Faculty Bibliography

Objective/UNASSIGNED:PubMed's provision of MEDLINE and other National Library of Medicine (NLM) resources has made it one of the most widely accessible biomedical resources globally. The growth of PubMed Central (PMC) and public access mandates have affected PubMed's composition. The authors tested recent claims that content in PMC is of low quality and affects PubMed's reliability, while exploring PubMed's role in the current scholarly communications landscape. Methods/UNASSIGNED:The percentage of MEDLINE-indexed records was assessed in PubMed and various subsets of records from PMC. Data were retrieved via the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) interface, and follow-up interviews with a PMC external reviewer and staff at NLM were conducted. Results/UNASSIGNED:Almost all PubMed content (91%) is indexed in MEDLINE; however, since the launch of PMC, the percentage of PubMed records indexed in MEDLINE has slowly decreased. This trend is the result of an increase in PMC content from journals that are not indexed in MEDLINE and not a result of author manuscripts submitted to PMC in compliance with public access policies. Author manuscripts in PMC continue to be published in MEDLINE-indexed journals at a high rate (85%). The interviewees clarified the difference between the sources, with MEDLINE serving as a highly selective index of journals in biomedical literature and PMC serving as an open archive of quality biomedical and life sciences literature and a repository of funded research. Conclusion/UNASSIGNED:The differing scopes of PMC and MEDLINE will likely continue to affect their overlap; however, quality control exists in the maintenance and facilitation of both resources, and funding from major grantors is a major component of quality assurance in PMC.

BACKGROUND:There is an urgent need for consistent collection of demographic data on COVID-19 morbidity and mortality and sharing it with the public in open and accessible ways. Due to the lack of consistency in data reporting during the initial spread of COVID-19, the Equitable Data Collection and Disclosure on COVID-19 Act was introduced into the Congress that mandates collection and reporting of demographic COVID-19 data on testing, treatments, and deaths by age, sex, race and ethnicity, primary language, socioeconomic status, disability, and county. To our knowledge, no studies have evaluated how COVID-19 demographic data have been collected before and after the introduction of this legislation. OBJECTIVE:This study aimed to evaluate differences in reporting and public availability of COVID-19 demographic data by US state health departments and Washington, District of Columbia (DC) before (pre-Act), immediately after (post-Act), and 6 months after (6-month follow-up) the introduction of the Equitable Data Collection and Disclosure on COVID-19 Act in the Congress on April 21, 2020. METHODS:We reviewed health department websites of all 50 US states and Washington, DC (N=51). We evaluated how each state reported age, sex, and race and ethnicity data for all confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths and how they made this data available (ie, charts and tables only or combined with dashboards and machine-actionable downloadable formats) at the three timepoints. RESULTS:We found statistically significant increases in the number of health departments reporting age-specific data for COVID-19 cases (P=.045) and resulting deaths (P=.002), sex-specific data for COVID-19 deaths (P=.003), and race- and ethnicity-specific data for confirmed cases (P=.003) and deaths (P=.005) post-Act and at the 6-month follow-up (P<.05 for all). The largest increases were race and ethnicity state data for confirmed cases (pre-Act: 18/51, 35%; post-Act: 31/51, 61%; 6-month follow-up: 46/51, 90%) and deaths due to COVID-19 (pre-Act: 13/51, 25%; post-Act: 25/51, 49%; and 6-month follow-up: 39/51, 76%). Although more health departments reported race and ethnicity data based on federal requirements (P<.001), over half (29/51, 56.9%) still did not report all racial and ethnic groups as per the Office of Management and Budget guidelines (pre-Act: 5/51, 10%; post-Act: 21/51, 41%; and 6-month follow-up: 27/51, 53%). The number of health departments that made COVID-19 data available for download significantly increased from 7 to 23 (P<.001) from our initial data collection (April 2020) to the 6-month follow-up, (October 2020). CONCLUSIONS:Although the increased demand for disaggregation has improved public reporting of demographics across health departments, an urgent need persists for the introduced legislation to be passed by the Congress for the US states to consistently collect and make characteristics of COVID-19 cases, deaths, and vaccinations available in order to allocate resources to mitigate disease spread.

When millions saw footage of George Floyd's murder by police during the COVID-19 pandemic where marginalized groups had higher death rates, increased awareness and action arose because Black people are treated differently in the United States. Many libraries subsequently created statements and committees to commit to reduce inequities in libraries; however, Black bodies are still being harmed. Therefore, this editorial details the Start and End with I concept and provides concrete steps for making change. It is time to center the voices that have been dismissed and ignored for too long. Are you willing to do what it takes?

Spurred by the National Institute of Health mandating a data management and sharing plan as a requirement of grant funding, research data management has exploded in importance for librarians supporting researchers and research institutions. This editorial examines the role and direction of libraries in this process from several viewpoints. Key markers of success include collaboration, establishing new relationships, leveraging existing relationships, accessing multiple avenues of communication, and building niche expertise and cachè as a valued and trustworthy partner.

BACKGROUND:Health practitioners and researchers must be able to measure and assess maternal care quality in facilities to monitor, intervene, and reduce global maternal mortality rates. On the global scale, there is a general lack of consensus on how maternal care quality is defined, conceptualized, and measured. Much of the literature addressing this problem has focused primarily on defining, conceptualizing, and measuring clinical indicators of maternal care quality. Less attention has been given in this regard to perceived maternal care quality among women which is known to influence care utilization and adherence. Therefore, there is a need to map the literature focused on defining, conceptualizing, and measuring perceived maternal care quality across low-, middle-, and high-income country contexts. METHODS:This scoping review protocol will follow the Arksey and O'Malley methodological framework. A comprehensive search strategy will be used to search for articles published from inception to 2020 in Ovid MEDLINE, Embase, AMED, and WHO Global Index Medicus. Gray literature will be included. Two independent reviewers will screen articles by title and abstract, then by full-text based on pre-determined inclusion/exclusion criteria. A third reviewer will arbitrate any discrepancies. This protocol outlines a four-step analytic approach that includes numerical, graphical, tabular, and narrative summaries to provide a comprehensive description of the body of literature. DISCUSSION:The findings from this scoping review will provide a comprehensive overview of the existing evidence on perceived maternal care quality. The findings are expected to inform future work on building consensus around the definition and conceptualization of perceived maternal care quality, and lay the groundwork for future research aimed at developing measures of perceived maternal care quality that can be applied across country contexts. Consequently, this review may aid in facilitating coordinated efforts to measure and improve maternal care quality across diverse country contexts (i.e., low-, middle-, and high-income country contexts). REVIEW REGISTRATION:This scoping review has been registered in the Open Science Framework (osf.io/k8nqh).

Objective - To investigate how long it takes for medical librarians to complete steps toward completion of a systematic review and to determine if the time differs based on factors including years of experience as a medical librarian and experience completing systematic reviews. Design - Survey research as a questionnaire disseminated via email distribution lists. Setting - At institutions that are members of the Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries (AAHSL) and librarians at Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) or American Osteopathic Association (AOA) member institutions. Subjects - Librarians of member institutions who have worked on systematic reviews. Methods - On December 11, 2015, AAHSL library directors and librarian members of AAMC and AOA were sent the survey and the recommendation to forward the survey to librarians on staff who have worked on systematic reviews. Reminders were sent on December 17, 2015, and the survey closed for participation on January 7, 2016. Participants who had worked on a systematic review within the past five years were asked to indicate experience by the number of systematic reviews completed, years of experience as a medical librarian, and how much time was spent, in hours, on the following: initial consultations/meetings; developing and testing the initial search strategy; translating the strategy for other databases; documenting the process; delivering the search results; writing their part of the manuscript; other tasks they could identify; and any instruction (i.e., training they provided to team members necessary for completion of the systematic review). Participants also further broke down the amount of their time searching, by percentage of time, in various resources, including literature indexes/databases, included studies' references, trial registers, grey literature, and hand searching. Participants were also given space to add additional comments. The researchers reported summary statistics for phase one and, for phase two, excluded outliers and performed exploratory factor analysis, beginning with principal components analysis (PCA), followed by a varimax rotation, to determine if there was a relationship between the time on tasks and experience. Main Results - Of the 185 completed responses, 105 were analyzed for phase one because 80 responses were excluded due to missing data or no recent experience with a systematic review. The average respondent had between 1 and 6 years of experience: 1-3 years in librarianship (49.5%) and 4-6 years (23.8%). The time reported for completion of all tasks ranged from 2 to 219 hours with a mean of 30.7 hours. Most of the variance (61.6%) was caused by "information processing" and "interpersonal instruction/training" components. Search strategy development and testing had the highest average time at 8.4 hours. Within that category, databases accounted for 78.7% of time searching, followed by other searching methods. For remaining systematic review tasks, their averages were as follows: translating research (5.4 hours), delivering results (4.3 hours), conducting preliminary consultations (3.9 hours), instruction (3.8 hours), documentation (3.0 hours), additional tasks that were written-in by respondents (2.2 hours), and writing the manuscript (1.8 hours). The most common written-in tasks were development of inclusion/exclusion criteria, critical appraisal, and deduplication. Other write-ins included retrieving full-text articles, developing protocols, and selecting a journal for publishing the systematic review. For the second phase of analysis, 12 responses were excluded as extreme outliers, and the remaining 93 responses were analyzed to detect a relationship between experience and time on task. Prior systematic review experience correlated with shorter times performing instruction, consultation, and translation of searches. However, librarian years of experience affected the percentage of time on task, where greater years of experience led to more time spent consulting and instructing than the percentage for librarians with fewer years of experience. Librarians with greater than 7 years of experience skewed trends toward shorter time on task, and, with their data excluded, years of experience showed weak positive correlation with instruction and consultation. Conclusion - Because the average librarian participating on systematic review teams has had few prior experiences and because the times can vary widely based on assigned roles, duties, years of experience, and complexity of research question, it is not advised to establish expectations for librarians' time on task. This may be why library administrators have disparate expectations of librarians' involvement in systematic reviews and find it difficult to allocate and anticipate staff time on systematic review projects. While it may not be possible to set specific overarching guidelines for librarians' expected time on systematic review tasks, librarian supervisors and library directors planning for their staff to offer systematic review services should work to develop extensive understanding of the steps for conducting and assessing systematic reviews in order to better estimate time commitments.

Objective - To determine the effects of the professional designation and communication method on clinical, educational, and research activities and related users' reported satisfaction with and perceived quality of a librarian-mediated literature searching service. Design - Online survey. Setting - A large teaching hospital in Ontario, Canada. Subjects - 237 health sciences centre staff who were requesting librarian-mediated literature searching over a one-year period. Methods - From February 1, 2014 to January 31, 2015, one-third of the health centre staff members requesting searching services, representing a systematic sample of the user group, were invited to participate in the survey. The survey centred on questioning participants on a critical incident, which, according to the critical incident technique, is an actual event upon which recollections are made, rather than hypothetical situations. In the case of this study, the critical incident was the service they received upon requesting literature searching by a librarian who was blinded concerning the originator of the request. With a 71% response rate, the researchers received 137 responses to the survey by health sciences staff. Participants were asked how many literature searches they had requested in the previous year, the reason they requested the service, how they submitted the request, and whether the librarian followed up for further clarification of their need. They also reported on the relevance of the results and their method of delivery, along with their perceptions of the overall quality of the service. Main Results - The results came from 137 completed surveys, for a 71% response rate. Physicians, nurses, and allied health professionals comprised 85% of the responses, at 35%, 27%, and 23% respectively. Scientists, researchers, research coordinators, and other staff made up the remainder of responses. Responses indicated frequent search requests, with the average number of searches being five, and 68% of respondents reported searching for the information themselves before contacting the library for assistance. Most searches were for research/publishing (34%) and teaching/training (20%). Requests were submitted via email (44%), online form (32%), in person (17.5%), and phone (6.5%), and most respondents rated themselves extremely satisfied (54%) or very satisfied (42%). Most respondents (72%) reported that the librarian followed up for further clarification of the request, and staff who received follow-up rated themselves extremely satisfied at a significantly higher rate than those who did not (p=0.002). Respondents whose request was submitted verbally (i.e., by phone or in person), in comparison with those whose request was submitted by email or online form, rated themselves extremely satisfied at a significantly higher rate (p=0.004) and rated the quality of results as excellent at a significantly higher rate (p=0.005). Conclusion - The need for comprehensive and expert searching when publishing or completing research and the availability of easy to use point-of-care resources may be why librarian-mediated literature searching was used for research and publishing at a rate much higher than for patient care. In addition, the fact that the institution was also engaged in efforts toward evidence-based standardization of care and electronic health records during that year may have also affected results. While satisfaction with the service was higher for those communicating verbally with a librarian, it is unclear whether this was caused by other factors or differences between staff members who engage in phone or in-person communication and those who submit forms and online requests. Because following up was correlated with higher satisfaction, adjustments in service encouraging librarians to follow up are recommended. Following up in person and via phone may help further.