Invitation to Join Journal Editorial Board

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Earlier this month, I received an email invitation to join a journal’s editorial board.  At first glance, I was delighted for the opportunity and flattered that someone would think of me for this role.   Then…. on closer examination, red flags started to appear.

The sender’s email address did not reflect the publishing company, the website link was not included, nor the address of the organization.  In addition, the reason that was given for why they wanted me to join the board was because of a paper I co-authored in the Journal of Hospital Librarianship, published in July 2015.  The topic of the paper was the relevance of a library’s physical space, while the journal trying to recruit my services was focused on Integrative Medicine.  I didn’t see any connection between these two subject areas. Continue reading →

Finding Clinical Practice Guidelines

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There are a number of useful guideline repositories that provide search interfaces that make identifying available practice guidelines easier. Two noteworthy examples are the AHRQ’s National Guideline Clearinghouse (NGC) and the Guidelines International Network (G-I-N).

NGC “is a public resource for summaries of evidence-based clinical practice guidelines”. Their “New This Week” link provides a summary of the latest additions to their database (and can be subscribed to via email or RSS feed).  NGC does include guidelines from other countries but the database is limited to guidelines that meet certain criteria for inclusion.

Another option for guidelines from countries across the globe is the Guidelines International Network (G-I-N), which has the World’s largest international guideline library. ”The Guidelines International network, G-I-N, is a global network, founded in 2002. It has grown to comprise 105 organisations and 149 individual members representing 53 countries from all continents (March 2018).”

Although they are valuable search tools, the problem with both of these options, however, is that there is always a lag period between the date that a guideline is published and when it actually becomes available in NGC or G-I-N.

For identifying more recent guidelines, a better option may be to search a database like PubMed. PubMed even has search filters that can be applied to results in order to limit these to the publication types: Practice Guideline[ptyp] OR Guideline[ptyp]

However, limiting by MeSH indexing terms will only bring up the records that have been fully processed for the MEDLINE portion of PubMed, which are likely not the most recent additions to PubMed, as adding index terms to records may take 2-4 weeks. As such, simply keyword searching for a known guideline developer may be the best approach for identifying the most current guideline-related publications in PubMed.

For example, searching on the phrase “American Society of Clinical Oncology Clinical Practice Guideline” or “ASCO Clinical Practice Guideline Summary” in the PubMed search box will bring up the latest ASCO guidelines (or at least the majority of them), such as this one from April 2018 that includes a lead author from MSK:

Morris MJ, Rumble RB, Basch E, Hotte SJ, Loblaw A, Rathkopf D, Celano P, Bangs R, Milowsky MI. Optimizing Anticancer Therapy in Metastatic Non-Castrate Prostate Cancer: American Society of Clinical Oncology Clinical Practice Guideline. J Clin Oncol. 2018 Apr 2:JCO2018780619. doi: 10.1200/JCO.2018.78.0619. [Epub ahead of print] PubMed PMID: 29608397.

For more tips on searching for published guidelines, feel free to Ask Us!

 

Three Questions for our Librarians – Mark

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This month, I asked three questions to Mark Monakey, Associate Librarian, Content Management.

What areas can you help MSK users with?
In my position as Associate Librarian, Content Management, one of my main responsibilities is to acquire new materials for the MSK Library. This includes books, journals, and databases. We often receive recommendations directly from MSK users on what resources we should add to our collection. My team works with users to ensure that their input has been received and considered, that we purchase/license materials from the best source, that our accounts are paid in full, that the resource is accessible from our catalog, and that our budget is balanced.

What projects have you been working on recently?
In conjunction with our Tri-Cat partners, Weill Cornell Library and Rockefeller University Library, we recently completed a full data migration from Innovative Interfaces Inc.’s Millennium integrated library system (i.e. the Tri-Cat catalog) to Alma/Primo (i.e. OneSearch), Ex Libris’ next-generation library management solution and discovery and delivery solution. The new Alma/Primo system includes essential cataloging, patron record management, and circulation features, as well as integrated digital content management, and a statistics analysis tool that can generate customized reports regarding our collection.

If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go?
I would travel to South Korea with my family – we would start off in Seoul then travel to JeJu Island, and then end our vacation in Busan.