Meeting date: Tuesday, May 29, 2018

Presenter: Catherine Hana

Citation: Dawson, D. (DeDe) ., (2018). Effective Practices and Strategies for Open Access Outreach: A Qualitative Study. Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication. 6(1), p.eP2216. DOI: http://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2216

Article abstract:
INTRODUCTION – There are many compelling reasons to make research open access (OA), but raising the awareness of faculty and administrators about OA is a struggle. Now that more and more funders are introducing OA policies, it is increasingly important that researchers understand OA and how to comply with these policies. U.K. researchers and their institutions have operated within a complex OA policy environment for many years, and academic libraries have been at the forefront of providing services and outreach to support them. This article discusses the results of a qualitative study that investigated effective practices and strategies of OA outreach in the United Kingdom.

METHODS – Semistructured interviews were conducted with 14 individuals at seven universities in the United Kingdom in late 2015. Transcripts of these interviews were analyzed for dominant themes using an inductive method of coding.

RESULTS – Themes were collected under the major headings of “The Message”; “Key Contacts and Relationships”; “Qualities of the OA Practitioner”; and “Advocacy versus Compliance.” DISCUSSION Results indicate that messages about OA need to be clear, concise, and jargon free. They need to be delivered repeatedly and creatively adapted to specific audiences. Identifying and building relationships with influencers and informers is key to the uptake of the message, and OA practitioners must have deep expertise to be credible as the messengers.

CONCLUSION – This timely research has immediate relevance to North American libraries as they contend with pressures to ramp up their own OA outreach and support services to assist researchers in complying with new federal funding policies.

Reason for selection: DeDe presented at the joint SHLA/MAHIP CE session on May 10. As several journal club members also attended the session, I thought it would be good to take a more in-depth look at DeDe’s findings. For those who were not at the CE session, this is still an interesting and relevant topic that has not been well covered in previous journal club meetings.

Critical Appraisal:
Completed Critical Appraisal Worksheet

Meeting date: March 28, 2018

Presenter: Gina Brander

Citation: Ganshorn, H., & Giustini, D. (2017). New directions in health sciences libraries in Canada: Research and evidence based practice are key. Health Information & Libraries Journal, 34(3), 252–257. https://doi.org/10.1111/hir.12190

Article abstract: This article is the second in a new series in this regular feature. The intention of the series is to look at important global developments in health science libraries. These articles will serve as a road map, describing the key changes in the field and exploring factors driving these changes. The present article by two Canadian librarians identifies important national developments which are shaping the profession such as the centralisation of health care services, the challenge of providing consumer health information in the absence of a national strategy, government recognition of the need to recognise and respond to the health needs of indigenous peoples and the growing emphasis on managing research data. Although their profession is strong, health science librarians must find ways of providing enhanced services with fewer staff and demonstrate value to organisations.

Reason for selection: As a librarian currently working in post-secondary education, I found this bird’s-eye view of trends in health sciences libraries and librarianship informative and thought-provoking. In fact, as soon as I finished reading the article, I had several questions I wanted to fire at colleagues working in hospitals and health research contexts! I therefore selected this article because I am interested in learning about the on-the-ground experiences of health librarians in Saskatchewan, and whether the same factors driving these changes elsewhere in Canadian health libraries are at work in our province. As well, I hope to learn more about some of the challenges resulting from budget cuts and organizational restructuring.

Critical appraisal questions & summary: 

1. Have any of the five trends identified by Ganshorn and Giustini resulted in added or changed roles in your library? Which trend has most significantly impacted your daily practice?

• There is definitely more of a role for librarians to introduce and facilitate the use of different technologies. Our users want more online and open access books and journals as well as mobile apps which are in high demand compared to a few years ago. Academic settings are seeing a large increase in 3D printing and even wanting to borrow iPads and laptops, interestingly not all students appear to have their own.
• Centralisation of health services is obviously very relevant to the day-to-day experience for the new Saskatchewan Health Authority. Different libraries (and ways of providing services) have had to come together and provide a new single service that is being pushed out to the whole province. This has a major impact on collection development.

2. One trend observed by the authors is the centralisation of provincial health care services. In the face of the recent dissolution of the twelve health regions in favour of one provincial health authority in Saskatchewan, do you agree that the overall result of centralisation has been, or will be, improved access to collections and library services?

• SHIRP licensed products have helped with the new centralisation of health services. Regina had a larger budget than Saskatoon and Prince Albert so it has improved access to resources for everyone. The former health region libraries were already working together in some ways even before the amalgamation happened and relationships were already developed which has helped facilitate this transition.
• The Saskatchewan Health Authority Library is ready to go but still waiting for other things to happen in the Health Authority so that we have a clearer direction (ex. strategic plan, marketing, etc).
• Webinars and training sessions via WebEx being offered to staff from some of the former health regions that ha dno library. However this comes with its challenges such as only having 1 WebEx account.

3. Another trend observed was a movement towards supporting diverse populations/health consumers, with an emphasis on providing culturally competent and inclusive consumer health information to Indigenous communities. Can you speak about any steps your library has taken to respond to the TRC’s seven health-specific Calls to Action, such as the selection and inclusion of Indigenous-focused content and resources?

• The importance of incorporating Indigenous ways of knowing and learning has  been emphasized in academic settings. Looking at different approaches and awareness of history and issues related to Indigenous Peoples, making sure  resources are not just selected, but also featured and promoted to staff to help develop cultural competency.
•  There has been some connecting with Elders, weekly staff huddles where one of the calls to action is read out loud and everyone talks about what is being done. It should be noted however that there tends to not be enough follow-up. But the huddles are great for making staff aware and keeping them informed of what is being done.
• The 1st year nursing students have to do an indigenous project so connecting them with information (Canadian, Saskatchewan, UofS iPortal) and addressing their needs. UofR works closely in partnership with the First Nations University and partners with things like books.
• Also indigenizing the library spaces and making sure they are inclusive. UofR has beautiful indigenous art in the building. UofS campus has also done a great job.
• There is a difference in clinical settings perhaps because clinical librarians depend on the needs of their users and these types of questions aren’t being asked as much.
• The Regina General Hospital has an Indigenous Healing Centre at its front entrance. Perhaps an opportunity here for the library to do something?

4. Have you witnessed an increased demand for support around systematic reviews and other forms of evidence synthesis? If so, how has your library met the increase in demand? Have new service models been explored or piloted at your library? Have any library roles shifted towards increased embeddedness to support the needs of research teams?

• Increase in requests for systematic reviews in Kinesiology and Nursing in academic settings. Very time consuming, mostly consists of doing the literature review and extracting the data.
• Telling them the librarian must be included as an author
• The people requesting these reviews usually haven’t done enough preparation before approaching the library and they get turned away.
• Sometimes when asked to re-run a search, the strategies are not good and include very few search terms so it becomes more time consuming.

5. How do health sciences libraries continue to meet the challenging demands for increased services in the face of budgetary cuts? Are we simply facing the same issues as those who came before us, or do you see the need for a serious overhaul in terms of how we provide information resources and services to users?

• “We’re always doing more with less.”
• One strategy mentioned in the article is to utilize and teach the technology. Use video conference software to reach as many people as possible (also using something like RedCap).
• Enable our users to do as much of the work on their own as possible.
• York University has a tool to help with modules, research, and writing that the UofR has been looking at.

6. Are there any developments shaping our profession that Ganshorn and Guistini did not mention, which you feel warrant attention?

• These authors did a great job selecting the major issues in Canada, but they only touched briefly on the struggle of demonstrating our value.
• There isn’t much benchmarking on staff ratio for our libraries.
• There was no mention of the dissolution of the CLA and creation of CFLA.

Meeting date: January 23, 2018

Presenter: Suzy Bear

Citation: Nicholas, D., Boukacem-Zeghmouri, C., Rodriguez-Bravo, B., Xu, J., Watkinson, A., Abrizah, A., Herman, E., & Swigon, M. (2017). Where and how early career researchers find scholarly information. Learned Publishing, 30(1) doi:10.1002/leap.1087. http://ciber-research.eu/download/20170103-Where_and_How_ECRs_Find_Scholarly_Information-LEAP1087.pdf

Article abstract: This article presents findings from the first year of the Harbingers research project started in 2015. The project is a 3-year longitudinal study of early career researchers (ECRs) to ascertain their current and changing habits with regard to information searching, use, sharing, and publication. The study recruited 116 researchers from seven countries (UK, USA, China, France, Malaysia, Poland, and Spain) and performed in-depth interviews by telephone, Skype, or face-to-face to discover behaviours and opinions. This paper reports on findings regarding discovery and access to scholarly information.
Findings confirm the universal popularity of Google/Google Scholar. Library platforms and web-scale discovery services are largely unmentioned and unnoticed by this user community, although many ECRs pass through them unknowingly on the way to authenticated use of their other preferred sources, such as Web of Science. ECRs are conscious of the benefits of open access in delivering free access to papers. Social media are widely used as a source of discovering scholarly information. ResearchGate is popular and on the rise in all countries surveyed. Smartphones have become a regularly used platform on which to perform quick and occasional searches for scholarly information but are only rarely used for reading full text.

Discussion summary & recommendations:
This study examines how early career researchers (ECRs) find scholarly information. The “who” is answered but not the “why”. A clear problem of how they find information definitely exists and is addressed. There didn’t seem to be any real method for recruitment in this study, it was quite random with no mention of why specific countries were selected (Canada was also excluded). Some of the interviews done in other languages were transcribed and then later translated. The study was done over a 3 year period which is a long time (a lot can change over 3 years). Looks like they are reporting the initial results but still have another 2 years to go. The relationship between the researchers and participants is not discussed. The final results demonstrate a lack of effective marketing by libraries. Many of the participants had no idea they were accessing their materials via the library (ex. the PDF’s they find in Google Scholar are thanks to the library’s IP address). There is definitely a big understanding of what libraries actually do. Marketing an be hard because many can’t be bothered to even read what we put out. There is a big problem with administration staff who clearly don’t understand what the library is all about and they make statements about how everything is online and the library is not needed or just a bunch of books. We can market more to them but should also focus on ECRs since they can be the ones to change the trend. We can’t compete with Google and shouldn’t try to. Discovery layers not functioning well for users sometimes doesn’t help either. These results are mentioned for academic libraries but apply to all library settings too.

Meeting date: November 28, 2018

Presenter: Mary Chipanshi

Citation: Mi, Misa & Zhang, Yingting. (2017). Culturally competent library services and related factors among health sciences librarians: An exploratory study. Journal of the Medical Library Association, 105(2), 132-139. https://doi.org/10.5195/jmla.2017.203

Article abstract:
OBJECTIVE – This study investigated the current state of health sciences libraries’ provision of culturally competent services to support health professions education and patient care and examined factors associated with cultural competency in relation to library services and professional development.

METHODS – This was a cross-sectional study. Data were collected with a survey questionnaire that was distributed via Survey Monkey to several health sciences librarian email discussion lists. Results: Out of 176 respondents, 163 reported serving clients from diverse cultural backgrounds. Various services were provided to develop or support initiatives in cultural competency in health professions education and patient care. A considerable number of respondents were unsure or reported no library services to support initiatives in cultural competency, although a majority of respondents perceived the importance of providing culturally competent library services (156, 89.1%) and cultural competency for health sciences librarians (162, 93.1%). Those who self-identified as nonwhites perceived culturally competent services to be more important than whites (p=0.04). Those who spoke another language in addition to English had higher self-rated cultural competency (p=0.01) than those who only spoke English.

CONCLUSIONS -These findings contribute to our knowledge of the types of library services provided to support cultural competency initiatives and of health sciences librarians’ perceived importance in providing culturally competent library services and cultural competency for health sciences librarians. The results suggest
implications for health sciences libraries in fostering professional development in cultural competency and in providing culturally competent services to increase library use by people from a wide range of cultures and backgrounds.

Reason for selection: As Canada becomes more and more diverse and as we see the landscape of our clients in health libraries change, how do we as librarians become culturally competent. 

Discussion summary & recommendations:
The paper had 3 focused questions and used a survey questionnaire using a convenient sample that could have introduced a bias. For demographic selection they got a sample from a variety of racial groups. It was surprising that although library schools are graduating a lot of students (younger and different races) the age range from the survey of respondents was average age of 50 and mostly white. It was noted that in their questionnaire they did not exhaust the list of races. They could have added other to capture races that did not fall in their list. In addition their questionnaire lacked open ended questions which may have answered for example why people felt cultural competence was important.

As mentioned in the article, there are some barriers faced by libraries to offering cultural competent library services. This topic can be pursued with appropriate stake holders. This can also include the topic of Indigenization.

Meeting date: November 22, 2016

Presenter: Catherine Young

Citation: Truccolo I. (2016). Providing patient information and education in practice: the role of the health librarian. Health Information & Libraries Journal, 33(2), 161-6. https://doi.org/10.1111/hir.12142

Questions:

1. How does the author’s concept of patient education differ from the definition of CAPHIS/MLA?
2. What job functions does the author describe/mention that support patient education? Which of these job functions, if any, were new to you?
3. What could you take from this article and apply in your own work, assuming time was not a factor?

Article abstract: In this article, guest writer Ivana Truccolo presents an overview of her work at the Scientific and Patient Library of a Cancer Comprehensive Centre in Italy coordinating the patient education process. She discusses the historical evolution of the concept of patient education and how this has run alongside the role of the health librarian in the provision of consumer health information. Details are provided about various patient education programmes in place at the Centre. In particular, various activities are discussed including patient education classes, the development of patient education handouts and a narrative medicine programme which includes a literary competition. The article concludes with a specific outline of the role the health librarian can play in the provision of consumer health information and patient education. H.S.

Reason for selection: Providing consumer health resources and patient education have become more common job activities of hospital librarians, with some positions now entirely focused on them. As the amount of available health information grows, including poor quality and false information, hospital librarians are increasingly being asked, and have the needed knowledge and skills, to recommend sources of and provide patients and families with reliable health information. This article provides a current example of the changing role of a cancer centre librarian now involved in the patient education process.

Meeting date: October 25, 2017

Presenter: Lukas Miller

Citation: Shamseer, L., Moher, D., Maduekwe, O., Turner, L., Barbour, V., Burch, R., … Shea, B. J. (2017). Potential predatory and legitimate biomedical journals: can you tell the difference? A cross-sectional comparison. BMC Medicine, 15(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-017-0785-9

Article abstract:
BACKGROUND – The Internet has transformed scholarly publishing, most notably, by the introduction of open access publishing. Recently, there has been a rise of online journals characterized as ‘predatory’, which actively solicit manuscripts and charge publications fees without providing robust peer review and editorial services. We carried out a cross-sectional comparison of characteristics of potential predatory, legitimate open access, and legitimate subscription-based biomedical journals.

METHODS – On July 10, 2014, scholarly journals from each of the following groups were identified – potential predatory journals (source: Beall’s List), presumed legitimate, fully open access journals (source: PubMed Central), and presumed legitimate subscription-based (including hybrid) journals (source: Abridged Index Medicus). MEDLINE journal inclusion criteria were used to screen and identify biomedical journals from within the potential predatory journals group. One hundred journals from each group were randomly selected. Journal characteristics (e.g., website integrity, look and feel, editors and staff, editorial/peer review process, instructions to authors, publication model, copyright and licensing, journal location, and contact) were collected by one assessor and verified by a second. Summary statistics were calculated.

RESULTS – Ninety-three predatory journals, 99 open access, and 100 subscription-based journals were analyzed; exclusions were due to website unavailability. Many more predatory journals’ homepages contained spelling errors (61/93, 66%) and distorted or potentially unauthorized images (59/93, 63%) compared to open access journals (6/99, 6% and 5/99, 5%, respectively) and subscription-based journals (3/100, 3% and 1/100, 1%, respectively). Thirty-one (33%) predatory journals promoted a bogus impact metric – the Index Copernicus Value – versus three (3%) open access journals and no subscription-based journals. Nearly three quarters (n = 66, 73%) of predatory journals had editors or editorial board members whose affiliation with the journal was unverified versus two (2%) open access journals and one (1%) subscription-based journal in which this was the case. Predatory journals charge a considerably smaller publication fee (median $100 USD, IQR $63–$150) than open access journals ($1865 USD, IQR $800–$2205) and subscription-based hybrid journals ($3000 USD, IQR $2500–$3000).

CONCLUSIONS – We identified 13 evidence-based characteristics by which predatory journals may potentially be distinguished from presumed legitimate journals. These may be useful for authors who are assessing journals for possible submission or for others, such as universities evaluating candidates’ publications as part of the hiring process.

Reason for selection: This paper was selected in consideration of our engaging discussion on predatory publishing and open access at the September 26, 2017 Journal Club meeting. Given the prominence of this issue in academic and research library settings, it is prudent we as librarians understand not only how to discern predatory journals from those that are legitimate, but also doing so ethically and mindfully with the guidance of evidence-based science.

This article is also open peer reviewed – a relatively new approach to scholarly publishing. A discussion question has been tailored to this as a learning opportunity for librarians.

Critical Appraisal: Please use the CEBMA Critical Appraisal of a Cross-Sectional Study (Survey)worksheet as a template to assess this study.

Questions:

1. Consider the 13 evidence-based characteristics (Table 10) in comparison to other method(s) you take to assess the quality of journals. Do you agree with the characteristics the authors have identified? Can you foresee any potential problems in adopting this approach?
2. Consider and share any experiences you have had browsing websites or handling solicitation emails from predatory publishers. How did you make the determination, and how difficult was it to decide? Would having this tool available at the time made a difference for you or a client?
3. This article is open peer review. Please take the opportunity to click the “Open Peer Review Reports” link below the article title and browse the reviewer reports and author comments.  Be prepared to share your thoughts and opinions on this relatively new approach to academic publishing. A brief explanation of BMC’s open peer review policy can be found here. Consider what implications open peer review can have for scholarly communication, predatory publishing, and our work in hospital/clinical libraries. What implications will this have for us/our clients in the future?
4. Open discussion.

Discussion summary & recommendations:
We determined the article addressed a clear concern or issue. The study design was deemed suitable to tackle the issue, and we perceived minimal issues concerning the sample(s), bias, and findings. We acknowledges inherit ethical concerns relating to Beall’s List, given other research on this topic.

Statistical significance and confidence intervals were not presented by the authors. However, given the study design and sample, this was acceptable.

We felt that additional information concerning the authors’ scope & definition of “predatory publishers” and/or “predatory publishing” would have helped to clarify matters of identification.

We determined that the 13 evidence-based criteria for predatory publishers presented by the authors would be a helpful aid for librarians assisting scholars, though some carry more weight than others. We acknowledged that there is no “one true” solution to this problem, and that individual discretion is often required.

We further discussed the 13 criteria and our own personal/professional approaches to aiding scholars with finding where to publish their research.