Submitting to MedEdPORTAL: Do it right the first time

Presented as a Small Group/Roundtable Discussion at 2020 IUSM Education Day.Medical educators at Indiana University School of Medicine (IUSM) are encouraged to publish in MedEdPORTAL: The Journal of Teaching and Learning Resources. Published by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), MedEdPORTAL is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal for medical education scholarship. These publications contain complete curricula, including objectives, instructor guides, slides, and assessments, ready to be implemented in the classroom. When faculty members apply for promotion, MedEdPORTAL can demonstrate the quality of their work through peer-review, citation counts, and other usage reports. Despite submitting high quality learning modules, medical educators receive rejections from the MedEdPORTAL 62% of time. Reasons for rejection include insufficient educational context and assessment, mismatch of educational objectives and instructional content, and failure to build on existing curricula. Of immediately rejected submissions, 90% also have copyright issues. MedEdPORTAL is a member of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) and therefore has strict requirements for copyright and licensing images in the education materials. These requirements are difficult to navigate. For faculty who are not familiar with copyright and licensing, these barriers can be frustrating enough to deter them from submitting curricula. This workshop introduced MedEdPORTAL, described the submission process, and shared our strategies for putting together a successful submission. By the end of the workshop, participants were able to: • Identify curricula they have developed that would fit with the goals of MedEdPORTAL’s publishers • Use template to complete the Educational Summary Report (ESR) • Classify content as that which requires copyright permission, is in the public domain, or has a Creative Commons license • Navigate the process of manuscript submission and revisio

Exploring Public Health Citation Networks: A Pilot Project to Determine the Publishing Patterns in Racial and Ethnic Health Disparity Research

Objective: The study identifies the most heavily cited journal titles, publication types, and subject disciplines in racial and ethnic health disparities research. The overall goal is to assist librarians with collection assessment for diversity and disparity-related research, and to provide a resource to assist faculty with identifying potential sources for publication. Methods: Using a modified version of the literature mapping protocol developed by the Nursing and Allied Health Resources Section, this study analyzed the references from research articles published in 2016 in racial and ethnic health disparities journals. Four journals were selected based on coverage of racial and ethnic disparities, and input from health disparities researchers. For eachreference, publication type, publication date, and journal title, if it is an article, was recorded. To identify the core journals, cited journals were divided into three zones using Bradford’s Law of Scattering. A single subject discipline was assigned to each core journal based on Library of Congress classification, as determined by Ulrich’s Web. Results: 332 articles from four journals yielded 13,023 references. Journal articles were the most heavily cited publication type (n=10,596, 81%), followed bygovernment reports (n=1005, 8%). Age of citations ranged 163 years, with 41% (n=5339) of citations occurring within the previous 8 years. The peak age of citations for articles was 6 years. Forty-two core journals accounted for 33.8% of all citations. Themost common subject disciplines of these core journals were medicine (n=15), and public health and population health (n=15), followed by ethnic interests (n=4). Conclusion: Similar to other public health-related fields, racial and ethnic health disparity research draws from a very diverse pool of subject disciplines from medicine to public health to the social sciences, and relies on older articles and reports published within the last twenty years. However, racial and ethnic disparity research does not rely as heavily on government reports or miscellaneous items as other public health and social services disciplines

Creating Incentives and Identifying Champions through an Open Education Award for Faculty

In an effort to boost the visibility of open educational resources (OERs) on campus, librarians from IUPUI University Library established an annual Open Education Award and corresponding event, dedicated to celebrating faculty who have committed to integrating OERs into their coursework. In a four-month period, we developed the award, sought nominations, selected a winner, and hosted an Open Education Award Ceremony. This poster will describe the development of the award, factors that contributed to its success, and how we are using the award to build our new OER program. While other universities, including Texas A&M (2019) and the University of Tennessee (2018), have implemented OER awards as part of established programs, IUPUI’s award is unique in its development and use as a tool to facilitate outreach for our newly implemented program. Initially, we were not aware how many faculty members on campus were already using OERs in their classrooms. By advertising the award broadly and soliciting self-nominations, we gained a better understanding of the number of faculty currently using OERs and those faculty members who could serve as ‘champions’ in efforts to save students money. Furthermore, the award reception served as a venue to not only reward and further incentivize OER use, but also to connect like-minded individuals and spark conversations. We identified several potential collaborators as a result of interactions at the reception. The development of an efficient project management process was a key factor in our success. We first developed a project charter and communication plan, and then used Trello, a collaborative project management tool, to create ‘boards’ of objectives and actions. Trello tracks which objectives are being worked on, who is working on what, and where they are in the process. This tool and regular meetings enabled us to easily and efficiently track our progress and overcome obstacles. We plan on using this process to create awards for other aspects of open scholarship that align with our library’s goals, including hosting a similar event for Open Access Week in October. Overall, this project was a success. We created and delivered the award in four months, received twice the anticipated nominations, and had a turnout of over 20 attendees at the reception. Our process for developing an open education award could serve as a model to others in higher education and similar institutions new to open education initiatives

So you’ve been rejected from MedEdPORTAL: Demystifying Open Access to Medical Educators

This blog post is in place of a cancelled conference presentation at the 2020 Library Publishing Forum. The original blog post is located here: https://librarypublishing.org/lpforum20-mededportal

The publication fate of abstracts presented at the Medical Library Association conferences

Objective We sought to determine how many abstracts presented at the 2012 and 2014 Medical Library Association (MLA) annual conferences were later published as full-text journal articles and which features of the abstract and author influence the likelihood of future publication. To do so, we replicated a previous study on MLA conference abstracts presented in 2002 and 2003. The secondary objective was to compare the publication rates between the prior and current study. Methods Presentations and posters delivered at the 2012 and 2014 MLA meetings were coded to identify factors associated with publication. Post-conference publication of abstracts as journal articles was determined using a literature search and survey sent to first authors. Chi-squared tests were used to assess differences in the publication rate, and logistic regression was used to assess the influence of abstract factors on publication. Results The combined publication rate for the 2012 and 2014 meetings was 21.8% (137/628 abstracts), which is a statistically significant decrease compared to the previously reported rate for 2002 and 2003 (27.6%, 122/442 abstracts). The odds that an abstract would later be published as a journal article increased if the abstract was multi-institutional or if it was research, specifically surveys or mixed methods research. Conclusions The lower publication rate of MLA conference abstracts may be due to an increased number of program or non-research abstracts that were accepted or a more competitive peer review process for journals. MLA could increase the publication rate by encouraging and enabling multi-institutional research projects among its members