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Nursing Blog

The PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) group is known for the statement/standards it has issued in the past for systematic reviews and meta-analyses.  Recently though the group has also issue a statement about the best practices for abstracts that pertain to systematic reviews and conference abstracts.  A link to the statement, as well as the PRISMA website. 

Statement for Abstracts Link

PRISMA Website

 Summary Points of Statement for Abstracts

  • The abstract of a systematic review should provide a structured summary that enables a quick assessment of the review's validity and applicability, and easy identification in electronic searching.
  • Despite published guidance on writing the abstract in the PRISMA Statement guiding the reporting of systematic reviews in general and elsewhere, evaluations show that reporting of systematic reviews in journal and conference abstracts is poor.
  • We developed consensus-based reporting guidelines as an extension to the PRISMA Statement on good reporting of systematic reviews and meta-analyses in abstracts.
  • The PRISMA for Abstracts checklist gives authors a framework for condensing their systematic review into the essentials for an abstract that will meet the needs of many readers.

(Beller, E. M., Glasziou, P. P., Altman, D. G., Hopewell, S., Bastian, H., Chalmers, I., ... & Tovey, D. (2013). PRISMA for Abstracts: Reporting Systematic Reviews in Journal and Conference Abstracts. PLoS medicine, 10(4), e1001419.)

May Events and Classes

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Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Noon

Pet a Pooch with Dogs on Call

Tompkins-McCaw Library

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Noon

Brown Bag Lunch: Strategies and Tools for Patient Recruitment

Tompkins-McCaw Library

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

3:00pm

Tompkins-McCaw Library Orientation & Tour

Tompkins-McCaw Library

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

12:15pm

Open Online Workshop: Introduction to PubMed

Online

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Noon

Tompkins-McCaw Library Orientation & Tour

Tompkins-McCaw Library

HRSA.gifA new report  has been released by US Department of Health & Human Services entitled "The U.S. Nursing Workforce: Trends in Supply and Education."  It present datas on the supply, distribution and educational information about the U.S. nursing workforce.  It covers both registered nurses (RN) and licensed practical nurses (LPN) workforces in the United States. 

The report can be found at - http://bhpr.hrsa.gov/healthworkforce/reports/nursingworkforce/index.html.

Dr. Jen Nooney, lead author, will present findings from this report and the National Center's nursing workforce agenda at our next Health Workforce Webinar, scheduled for May 14, 2013, at 2PM ET. Webinar details can be found at http://bhpr.hrsa.gov/healthworkforce/index.html.

TEDMED 2013 Simulcast at TML : April 17th -19th

TEDMED.jpg I wanted to let you know that the TEDMED 2013 Conference is being live simulcast at Tompkins-McCaw Library if you should be interested from April 17th - 19th.  The TED (technology, entertainment, design) conference series began in the mid-1980s. The TEDMED conference talks focus on health and medicine. According to organizers, "TEDMED believes that the future of health and medicine will be shaped by vital input from leading medical colleges, teaching hospitals, government agencies and non-profit institutions around the world." In this spirit of collaboration and information sharing, the TEDMED event is broadcast free to these institutions. 

Here is a link to the lineup of speakers and a schedule if you are interested. 

The TEDMED Schedule  / Speakers By Session


The Speakers' Lineup

Feature-JCR.jpg In the last several weeks I have been asked about impact factors when it comes to publishing.  Because of these questions I decided to compile some information on impact factors from what the measure is, articles on the debate over the measure, and finally how to find it.   I hope the information below is useful and do not hesitate to contact me if you should have any questions.  

 

Definition

The JCR provides quantitative tools for ranking, evaluating, categorizing, and comparing journals. The impact factor is one of these; it is a measure of the frequency with which the "average article" in a journal has been cited in a particular year or period. The annual JCR impact factor is a ratio between citations and recent citable items published. Thus, the impact factor of a journal is calculated by dividing the number of current year citations to the source items published in that journal during the previous two years (see Figure 1).

 

Figure 1: Calculation for journal impact factor.

A= total cites in 1992

B= 1992 cites to articles published in 1990-91 (this is a subset of A)

C= number of articles published in 1990-91

D= B/C = 1992 impact factor

 

The impact factor is useful in clarifying the significance of absolute (or total) citation frequencies. It eliminates some of the bias of such counts which favor large journals over small ones, or frequently issued journals over less frequently issued ones, and of older journals over newer ones. Particularly in the latter case such journals have a larger citable body of literature than smaller or younger journals. All things being equal, the larger the number of previously published articles, the more often a journal will be cited.

(Taken from: Thomson reuters | the thomson reuters impact factor | science Retrieved 4/9/2013, 2013, from http://thomsonreuters.com/products_services/science/free/essays/impact_factor/)

_________________________________________________________________________

2011 Impact Factor for American Journal of Critical Care

 

Journal Impact Factor

 

Cites in 2011 to items published in:

2010 =

70 

 

Number of items published in:

2010 =

66 

 

2009 =

142 

 

 

2009 =

62 

 

Sum:

212 

 

 

Sum:

128 

 

Calculation:

Cites to recent items 

212

=

1.656 

 

Number of recent items 

128 

 

 

 

5-Year Journal Impact Factor

 

Cites in {2011} to items published in:

2010 =

70 

 

Number of items published in:

2010 =

66 

 

2009 =

142 

 

 

2009 =

62 

 

2008 =

97 

 

 

2008 =

51 

 

2007 =

157 

 

 

2007 =

60 

 

2006 =

165 

 

 

2006 =

57 

 

Sum:

631 

 

 

Sum:

296 

 

Calculation:

Cites to recent items 

631

=

2.132 

 

Number of recent items 

296 

 

 

 

Factors that Influence Impact Factors

Date of Publication:
The impact factor is based solely on citation data and only looks at the citation frequency of articles from a journal in their first couple years of publication. Journals with articles that are steadily cited for a long period of time (say, 10 years) rather than only immediately lose out with this calculation.

Large vs. Small Journals:

Large and small journals are compared equally. Large journals tend to have higher impact factors--nothing to do with their quality.

Average Citation:
It's important to remember that the impact factor only looks at an average citation and that a journal may have a few highly cited papers that greatly increase its impact factor, while other papers in that same journal may not be cited at all. Therefore, there is no direct correlation between an individual article's citation frequency or quality and the journal impact factor.

Review Articles:

Impact factors are calculated using citations not only from research articles but also review articles (which tend to receive more citations), editorials, letters, meeting abstracts, and notes. The inclusion of these publications provides the opportunity for editors and publishers to manipulate the ratio used to calculate impact factor and falsely try to increase their number.

Changing / Growing Fields:
Rapidly changing and growing fields (e.g. biochemistry and molecular biology) have much higher immediate citation rates, so those journals will always have higher impact factors than nursing, for instance.

ISI's Indexing / Citation Focus:
There is unequal depth of coverage in different disciplines. In the health sciences, the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), the company which publishes impact factors, has focused much of their attention on indexing and citation data from journals in clinical medicine and biomedical research and has not focused on nursing as much. Very few nursing journals are included in their calculations (around 45). This does not mean that nursing journals they do not include are of lesser quality, and, in fact, they do not give any explanation for why some journals are included and others are not. In general, ISI focuses more heavily on journal dependent disciplines in the sciences and provides less coverage for areas of the social sciences and humanities, where books and other publishing formats are still common.

Research vs. Clinical Journals
In some disciplines such as some areas of clinical medicine where there is not a distinct separation between clinical/practitioner versus research journals, research journals tend to have higher citation rates. This may also apply to nursing.

(Taken from: Home - journal impact factors - guides at michigan state university libraries Retrieved 4/9/2013, 2013, from http://libguides.lib.msu.edu/impactfactors )

How to Find a Journal's Impact Factor

Video:  How to Find a Journal's Impact Factor

Steps

  1. Go to the Tompkins-McCaw Library Website  and click on Web of Science under search collections.
  2. On the Web of Science page go to the tabs at the top of the page and click on the one that says select a database.  
  3. Select  Journal Citation Reports®
  4. Select the JCR edition (Science or Social Science) and year that you want. When it comes to some subjects the subject appears under both editions. Nursing is one subject that appears in both editions.
  5. Next, select a search option (view journals by subject, search for a specific journal, or view all journals) to find if the journal you're looking for has an impact factor.
  6. In order to see how the journal you are interested in compares to other in a particular field, it is best to select  "view a group of journals by subject category" and click submit. 
  1. Select the topic/category you want to see from the list (You can select more than one by holding down the Ctrl key and clicking on multiple categories).  Below this list of  categories you can select how you would like to view the journals by going to the drop down menu and choosing accordingly. 

 

Articles:  Impact Factor Debate

  • Citations are hotlinked to the article.  You will need to either be on campus or authenticate in order to access them.

Alexandrov, G. A. (2011). The meaning of the 'impact factor' in the case of an open-access journal. Carbon Balance & Management, 6(1), 1-4. doi:10.1186/1750-0680-6-1

 

Althouse, B. M., West, J. D., Bergstrom, C. T., & Bergstrom, T. (2009). Differences in impact factor across fields and over time. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 60(1), 27-34.

 

Amin, M., & Mabe, M. (2000). Impact factors: use and abuse. Perspectives in publishing, 1(2).

 

Bordons, M., Fernández, M. T., & Gomez, I. (2002). Advantages and limitations in the use of impact factor measures for the assessment of research performance. Scientometrics, 53(2), 195-206.

 

Citrome, L. (2007). Impact factor? Shmimpact factor! The journal impact factor, modern day literature searching, and the publication process. Psychiatry (1550-5952), 4(5), 54-57.

 

Dong, P., Loh, M., & Mondry, A. (2005). The" impact factor" revisited. Biomedical digital libraries, 2(7), 1-8.

 

Fassoulaki, A., Papilas, K., Paraskeva, A., & Patris, K. (2002). Impact factor bias and proposed adjustments for its determination. Acta Anaesthesiologica Scandinavica, 46(7), 902-905.

 

Garfield, E. (2006). The history and meaning of the journal impact factor. JAMA: the journal of the American Medical Association, 295(1), 90-93.

 

Greenwood, D. C. (2007). Reliability of journal impact factor rankings. BMC Medical Research Methodology, 7(48), 48.

 

Ironside, P. M. (2007). Advancing the science of nursing education: Rethinking the meaning and significance of journal impact factors. Journal of Nursing Education, 46(3), 99-100.

 

Kurmis, A. P. (2003). Understanding the limitations of the journal impact factor. The Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery, 85(12), 2449-2454.

 

Oermann, M. H. (2012). Editorial: Impact factors and clinical specialty nursing journals. Journal of clinical nursing, 21(3‐4), 299-300.

 

Opthof, T. (1997). Sense and nonsense about the impact factor. Cardiovascular research, 33(1), 1-7.

 

Parse, R. (2012, July). Impact Factor--One-Size-Fits-All: What's Wrong With This Picture?. Nursing Science Quarterly. pp. 209-210. doi:10.1177/0894318412447546.

 

Polit, D. F., & Northam, S. (2011). Impact factors in nursing journals. Nursing outlook, 59(1), 18-28.

 

Saha, S., Saint, S., & Christakis, D. A. (2003). Impact factor: a valid measure of journal quality?. Journal of the Medical Library Association, 91(1), 42.

 

Seglen, P. O. (1997). Why the impact factor of journals should not be used for evaluating research. BMJ: British Medical Journal, 314(7079), 498.

 

Smith, D. R. (2010). A longitudinal analysis of bibliometric and impact factor trends among the core international journals of nursing, 1977-2008. International journal of nursing studies, 47(12), 1491-1499.

 

Thompson, D. R., & Clark, A. M. (2012). The five top bad reasons nurses don't publish in impactful journals. Journal Of Advanced Nursing, 68(8), 1675-1678. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2648.2012.06022.x

 

Whitehouse, G. H. (2001). Citation rates and impact factors: should they matter?. British Journal of Radiology, 74(877), 1-3.

 

 

Events and Classes - April, 2013

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Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Noon

Keep Current on Research by Using Alerts

Online

Thursday, April 4, 2013

10:00am

VCU Tech Fair 2013 - MCV

Tompkins-McCaw Library

Thursday, April 4, 2013

7:30pm

28th Annual Brown-Lyons Lecture: 'In Search of Answers to Life's Meaning'

Singleton Center for the Performing Arts

Monday, April 8, 2013

Noon

Tompkins-McCaw Library Orientation & Tour

Tompkins-McCaw Library

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Noon

RefWorks -A Citation Management Program

Tompkins-McCaw Library

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Noon

Brown Bag Lunch: Making GCP Your Standard Research Practice

Tompkins-McCaw Library

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Noon

Film Screening: Tapped

Hunton Student Center

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

12:15pm

Advanced PubMed

Online

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

11:00am

Tompkins-McCaw Library Orientation & Tour

Tompkins-McCaw Library

Open Access - Economics and Other Aspects

OAlogo.jpg A couple of weeks ago the New England Journal of Medicine published a set of articles on open access publishing.  In order to provide more information on open access and the cost to authors the links below are provided.  The intention of these links is to inform those who are interested as to memberships that VCU has that provide some discounts to authors.  Also in the links below is information on  the economics of open access and a couple of article citations on the topic.  

  • VCU Libraries: Scholarly Communications, Copyright & Publishing : The resources here provide a clearinghouse of information on copyright, publishing, and scholarly communication.  The VCU Libraries supports the teaching, research, and outreach missions of the University by guiding the faculty, students, and staff in matters relating to the dissemination and use of knowledge


Memberships VCU has that provide discounts to authors.

Membership

Journals

Author Discount

BioMed Central - Supporter Member

BioMed Central, Chemistry Central, and Springer Open Journals

15%

Hindawi - Institutional Member

All Hindawi Open Access Journals

100%

Public Library of Science - Institutional Member

All PLoS Journals

10%


  • Directory of Open Access Journals:  can look up journals by topic.  In the list of journals it tells if there are publishing fees and if there are it provides a link to the information about what it costs.
Journal Articles on the Topic:

  • Watson, R., Cleary, M., Jackson, D., & Hunt, G. E. (2012). Open access and online publishing: a new frontier in nursing?. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 68(9), 1905-1908.



March - Upcoming Classes and Events

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Thursday, March 14, 2013

Noon

Film Screening: Is Seeing Believing

Hunton Student Center

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

2:00pm

Introduction to Searching PubMed

Tompkins-McCaw Library

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

6:00pm

International Student Library Workshop Series: Finding Information in the Library, Part 2

Cabell Library

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Noon

Brown Bag Lunch: The IRB- the Exempt, the Expedited and the Full-Board

Richmond Academy of Medicine

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Noon

Community Health Education Center Program: Kidney Health

VCU Medical Center Gateway Building - Ground Floor

Thursday, March 21, 2013

11:00am

Online Workshop: RefWorks - A Citation Management Program

Online

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Noon

Tompkins-McCaw Library Orientation and Tour

Tompkins-McCaw Library

OAlogo.jpg Publishing and research are a major focus in academia and especially here on the MCV campus.  In making decisions as to where to publish, one issue that is coming to the forefront  is whether to publish in open access journals.  In the New England Journal of Medicine this week there is a series of articles with different perspectives on this topic that may be of interest.

Carroll, M. W. (2013). Creative commons and the openness of open access. N Engl J Med, 368(9), 789-791. doi: 10.1056/NEJMp1300040

Frank, M. (2013). Open but not free -- publishing in the 21st century. N Engl J Med, 368(9), 787-789. doi: 10.1056/NEJMp1211259

Haug, C. (2013). The downside of open-access publishing. N Engl J Med, 368(9), 791-793. doi: 10.1056/NEJMp1214750

Wolpert, A. J. (2013). For the sake of inquiry and knowledge -- the inevitability of open access. N Engl J Med, 368(9), 785-787. doi: 10.1056/NEJMp1211410


RefWorks Tutorials - Complete

RefWorks.jpg
  Well I have finished all of the videos that disucss how to use RefWorks.  Please take a look and let me know if there are any changes to be made or if anything needs to be added.   They can be found on the tutorial page of the nursing research guide on the bottorm right.   I am also provided the list of topics that are linked to the videos below.  I hope you find them useful as you go to write papers and need to have everything in the right citation style.  Let me know if you have any questions.


Tutorials from Other Sources