Searching for evidence in public health emergencies: a white paper of best practices.

Objectives: Information professionals have supported medical providers, administrators and decision-makers, and guideline creators in the COVID-19 response. Searching COVID-19 literature presented new challenges, including the volume and heterogeneity of literature and the proliferation of new information sources, and exposed existing issues in metadata and publishing. An expert panel developed best practices, including recommendations, elaborations, and examples, for searching during public health emergencies. Methods: Project directors and advisors developed core elements from experience and literature. Experts, identified by affiliation with evidence synthesis groups, COVID-19 search experience, and nomination, responded to an online survey to reach consensus on core elements. Expert participants provided written responses to guiding questions. A synthesis of responses provided the foundation for focus group discussions. A writing group then drafted the best practices into a statement. Experts reviewed the statement prior to dissemination. Results: Twelve information professionals contributed to best practice recommendations on six elements: core resources, search strategies, publication types, transparency and reproducibility, collaboration, and conducting research. Underlying principles across recommendations include timeliness, openness, balance, preparedness, and responsiveness. Conclusions: The authors and experts anticipate the recommendations for searching for evidence during public health emergencies will help information specialists, librarians, evidence synthesis groups, researchers, and decision-makers respond to future public health emergencies, including but not limited to disease outbreaks. The recommendations complement existing guidance by addressing concerns specific to emergency response. The statement is intended as a living document. Future revisions should solicit input from a broader community and reflect conclusions of meta-research on COVID-19 and health emergencies.

Scite.

Scite. Scite Inc., 334 Leonard St., Brooklyn, NY 11211; https://scite.ai/; tiered pricing model with free, basic ($7.99/month), premium ($19.99/month or $100/year), premium+ ($59.99/month), and enterprise plans.

Providing Information to Support COVID-19 Pandemic Response: Academic Medical Librarians' Roles in Creating an Intelligence Report.

In March 2020, the Dean of the George Washington (GW) University School of Medicine and Health Sciences (SMHS) and the GW COVID-19 Incident Management Team asked the Senior Associate Dean for Clinical Public Health to initiate a daily report that surveyed COVID-19 literature/resources. This COVID-19 Intelligence Report would serve as a concise, authoritative source of COVID-19 information for clinicians, the Incident Management Team, and operational leaders. The Senior Associate Dean established an Intelligence Gathering Team comprised of clinicians and librarians. Himmelfarb librarians facilitated the collection, distribution, and archiving of COVID-19 resources and Intelligence Reports.

The currency and completeness of specialized databases of COVID-19 publications.

OBJECTIVE: Several specialized collections of COVID-19 literature have been developed during the global health emergency. These include the WHO COVID-19 Global Literature Database, Cochrane COVID-19 Study Register, CAMARADES COVID-19 SOLES, Epistemonikos' COVID-19 L-OVE, and LitCovid. Our objective was to evaluate the completeness of these collections and to measure the time from when COVID-19 articles are posted to when they appear in the collections. STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING: We tested each selected collection for the presence of 440 included studies from 25 COVID-19 systematic reviews. We sampled 112 journals and prospectively monitored their websites until a new COVID-19 article appeared. We then monitored for 2 weeks to see when the new articles appeared in each collection. PubMed served as a comparator. RESULTS: Every collection provided at least one record not found in PubMed. Four records (1%) were not in any of the sources studied. Collections contained between 83% and 93% of the primary studies with the WHO database being the most complete. By 2 weeks, between 60% and 78% of tracked articles had appeared. CONCLUSION: Our findings support the use of the best performing COVID-19 collections by systematic reviews to replace paywalled databases.

UMLS users and uses: a current overview.

The US National Library of Medicine regularly collects summary data on direct use of Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) resources. The summary data sources include UMLS user registration data, required annual reports submitted by registered users, and statistics on downloads and application programming interface calls. In 2019, the National Library of Medicine analyzed the summary data on 2018 UMLS use. The library also conducted a scoping review of the literature to provide additional intelligence about the research uses of UMLS as input to a planned 2020 review of UMLS production methods and priorities. 5043 direct users of UMLS data and tools downloaded 4402 copies of the UMLS resources and issued 66 130 951 UMLS application programming interface requests in 2018. The annual reports and the scoping review results agree that the primary UMLS uses are to process and interpret text and facilitate mapping or linking between terminologies. These uses align with the original stated purpose of the UMLS.

Newborn Health: Resources for New Mothers: A Webliography.

New mothers have unique health information needs and behaviors. They may be overwhelmed or feel pressure from family, society, and self. At any time they may have only one hand free to scroll through a webpage. New mothers may be adept at navigating the Internet and using technology, and they may prefer mobile-friendly sites and apps. Mothers need reliable health information from professionals and experiential knowledge from other mothers. They need information to face the day-to-day challenges and to feel like part of a community. This webliography is a guide to online resources, including websites, blogs, and support groups, which provide new mothers with information on newborn care.