MSF Field Research database

Médecins Sans Frontières aanounced yesterday that it is making its database of research accessible to health workers in developing countries through a new open-access website known as the MSF Field Research database.

At its launch, the field research site included over 400 archived articles on issues including HIV care, malaria, tuberculosis, leishmaniasis, refugees and health politics. It also features conference abstracts and a section called ‘Programme Descriptions’ that describes lessons learnt from MSF’s field experience.

The hope is that making these reports freely available, as opposed to hidden away in subscription based journals, will enable the sharing of experience and benefit those in developing countries that might not have been able to afford the subscriptions to the journals.

The journals who have agreed to this system include The Lancet, BMJ, New England Journal of Medicine, PLoS Medicine and Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, and perhaps demonstrates a change in their business model to a more open access approach.

Researcher job for the NHS Connecting for Health Evaluation Programme

An interesting looking job advert for a Research Associate/Fellow working on systematic reviews for the NHS Connecting for Health Evaluation Programme has recently been advertised.

The job is at the School of Clinical Sciences and Community Health at the University of Edinburgh, in association with Imperial College London, and will involve undertaking a systematic overview of the impact of information technology on the quality and safety of health services. This will assemble a series of systematic reviews about information technology in health services and weave these into a comprehensive and authoritative report with reference to safety and quality of care.

If the outputs are up to the standard of the Report of Evaluation of Summary Care Record Early Adopter Programme published a few weeks ago then this could be very worthwhile work.

If I was in Edinburgh (and the post had a slightly higher salary) I would consider applying for it myself.

professional issues in e-health - report

Bournemouth University, School of Health and Social Care, Centre for Practice Development have recently published a report on "An investigation of the emergent professional issues experienced by nurses when working in an e-health environment", which was produced in collaboration with Information in Nursing Forum at the Royal College of Nursing.

It provides a useful snap shot of the British nurses about ehealth and the gap between the vision presented and the experiences of frontline nurses, and has implications for management, education and practice.

Petition to the EU free and open access to research results

A petition, sponsored by JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee, UK), SURF (Netherlands), SPARC Europe, DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Germany), DEFF (Danmarks Elektroniske Fag- og Forskningsbibliotek, Denmark), is currently available for people to sign at http://www.ec-petition.eu/

The petition calls on the EC to formally endorse the recommendations outlined in the EC-commissioned Study on the Economic and Technical Evolution of the Scientific Publication Markets of Europe. Published in early 2006, the study made a number of important recommendations to help ensure the widest possible readership for scholarly articles. In particular, the first recommendation called for 'Guaranteed public access to publicly-funded research results shortly after publication'.

The EC-commissioned Study on the Economic and Technical Evolution of the Scientific Publication Markets of Europe is available at: http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/pdf/scientific-publication-study_en.pdf

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