Author Archives: Dina

Authoring Published Meeting Abstracts – Searching for Upcoming Conferences for Submitting Your Work

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There are a few approaches that you can take for identifying upcoming conferences that may be appropriate venues for sharing your preliminary research results (as a peer-reviewed paper or poster presentation).

  • One way is to search a database that contains information about the conferences/congresses themselves. Another way is to identify professional associations/organizations related to your discipline/field that would likely be responsible for organizing professional meetings, and then search the website of these organizations to look for announcements of their upcoming events and professional development opportunities.

For example, you can use a database like PubsHub that indexes Congresses and Associations:

PubsHub: https://libguides.mskcc.org/pubshub

Many people are familiar with PubsHub as they may have used it when trying to identify good journal contenders for manuscript submission. It’s a great tool to use for that purpose – it even has functionality that lets you easily compare the features of two different journal titles – but there are also parts of this database dedicated to Congresses and Associations.

  • Another effective way to find this information is to search on your favorite topic in a scholarly literature database that indexes conference proceedings, limit your search results to the Meeting Abstracts/Conference Proceedings publication type, and then note the names of the conferences where these meeting abstracts were submitted and accepted.

For example, you can search a database that indexes conference proceedings of interest and then look up the conference names included in the citations that are returned (from the citation record/published meeting abstracts records that were presented on topics related to yours) using another search tool (like Google) to investigate if those conferences/associations will soon be accepting abstract submissions for their next conference.

Resources available via the MSK Library that index conference proceedings/meeting abstracts include:

  1. Web of Science – https://libguides.mskcc.org/webofscience

  2. Northern Light Life Sciences Conference Abstracts – https://libguides.mskcc.org/northernlight

  3. Synapse – https://synapse.mskcc.org/synapse/works

Questions? Ask Us at the MSK Library.

Cochrane RCT Classifier

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As anyone who has worked on a systematic review (SR) project can attest – the record screening process can be a frustratingly tedious and time-consuming one. If available, most reviewers would likely welcome some kind of automation that streamlines and potentially reduces the manual record screening portion of their SR workload.

What is an RCT classifier algorithm?

An RCT classifier algorithm is “a tool to help you sort out the non-RCTs so that you can focus your effort on studies more likely to be included in your review”. In other words, researchers working on SRs that specify in their protocol that only studies reporting on RCTs will be included can now take advantage of tools that help them predict – using an automated algorithm derived from machine learning – whether a study is using a possible RCT or a not an RCT study design. 

The research team behind the leading RCT classifier algorithm tool (which includes members of the EPPI-Centre and Cochrane) published a paper in May 2022 describing the development and evaluation of their tool:

Thomas J, McDonald S, Noel-Storr A, Shemilt I, Elliott J, Mavergames C, Marshall IJ. Machine learning reduced workload with minimal risk of missing studies: development and evaluation of a randomized controlled trial classifier for Cochrane Reviews. J Clin Epidemiol. 2021 May;133:140-151. doi: 10.1016/j.jclinepi.2020.11.003. Epub 2020 Nov 7. PMID: 33171275; PMCID: PMC8168828. 

The good news for our MSK community is that this RCT classifier functionality has already been incorporated into Covidence, the systematic review project management system that the MSK Library subscribes to and provides access to. To turn this function on in a review that they are working on, a team member will need to have first selected the “Medical and health sciences” option under the “Area of Research” drop-down menu. After choosing to create this kind of review, the option to “Automatically tag studies reporting on RCTs using the Cochrane RCT Classifier” will become visible for a user to decide to enable of not. If enabled (only works with titles that have >15 characters and abstracts that have >400 characters), their SR records will be tagged as “Possible RCT” or “Not RCT” and can be filtered accordingly.

Learn more about “How to tag studies not reporting on RCTs” by checking out this article from the Covidence knowledgebase.

Questions? Ask Us at the MSK Library.

Hijacked Journals – A Predatory Journal Scam Sub-type

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Predatory journals have been part of the scholarly publishing discussion for a number of years now and numerous efforts have been made to develop training resources and tools to help potential authors establish whether or not a journal they are considering submitting a manuscript to is reputable or not.

Not surprisingly, as consumers are becoming more aware of the existence and threat of predatory publishing, the predators are adapting to this new reality and becoming more sophisticated – or rather – more downright sneaky in their ways. Which brings us to “Hijacked Journals”.

What is a “Hijacked Journal”?

A hijacked journal is basically a predatory journal that is not just trying to mimic another established journal by adopting a similar title and “look” to their publication, but rather is actually using a legitimate journal’s exact title, ISSN information, and other meta-data. This scam can happen to current titles published by larger publishers, but likely is more easily carried out successfully using journal titles that may have been recently ceased or to smaller society or university publications.

What can you do to protect yourself?

The usual strategies for avoiding predatory publishers still apply to avoiding hijacked journals. That said – taking extra steps to investigate whether or not a publication has ceased or has had a change in publisher is highly recommended as this step will help to determine if even more scrutiny of the journal is warranted. Tools like the NLM Catalog and Ulrichs can be used to verify this information.

Furthermore, to help authors not fall victim to this hijacking scam, the diligent folks at Retraction Watch have begun compiling a spreadsheet of journal titles that they have classified as “hijacked” in their new Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker. Learn more by reading their recent blog post announcing this new tool.

Additional reading:

Questions? Ask Us at the MSK Library.