Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency–Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research

Integrated working between residential care homes and primary care : a survey of care homes in England

Older people living in care homes in England have complex health needs due to a range of medical conditions, mental health needs and frailty. Despite an increasing policy expectation that professionals should operate in an integrated way across organisational boundaries, there is a lack of understanding between care homes and the National Health Service (NHS) about how the two sectors should work together, meaning that residents can experience a poor "fit" between their needs, and services they can access. This paper describes a survey to establish the current extent of integrated working that exists between care homes and primary and community health and social services.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Distinction and relatedness – Taxonomic and genetic studies reveal a new species group of goatfishes (Upeneus; Mullidae)

Phenotypic and genetic differentiation among goatfish species of the genus Upeneus which had been formerly included in the so-called ‘vittatus group’ were examined using a comprehensive alpha-taxonomic and barcoding approach. Four of the five species of this group, U. indicus, U. suahelicus, U. supravittatus and U. vittatus, occur in the Western Indian Ocean (WIO), while U. parvus occurs in the Western Atlantic. An updated diagnosis of the WIO species, followed by detailed inter- and intraspecific comparison, is provided based on a large set of morphological and colour characters obtained from 134 specimens. The phenotypic comparisons among all five species and the evidence obtained from barcoding analyses of four species support the separation of U. parvus and U. vittatus from the other three more similar and closely related species which form the here newly established suahelicus group. An identification key for this species group is provided that should also minimize possible confusion with U. vittatus and species of the U. stenopsis group, two of which also occur in the WIO. New records for Madagascar and Saudi Arabia (U. suahelicus), Iran and Pakistan (U. supravittatus) and Sudan (U. vittatus) are reported. Application of this integrative approach to other species groups and species of Upeneus and the need to uncover intra- and interspecific distribution patterns and diversity more fully within the suahelicus group are outlined