opportunity might prove helpful and encourage those who are considering preparing a case report for publication. (+info)
Electronic health record meets digital library: a new environment for achieving an old goal.
(39/1217)
Linking the electronic health record to the digital library is a Web-era reformulation of the long-standing informatics goal of seamless integration of automated clinical data and relevant knowledge-based information to support informed decisions. The spread of the Internet, the development of the World Wide Web, and converging format standards for electronic health data and digital publications make effective linking increasingly feasible. Some existing systems link electronic health data and knowledge-based information in limited settings or limited ways. Yet many challenging informatics research problems remain to be solved before flexible and seamless linking becomes a reality and before systems become capable of delivering the specific piece of information needed at the time and place a decision must be made. Connecting the electronic health record to the digital library also requires positive resolution of important policy issues, including health data privacy, government encouragement of high-speed communications, electronic intellectual property rights, and standards for health data and for digital libraries. Both the research problems and the policy issues should be important priorities for the field of medical informatics. (+info)
Digital reviews in molecular biology: approaches to structured digital publication.
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MOTIVATION: It is widely appreciated that it is no longer possible for biomedical research scientists to keep up with as much of what is published in their field as they ought. One solution to this problem is to increase the efficiency of information use by moving away from the classical browsing model for scientific information dissemination towards an information on demand model which would allow researchers to access information quickly and efficiently only as they need it. The most common approach to this goal has been to use information retrieval technology to improve access to text databases of biomedical information. We are interested in exploring an alternative; encoding this information for storage in structured databases for efficient retrieval. RESULTS: Two small databases described here are test beds for development of structured digital publication software; the Tumor Gene Database, containing information about genes which are the sites for cancer-causing mutations, and the Mammary Transgene Database, containing information about expression of transgenes in agriculturally important animals. Both have been successfully searched by users and edited by curators via the World Wide Web. (+info)