Bridging the ‘Know‐Do Gap’: a role for health information professionals?

This feature briefly examines the development of knowledge translation, knowledge transfer and the knowledge broker role as constituting the next manifestation of the movement that brought us evidence based medicine and its derivatives. It examines the extent to which health information professionals currently meet the specification for a knowledge broker role. In doing so it assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the profession when ranged alongside the five components of the knowledge transfer process that is, problem identification; knowledge development and selection; analysis of context; knowledge transfer interventions; and knowledge utilization. Current deficiencies also lie in a need for political astuteness and awareness and in a lack of knowledge of the most significant models of behavioural change. The feature concludes by examining the potential for knowledge team approaches arguing that gains from a wider perspective that encompasses the entire knowledge process may be even more significant than the pooling of collective knowledge, skills and expertise.     

How accurate are cited references in Iranian peer‐reviewed journals?

The references cited in scientific articles are as important as any other part of the paper, because of their usefulness to the scientific community and to abstracting and indexing services and citation databases. I studied inaccuracies in references and in‐text citations in sample of 97 of the 519 peer‐reviewed journals accredited by the Iranian National Commission for Journal Accreditation Policy (Ministry of Research, Science and Technology). The target journals published 2,980 articles with 74,577 cited references and 108,151 in‐text citations. The results showed 36.6% as the average percentage error rate (range 5.6% to 61.3%). The mean number of errors in cited reference and in‐text citations was 2.7 per article, and the mean number of errors per journal was 690. For the entire sample of articles, 4,369 in‐text citations did not match any source in the list of references (4%), and 8,683 cited references did not match any in‐text citation (11.6%). The stakeholders in scholarly communication, especially authors, pay insufficient attention to the accuracy of bibliographic references. Peer‐reviewed journals should encourage the use of standardized journal policies and quality‐control measures regarding peer review, data quality and accuracy.     

Evidence in seconds? Format and design considerations in the provision of reliable information to support evidence‐based practice

Evidence‐based practice is gaining support amongst health professionals. However, the major barrier remains the lack of time to read the literature. There are also problems with the take‐up and use of evidence‐based information sources such as Cochrane reviews and Effective Health Care bulletins. If such evidence is to be incorporated into local guidelines and used in day‐to‐day practice, practitioners request that these and other reliable publications be further summarized in short packages and available within seconds. The Health Evidence Bulletins Wales offer a model for this approach. The Bulletins have gone through several developmental stages leading to a novel two‐column format. In the first column, brief statements summarize the best available evidence within a topic area. In the second, full details are provided of the supporting publications (and the evidence type, or research design) with links to the full text of documents, where possible from the electronic versions of each Bulletin. Results from a questionnaire study using a random sample and unsolicited feedback suggest that this ‘two‐tier’ approach to information provision is valued by users and has implications for information services currently under development to support clinical governance.     

‘Héloïse’: towards a co‐ordinated ecosystem approach for the archiving of scientific publications?

With the continued development of open access policies, it is important to promote consensus‐building projects with the various stakeholders. This article gives an account of how such collaboration has facilitated the construction of the project Héloïse. This project is a French information service dedicated to describing the policies of French publishers on the self‐archiving of scientific publications. Héloïse represents a real tool of mediation whose development involved much debate between publishers and research stakeholders. This article seeks to demonstrate that the development of trust between the actors involved in the project was a major component of its success.     

In the right vein? How adequately are departments of information and library studies educating for health care information management and library services in a changing health service?

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