Paul Chinnock's blog

Using open-access articles for student projects

Paul Chinnock — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 02:25:26 -0700

While realising that it could be tedious if every entry on the PLoS blog made yet another case for the advantages of open-access publishing, this time I intend to do exactly that. Articles published with open access can be put to excellent use in medical education. No copyright problems stand in the way of a lecturer basing a lecture or a workshop around a discussion of a published paper.

We are always pleased when we hear of an instance where an article in a PLoS journal has been used in this way. A regular favourite from PLoS Medicine is the controversial essay Why Most Published Research Findings Are False. For example, we understand that first-year dental students at the University of California, San Francisco were recently given a homework exercise based on this article.

What’s more, our reader response system makes it possible for students to contribute to the debate around a particular article. (Every article has a link ‘Write a response’, top right on the first page.) It can happen, when a class exercise focuses on one of our articles, that we are inundated with responses from individual students. So here's a suggestion – when a class is using a PLoS article why not, as part of the exercise, submit a single reader response that sums up the deliberations that took place?

We’ll look forward to receiving some class responses and, as the member of the editorial team who deals with the reader response system, I’d be happy to hear from anyone who’d like to discuss how we can develop this idea further.

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L'accès libre, pour les étudiants aussi !

from Enro, scientifique et citoyen on Wed, 2008-05-07 01:23

Nombreux sont les publics qui profitent de l'explosion des revues scientifiques en accès libre (open access). Les chercheurs eux-mêmes, le grand public mais aussi les étudiants. Comme le soulignait en 2004 Malcolm Campbell, c'est d'autant plus vrai ...

WHO jumps the gun?

Paul Chinnock — Wed, 3 Oct 2007 03:42:59 -0700

On 21st August PLoS Medicine published a research article from Kenya that reported a remarkable increase in the number of children sleeping under insecticide-treated mosquito nets, following policy changes that led to greater availability of free nets. A month later the Lancet published further findings from the same study.

Both journals had, however, been taken by surprise, on 16th April, by the release of a lengthy press kit by the World Health Organization, before the articles themselves had been published. The Kenyan research team had shared their data with WHO but on a confidential basis; they too were surprised (indeed shocked) by the early release. But the breaking of a press embargo is not the main issue here. Both research articles included detailed discussion of the results and the study strengths and limitations. The WHO document in contrast made bold unqualified statements and went on to issue new guidance on the use of nets, based on its interpretation of the study data.

An editorial in the Lancet has already registered concern over the behaviour of WHO. There has also been debate on the matter on various listservs, including HR4D-net and HIF-net.

So should WHO be making claims based on research that has not completed expert peer-review and which it has chosen to interpret in its own way? It would be interesting to hear the views of readers of PLoS Medicine on this point. However, it does seem to me that if we journal editors wait until expert review has been completed – and we are confident in the rigour of a study and its conclusions – before we publish, then policy-setting UN organisations must also surely hold their fire before they contact the media and issue new guidance.

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Should patients tell researchers what to do?

Paul Chinnock — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 07:00:10 -0700

I’ve always been uncomfortable with the notion that medical researchers simply hand down their wisdom to grateful and passive recipients – with patients seen as the most grateful and required to be the most passive. It was therefore a pleasure to be able to attend a one-day event in London entitled ‘Should Patients tell Researchers what to do? If so how?’ The meeting was organised jointly by the James Lind Alliance and the Association of Medical Research Charities.

In the UK a greater proportion of medical research is funded by charities than is the case elsewhere, so we here should be in a better position than most to create a culture where patients’ views on research matter. Some of the speakers mentioned important considerations such as the difficulty in allowing for the huge variation in patients’ views, the danger of creating ‘professional laypersons’, the position held by many researchers that patient involvement is fine in theory but too difficult in practice, and the possibility that the views of patients with high-profile diseases could overwhelm input from those with less common conditions. However, the general agreement was that we need to expand patient input, in line with the prevailing view that inclusiveness is desirable in society as a whole.

Speakers at the meeting described encouraging examples where patients have already made key contributions in determining research questions and the design of studies in several medical specialties:
Rheumatology
Asthma
Gastroenterology

Other important initiatives receiving a mention included:
DUETS
INVOLVE
Thinkwell

What I shall remember best from all the presentations is that fatigue was not even considered as an outcome worthy of consideration in research on rheumatoid arthritis, until a patient representative pointed out its importance. A survey subsequently found it was regarded by patients as their most important issue, ahead of pain. Its importance is now recognised internationally by OMERACT (Outcome Measures in Rheumatology).

While the meeting was focused on patient input in the direction and design of research, a related question is how best patients may have access to research output. As we know, most medical research journals are not open access. Furthermore the language of published research makes no concessions to those who lack medical or scientific training.

PLoS Medicine tries to address this problem in two ways. Firstly, of course, everything we publish is open access. Secondly, every research article is accompanied by an Editors’ Summary written in accessible, non-specialist language. We believe these summaries can make a contribution towards improving patient and public involvement.

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