Language and Geographic Representation of Neurosurgical Journals: A Meta-Science Study.

OBJECTIVE: Medical journals have a role in promoting representation of neurosurgeons who speak primary languages other than English. We sought to characterize the language of publication and geographic origin of neurosurgical journals, delineate associations between impact factor (IF) and language and geographic variables, and describe steps to overcome language barriers to publishing. METHODS: Web of Science, Scopus, and Ulrich's Serial Analysis system were searched for neurosurgery journals. The journals were screened for relevance. Language of publication, country and World Health Organization region, World Bank income status and gross domestic product, and citation metrics were extracted. RESULTS: Of 867 journals, 74 neurosurgical journals were included. Common publication languages were English (52, 70.3%), Mandarin (5, 6.8%), and Spanish (4, 5.4%). Countries of publication for the greatest number of journals were the United States (23, 31.1%), United Kingdom (8, 10.8%), and China (6, 8.1%). Most journals originated from the Americas region (29, 39.2%), the European region (28, 37.8%), and from high-income countries (n = 54, 73.0%). Median IF was 1.55 (interquartile range [IQR] 0.89-2.40). Journals written in English (1.77 [IQR 1.00-2.87], P = 0.032) and from high-income countries (1.81 [IQR 1.0-2.70], P = 0.046) had highest median IF. When excluding outliers, there was a small but positive correlation between per capita gross domestic product and IF (ß = 0.021, P = 0.03, R2 = 0.097). CONCLUSIONS: Language concordance represents a substantial barrier to research equity in neurosurgery, limiting dissemination of ideas of merit that currently have inadequate outlets for readership. Initiatives aimed at increasing the accessibility of neurosurgical publishing to underrepresented authors are essential.

Why are they not accessing it? User barriers to clinical information access.

The Medical Library Association's InSight Initiative provides an open and collaborative environment for library and industry partners to discuss vexing problems and find solutions to better serve their users. The initiative's fifth summit, continuing work from the previous summit, focused on understanding how users discover and access information in the clinical environment. During the summit, participants were divided into working groups and encouraged to create a tangible product as a result of their discussions. At the end of the summit, participants established a framework for understanding users' pain points, discussed possible solutions to those points, and received feedback on their work from an End User Advisory Board comprising physicians, clinical researchers, and clinical faculty in biomedicine. In addition to the pain point framework, participants are developing MLA InSight Initiative Learning content with modules to educate librarians and publishers about critical aspects of user behavior. The 2020 Insight Initiative Fall Forum will serve as a virtual home for constructive dialogue between health sciences librarians and publishers on improving discovery and access to information.

Is authorship sufficient for today's collaborative research? A call for contributor roles.

Assigning authorship and recognizing contributions to scholarly works is challenging on many levels. Here we discuss ethical, social, and technical challenges to the concept of authorship that may impede the recognition of contributions to a scholarly work. Recent work in the field of authorship shows that shifting to a more inclusive contributorship approach may address these challenges. Recent efforts to enable better recognition of contributions to scholarship include the development of the Contributor Role Ontology (CRO), which extends the CRediT taxonomy and can be used in information systems for structuring contributions. We also introduce the Contributor Attribution Model (CAM), which provides a simple data model that relates the contributor to research objects via the role that they played, as well as the provenance of the information. Finally, requirements for the adoption of a contributorship-based approach are discussed.

Personas for the translational workforce.

Twelve evidence-based profiles of roles across the translational workforce and two patients were made available through clinical and translational science (CTS) Personas, a project of the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) Program National Center for Data to Health (CD2H). The persona profiles were designed and researched to demonstrate the key responsibilities, motivators, goals, software use, pain points, and professional development needs of those working across the spectrum of translation, from basic science to clinical research to public health. The project's goal was to provide reliable documents that could be used to inform CTSA software development projects, educational resources, and communication initiatives. This paper presents the initiative to create personas for the translational workforce, including the methodology, engagement strategy, and lessons learned. Challenges faced and successes achieved by the project may serve as a roadmap for others searching for best practices in the creation of Persona profiles.

Translational Personas and Hospital Library Services.

Academic health centers, CTSA hubs, and hospital libraries experience similar funding challenges and charges to do more with less. In recent years academic health center and hospital librarians have risen to these challenges by examining their service models, and beyond that, examining their patron base and users' needs. To meet the needs of employees, patients, and those who assist patients, hospital librarians can employ the CTS Personas, a project of the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) Program National Center for Data to Health. The Persona profiles, which outline the motivations, goals, pain points, wants, and needs of twelve employees and two patients in translational science, provide vital information and insights that can inform everything from designing software tools and educational services, to advertising these services, to designing impactful and collaborative library spaces.

Metrics Toolkit: an online evidence-based resource for navigating the research metrics landscape.

While research metrics may seem well established in the scholarly landscape, it can be challenging to understand how they should be used and how they are calculated. The Metrics Toolkit is an online evidence-based resource for researchers, librarians, evaluators, and administrators in their work to demonstrate or assess the impact of research.

DigitalHub: A Repository Focused on the Future.

The DigitalHub scholarly repository was developed and launched at the Galter Health Sciences Library for the Feinberg School of Medicine and the greater Northwestern Medicine community. The repository was designed to allow scholars the ability to create, share, and preserve a range of citable digital outputs. This article traces the evolution of DigitalHub's development and engagement activities, highlighting project challenges, innovations, success stories, and the team-based approach that was employed to successfully achieve project goals.

Research evaluation support services in biomedical libraries.

Objective: The paper provides a review of current practices related to evaluation support services reported by seven biomedical and research libraries. Methods: A group of seven libraries from the United States and Canada described their experiences with establishing evaluation support services at their libraries. A questionnaire was distributed among the libraries to elicit information as to program development, service and staffing models, campus partnerships, training, products such as tools and reports, and resources used for evaluation support services. The libraries also reported interesting projects, lessons learned, and future plans. Results: The seven libraries profiled in this paper report a variety of service models in providing evaluation support services to meet the needs of campus stakeholders. The service models range from research center cores, partnerships with research groups, and library programs with staff dedicated to evaluation support services. A variety of products and services were described such as an automated tool to develop rank-based metrics, consultation on appropriate metrics to use for evaluation, customized publication and citation reports, resource guides, classes and training, and others. Implementing these services has allowed the libraries to expand their roles on campus and to contribute more directly to the research missions of their institutions. Conclusions: Libraries can leverage a variety of evaluation support services as an opportunity to successfully meet an array of challenges confronting the biomedical research community, including robust efforts to report and demonstrate tangible and meaningful outcomes of biomedical research and clinical care. These services represent a transformative direction that can be emulated by other biomedical and research libraries.

Mapping the evolving definitions of translational research.

OBJECTIVE: Systematic review and analysis of definitions of translational research. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The final corpus was comprised of 33 papers, each read by at least 2 reviewers. Definitions were mapped to a common set of research processes for presentation and analysis. Influence of papers and definitions was further evaluated using citation analysis and agglomerative clustering. RESULTS: All definitions were mapped to common research processes, revealing most common labels for each process. Agglomerative clustering revealed 3 broad families of definitions. Citation analysis showed that the originating paper of each family has been cited ~10 times more than any other member. DISCUSSION: Although there is little agreement between definitions, we were able to identify an emerging consensus 5-phase (T0-T4) definition for translational research. T1 involves processes that bring ideas from basic research through early testing in humans. T2 involves the establishment of effectiveness in humans and clinical guidelines. T3 primarily focuses on implementation and dissemination research while T4 focuses on outcomes and effectiveness in populations. T0 involves research such as genome-wide association studies which wrap back around to basic research. CONCLUSION: We used systematic review and analysis to identify emerging consensus between definitions of translational research phases.