Category Archives: Resource Highlights

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New MSK LibGuide on COVID-19

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Over the last year, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been felt by everyone in all walks of life, across the planet. It is not surprising, therefore, that the amount of COVID-19 related information available, both scholarly and not, has continued to grow exponentially.

With over 5,000 trials registered in ClinicalTrials.gov, over 120,000 openly-available journals article in PubMed Central (PMC), over 110,000 records in PubMed, over 2,000 COVID-19 related systematic reviews or meta-analyses, and even 296 publications by MSK authors (as of 3/11/2021), efforts to organize this information and make it more discoverable couldn’t be more welcome.

Thanks to the savvy information evaluation and organization skills of MSK Library Research Informationist, Kendra Godwin, the MSK community and the public at large can now take advantage of the Library’s new COVID-19 LibGuide to discover the plethora of COVID-19 resources and tools available online.

The MSK Library COVID-19 LibGuide includes resources arranged across nine tabs/sections:

  • Home
  • Local Resources
  • Resource Collections, News, and Trackers
  • Literature
  • Mental Health and Workplace Safety
  • Equity, Ethics, and Communication
  • Guiding Clinical and Cancer Care
  • Research, Data, and Visualizations 
  • Information for Cancer Patients and Caretakers

Included resources come from sources ranging from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), to scholarly publishers, professional organizations, public and private institutions, etc., that are both national and international. This finding aid will hopefully help fulfill a variety of information needs, both work-related and personal.

For more information about the COVID-19 LibGuide, please feel free to Ask Us at the MSK Library.

PRISMA-S Extension for Reporting Literature Searches

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First introduced in 2009, the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) statement provides guidance to authors, journal editors, and readers about which informational elements should ideally be reported on and in what detail in a systematic review (SR) publication.

With the increase in systematic review publications over the last decade came more variance and variety within the SR/evidence synthesis study design, prompting the need for even more specialized guidance. Responding to this need, various special interest PRISMA groups worked to develop “extensions” to the PRISMA reporting guidelines, their number now reaching ten.

From the Equator Network:

PRISMA-Equity: Welch V, Petticrew M, Tugwell P, Moher D, O’Neill J, Waters E, White H; PRISMA-Equity Bellagio group. PRISMA-Equity 2012 Extension: Reporting Guidelines for Systematic Reviews with a Focus on Health Equity. PLoS Med. 2012;9(10):e1001333. PMID: 23222917

PRISMA-Abstracts: Beller EM, Glasziou PP, Altman DG, Hopewell S, Bastian H, Chalmers I, Gøtzsche PC, Lasserson T, Tovey D; PRISMA for Abstracts Group. PRISMA for Abstracts: Reporting Systematic Reviews in Journal and Conference Abstracts. PLoS Med. 2013;10(4):e1001419. PMID: 23585737

PRISMA-P: Moher D, Shamseer L, Clarke M, Ghersi D, Liberati A, Petticrew M, Shekelle P, Stewart LA. Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Protocols (PRISMA-P) 2015 statement. Syst Rev. 2015;4(1):1. PMID: 25554246

PRISMA-IPD: Stewart LA, Clarke M, Rovers M, Riley RD, Simmonds M, Stewart G, Tierney JF; PRISMA-IPD Development Group. Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses of individual participant data: the PRISMA-IPD Statement. JAMA. 2015;313(16):1657-1665. PMID: 25919529

PRISMA extension for network meta-analyses: Hutton B, Salanti G, Caldwell DM, Chaimani A, Schmid CH, Cameron C, Ioannidis JP, Straus S, Thorlund K, Jansen JP, Mulrow C, Catalá-López F, Gøtzsche PC, Dickersin K, Boutron I, Altman DG, Moher D. The PRISMA Extension Statement for Reporting of Systematic Reviews Incorporating Network Meta-analyses of Health Care Interventions: Checklist and Explanations. Ann Intern Med. 2015;162(11):777-784. PMID: 26030634

PRISMA-harms: Zorzela L, Loke YK, Ioannidis JP, Golder S, Santaguida P, Altman DG, Moher D, Vohra S; PRISMA harms group. PRISMA harms checklist: improving harms reporting in systematic reviews. BMJ. 2016;352:i157. PMID: 26830668

PRISMA-CI: Guise JM, Butler ME, Chang C, Viswanathan M, Pigott T, Tugwell P; Complex Interventions Workgroup. AHRQ Series on Complex Intervention Systematic Reviews – Paper 6: PRISMA-CI Extension Statement & Checklist. J Clin Epidemiol. 2017. PMID: 28720516

PRISMA-DTA: McInnes MDF, Moher D, Thombs BD, McGrath TA, Bossuyt PM; and the PRISMA-DTA Group. Preferred Reporting Items for a Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Diagnostic Test Accuracy Studies: The PRISMA-DTA Statement. JAMA. 2018;319(4):388-396. PMID: 29362800

PRISMA-ScR: Tricco AC, Lillie E, Zarin W, O’Brien KK, Colquhoun H, Levac D, Moher D, Peters MDJ, Horsley T, Weeks L, Hempel S, Akl EA, Chang C, McGowan J, Stewart L, Hartling L, Aldcroft A, Wilson MG, Garritty C, Lewin S, Godfrey CM, Macdonald MT, Langlois EV, Soares-Weiser K, Moriarty J, Clifford T, Tunçalp Ö, Straus SE. PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR): Checklist and Explanation. Ann Intern Med. 2018. PMID: 30178033

The latest PRISMA extension to be published in 2021 is the PRISMA-S extension which provides detailed guidance related to the preferred reporting of SR literature searches.

Rethlefsen ML, Kirtley S, Waffenschmidt S, Ayala AP, Moher D, Page MJ, Koffel JB; PRISMA-S Group. PRISMA-S: an extension to the PRISMA Statement for Reporting Literature Searches in Systematic Reviews. Syst Rev. 2021 Jan 26;10(1):39. doi: 10.1186/s13643-020-01542-z. PMID: 33499930; PMCID: PMC7839230.

To learn more about best practices regarding the literature search required – and its reporting – for a systematic review, be sure to check out the MSK Library’s Systematic Review Service LibGuide and/or consider attending an upcoming training class.

Reporting Standards and Research Resource Identifiers (RRIDs)

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Following reporting guidelines of all kinds has become common – if not required – practice in health research and publishing over the last decade. The EQUATOR (Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research) Network which promotes “transparent and accurate reporting and wider use of robust reporting guidelines”, now makes available 448 reporting guidelines in its online library. Among them is one entitled – “Unique identification of research resources in the biomedical literature: the Resource Identification Initiative (RRID)”. 

As per the two papers cited below, the “Resource Identification Initiative was launched as a pilot project to improve the reporting standards for research resources in the methods sections of papers and thereby improve identifiability and scientific reproducibility”.

What is a Research Resource Identifier (RRID)?

An RRID is essentially a “Persistent Unique Identifier” that “is designed to help researchers cite the key biological resources used to produce their scientific findings”. Key resources can include: Antibodies, Model Organisms, Cell Lines, Plasmids, and other Tools (software, databases, services). Adding this degree of detail about the resources used in their research makes it possible for others to track these items down should they be interested in replicating or building on the published work. Authors can search for existing RRIDs using the Resource Identification Portal which was created in support of the Resource Identification Initiative, and whose aim is “to promote research resource identification, discovery, and reuse”. 

Not surprising, journal publishers – including Nature and AACR – have gotten on-board and started encouraging the use of RRIDs by authors submitting manuscripts for publication in their journals. In fact, in June 2020, it was announced that AACR journals will be integrating a text-mining tool called SciScore into its journals’ submission platform to help them with better implementing this effort.

From their Press Release:

“SciScore evaluates scientific manuscripts for compliance with recommendations and requirements designed to address different aspects of rigor and reproducibility in the published literature, e.g., MDAR, ARRIVE, CONSORT, and RRID standards. This tool provides a score and a supporting report to identify whether key areas of reproducibility and transparency are addressed in the manuscript.“

To learn more about this new development, be sure to view the video recording of the December 17, 2020 Advancing Authorship event entitled: Meeting the Challenges of Reproducibility, hosted by the MSK Library. The first speaker was Daniel Evanko, PhD, Director of Journal Operations and Systems at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), who has “been heavily involved in efforts to improve the communication, transparency, and reproducibility of published scientific research for over 10 years”. 

For more information on reporting standards, be sure to Ask Us at the MSK Library!