Welcome to the Clinician Researcher podcast, where academic clinicians learn the skills
to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor.
As clinicians, we spend a decade or more as trainees learning to take care of patients.
When we finally start our careers, we want to build research programs, but then we find
that our years of clinical training did not adequately prepare us to lead our research
program.
Through no fault of our own, we struggle to find mentors, and when we can't, we quit.
However, clinicians hold the keys to the greatest research breakthroughs.
For this reason, the Clinician Researcher podcast exists to give academic clinicians
the tools to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor.
Now introducing your host, Toyosi Onwuemene.
Welcome to the Clinician Researcher podcast.
I'm your host, Toyosi Onwuemene, and it is such a pleasure to be here today.
I'm super, super excited about today's episode because we have two amazing, not one, but
two amazing librarians who are here to talk to us about how they support clinician researchers.
I am so excited to talk with them, and without much further ado, because I want them to introduce
themselves, I want to go ahead and introduce to you Leila and Sarah.
Welcome both of you.
Hello.
Thank you so much for having us.
Hi, everybody.
My name is Leila Ledbetter.
I am one of the research and education librarians at the Medical Center Library and Archives.
We'll talk a tiny, tiny bit about that here at the Duke Medical Center.
My personal role is I am a liaison, so sort of like the diplomat between the library and
the Duke School of Nursing, but all of us librarians support across the population.
So if you write in and ask a question as a clinician researcher, you may get me answering
your question, or you may get Sarah, or you may get one of our other lovely librarians.
So I'll pass it off to Sarah.
Thank you so much, Toyosi, for having us.
This is a real fun privilege for us.
So I'm Sarah Cantrell, and I'm the associate director for research and education at the
Medical Center Library and Archives.
In this role, I'm responsible for developing, implementing, and evaluating the library's
research and education programs and our services surrounding that.
I'm also the liaison to the graduate medical education program, so I specifically support
all of the interns, the residents, and trainees and fellows.
So in terms of my role in supporting clinician and clinical researchers, I'd say I provide
significant support in the area of evidence-based practice, evidence synthesis, such as systematic
reviews, as well as in research impact and publication tracking.
I also teach a lot of skills to clinician researchers, such as comprehensive searching
techniques.
And I would also just want to add that our library as a whole provides services and the
collections that are really necessary to further educational research, clinical and
administrative activities throughout really your careers and in the biomedical field.
Wow.
Thank you both for introducing yourself.
So it's funny, I started out saying you're both librarians, which is really simplistic.
And I appreciate how you really fleshed it out to say, hey, yes, we're librarians, but
look at how much we do, which is so awesome.
And so I want to thank you for introducing yourselves so extensively.
And I want to thank you for the work you do.
And I'm hoping that today is the day that the audience gets to figure out how much value
librarians can bring to their...
Actually, to be honest, it sounds like you can help in so many ways, not just in clinical
research.
So I want to explore some of that today.
So I think I will start by asking Sarah, what is the highest value you give to clinician
researchers who work with you?
Sure.
First, it's really hard to distill this to one single gift because the library, I think,
is a gift in and of itself.
And the library has so many rich gifts in terms of collections and our research-focused services.
But ultimately, I am going to say it is our people.
All library staff have deep expertise and knowledge in their content areas.
And we all share really strong service mentality.
librarians in particular within the research and education department who are really kind
of our patron, forward-facing public services team, we really serve as research connectors
and catalysts.
I'd also add that our librarians are all highly trained, experienced professionals.
We all have advanced degrees.
We have, you know, in terms of things that are going to be really useful to the clinician
researcher and a gift.
I think it's truly our strong command of advanced literature searching across dozens of biomedical
databases.
In addition, I know that people often will think of librarians and searching, but we
do more than that.
We have a new data management program.
And within this, we're really providing support and guidance and training around the new NIH
data management and sharing policy requirements that is really a mandate from the NIH that
will affect anybody with NIH funding.
And that service there is helpful if this is your first time having to put together
something like a data management plan.
So that's the sort of guidance that we can help you with.
What does a good data management plan look like?
What repository should I be considering for my data?
And along those lines again of NIH funding, we're also providing support with the NIH
public access policy and compliance around that mandate as well.
Additionally, we're really offering researchers the tools that are needed to take control
of their scholarly profiles, their publication history.
We want you to be able to evaluate your personal research impact.
If you're working with collaborators to evaluate the research impact of that team or how people
are collaborating together or who at Duke is working on a certain topic.
And we also offer a lot of scholarly communication expertise.
And I know that phrase might be odd or new scholarly communication, but it's really that
whole business and process of manuscript writing and getting your work published.
And there's so many different interesting things surrounding that like open access.
So we're able to provide a lot of support in that open access realm.
Like should I be publishing open access?
Like I don't understand.
This journal has a traditional model and this open access model.
Is this open access journal potentially predatory, quote unquote?
So we can provide a lot of help there.
And I know I'm taking a little bit of time here, but I do think that when people think
of libraries, they think of collections, right?
Deep rich biomedical collections, such as those journals that are so important to you
and your research and the biomedical databases that are connecting you to different articles
and resources.
You know, we have these things, but we also have a medical center archives and that archives
collects the important histories of Duke health.
That includes faculty, staff, students, organizations.
We have some papers of our Nobel laureates.
We have, you know, we're processing right now this collection that is really the history
of the rice diet.
So there's lots of gems and things to uncover and discover there as well.
And librarians and archivists who can help you with that.
But ultimately our gift is truly our people, the people who are enabling access to these
collections who are making sure that things are running well for you, who educate you
in how to best use these tools to be knowledgeable consumers of information and really are strong
expertise in evidence synthesis, research impact and data management.
Whoa, thank you.
We do so much stuff that was like I'm ticking in my head all the things that we're probably
forgetting.
Right.
So what's the central point of information processing?
It is super awesome.
You know, it's funny as you're going through that list, I'm like, Oh my goodness, I'm not
even getting the most out of you.
But this is really awesome because what I'm hearing, you know, so there's the sense of
at least I grew up with the sense of the library is the place you go when you need something
and you go get a journal article or you go get a book.
So what I'm hearing really is that you are partners in this process and partners in research,
partners in publication, partners also in the clinical space.
You're really partners with deep expertise in access to information, how to get it, how
to present it and really how to share it as well.
Yes, yes.
Exactly.
You're so good at this, Tayosi.
I was trying to think of a way to squish this in.
One of the things that we can help with is scientific posters.
We'll sometimes get help people coming by and saying, would you have a look at our poster?
Would you help me lay one out?
Like not done one before I'm getting ready for a professional conference.
That's like one of the little things that a few of our librarians have expertise in.
So yeah, there's so many little things we can help with.
Layla, I'm going to want you to speak a little bit more about this.
Oh no.
No, this is good.
This is good.
Now, I know that what you're not looking for is someone who's like, oh, my poster is due
tomorrow.
Dear librarians, I need your help.
So what does engaging your help well look like when it comes to, for example, poster
presentations?
Okay.
So that's actually a really good lead in.
When you're asking us for help of any kind, so I'm going to actually, since you sort of
started with that, so a timeline and deadlines are always super, super important because
we're sort of, I like to tell some of my students and stuff that we're a little bit like a doctor's
office.
Like there's likelihood of getting in right away may not be great.
So there's always a good idea to sort of plan ahead usually two or three days because we
have so many people asking us for so many things.
But if you submit a request, what we usually ask for is some sort of context, like what,
you know, any kind of detail you can provide.
So if this is for a literature search, what do you need and why?
Is this for a proposal?
Is this for an article?
You doing a systematic review?
Is this for a class, a class assignment, something like that?
So we ask for that in order to be efficient.
People sometimes ask people like what have you done already, what databases have you
looked in, what have you searched with, just so we're not sort of doubling back and, you
know, annoying you by doing something you've already done before.
Like any place you feel like you got stuck, that kind of thing is super, super helpful.
And what we usually ask for is like how much help do you want?
So if we're helping with a poster, be like when does this do, how much stuff have you
put in, you know, where, what do you need help with?
Do you need help with layout?
Do you need more information to go in the poster?
But if you're looking for a literature search, we'll say, so librarians, you probably all
know this already, but we have a tendency to give you all of the things.
So if you don't want all of the things, but information overload, you should just let
us know, like, hey, I was at a cocktail party and I have trying to prove a point for a question
somebody asked us, so we just need like an article or two, or I'm providing a little
bit of background for this paper or so I just need, I don't know, 10 articles or I need
something for a class or just whatever.
I'm exploring a research topic.
Can you help me look to see if anything is out there?
So, or I'm doing an evidence synthesis and that means I want everything and like, and
then we'll ask you like, when do you need that guy, that kind of thing.
So that's usually what I would say is if you're asking us, but more detail, the better.
And that includes like asking us for classes.
So if you're interested in individual instruction on like reference management or open access
or having us come in and talk to your lab, for example, about something like open access
or research impact or citation management, just as much detail as you can provide will
help us sort of be able to get back to you faster.
And to piggyback on what Leila was saying about and what I think Toyosi, you were getting
at with like posters do the next day.
So, you know, of course we understand that people are busy and that, you know, some things
I'm known to procrastinate myself.
It does happen.
But in those cases, I would just to raise awareness.
I mean, we are engaged, happy to help you service, but we also are a high volume service.
So last year, I was just checking, we answered close to 10,000 reference questions.
So just be mindful that we are like, we've got our hands in many different pots and are
communicating with lots of different researchers and students and teams across Duke Health.
So, you know, as Leila said, a few days a week, you know, that's usually a realistic
timeframe for some smaller questions, systematic reviews and evidence synthesis work.
That's kind of a different story just because it is a really different type of project.
Sure.
Thank you.
Thank you for pointing that out.
So it's funny.
What I'm hearing is that while people like me are just waking up to how valuable you
are, other people are using you all the time.
So you're busy.
And if people want to get the most out of you, they do need to consider that you are
consummate professionals with full-time jobs, happy to help, but really needing lead-in
time to be able to give your best effort.
Exactly.
So I'm wondering if that answers that question about how researchers can come prepared to
get the most value or if there's something more you want to add.
I don't think so.
I think Leila really hit it on the head, just a communication of that need, what you've
tried or what your vision is, because not everything is a literature search.
So if it is something like I am looking to figure out my research impact or I need help
with X, Y, or Z timeframes, just extent of that need is really all we need to get started.
Sure.
That sounds really good.
Can I double down on something you said?
You talk about figuring out your research impact.
Why is that important?
And how will you help people do that?
Sure.
That is a really, really great question.
So here, what I'm kind of lopping into that category is particularly for people who are
on the tenure path.
So when you're putting together your portfolio and you're kind of thinking about all of your
publications, your presentations, your posters, and trying to get a sense for yourself of
the impact you've had in your specific field.
And I really do want to emphasize your specific field because it is not fair to compare a
researcher in a niche pediatric specialty with a researcher in adult cardiology.
It's just two different researchers.
So kind of really thinking about the ethical use and responsible use of publication metrics.
So thinking about how many times your articles have been cited.
Where have they been cited?
What are the journals that you're publishing in?
Are those the top journals within your niche specialty area?
Because it's not always going to be Nature and Lancet and New England Journal of Medicine.
So we're really trying to help people understand the full scholarly picture and to understand
what these metrics mean, like journal impact factor, like H index for an author, and how
those things might be used in an evaluative capacity and to give you all the information
you need to kind of ensure that you are being represented as fully, fully and clearly as
possible.
We also look at, so that's really at the individual level.
A lot of times departments will contact us and say, you know, we're kind of just doing
an internal analysis and just want to really see where people in our department are publishing,
who's getting cited, like what papers are getting cited the most, because we want to
highlight this in our department newsletter.
And then other people might contact us because they want to show, for example, they're putting
together a grant and they want to show that this is the perfect team of people to be working
together.
They've either collaborated before or this is an opportunity for collaboration.
So that's the type of-
An international team or inter-institutional team.
Yeah.
So I know, like, I guess, thank you for pointing out that research impact is sort of like this
buzzword that maybe only makes sense to a small number of librarians, but it really
has to deal with that scholarly output, things like journal articles and presentations and
sort of thinking about those metrics that surround them for better or worse, because
people will use them of helping you understand that full sphere of things.
That is really awesome.
So now adding to your list of amazing things that you do, do you get people promoted?
I mean-
We might be able to help a little bit.
No, that's for real, Allison, because I mean, if you think about, I mean, as you're talking,
I'm thinking about the intellectual development statement when you're writing your packet
for promotion, and that's one of the things you do need to explain.
What's your impact?
And for many of us in specialty fields, we're not going to be publishing in these major
high impact journals.
And how do we explain that?
Because it's an opportunity to explain it.
And it sounds like you help with that.
Yes.
Exactly.
And we have a research professional who kind of leads a service within our research and
education department, who's really what our lead for research impact, bibliometrics, which
is a type of a scientific approach to analyzing citations and publication tracking.
And we have kind of a core around that service.
So there is that support here within the library.
That is really awesome.
Thank you.
Sure.
And my next question is, what's the one thing about your role that every clinician researcher
should know?
And I want to tack on to that.
You guys are at Duke and Duke is a great place.
Is this the norm for librarians everywhere?
Oh, gosh, that's such a good question.
So remind me of the second piece after I answer the first piece.
So usually what I would like everyone to know is that we're not like the traditional like
bun and the librarian that most people think of when they think of librarian.
In fact, some universities and places actually instead of calling them librarians, which
come with a very specific sort of stereotypical, they'll call them informationists, for example.
But we still we love the name library and we're going to stick with it.
But because we're a service department, we're a service unit and we work with words and
we work with computers, we sometimes get sort of unintentionally mistaken for like administrative
assistants or like homework help.
But we're really information experts, right?
We help you do research and we contribute expertise in any of your sort of research
projects from like, how do I write this paper?
How do I get it published?
How do I collect data?
Where do I store the data?
So kind of any of that piece.
So we often partner with teams on things like systematic reviews, evidence synthesis of
those kinds or bibliometric research projects.
And what we do for those is we essentially collect your data.
So if you're trying to find all the literature on a topic, Toyo, so you know this because
you've worked with me.
We'll gather all that data for you and then you get to start off.
If you're doing a bibliometric research impact project, we gather all that data for you,
give it to you to work with and give you advice on how to work with that.
The data gathering is not by magic.
I will say, right, Leila, it is not a swish and flick.
That is where the real deep expertise and the wrangling of the controlled vocabulary
in these databases, the knowledge of the syntax within these systems, the expertise in understanding
the scholarly communication and citation sort of landscape.
But yes, data gatherers.
Yes, like a balancing.
So if you ask me a question and I'm like, oh gosh, there's a lot of information out
there.
And we try to sort of balance that.
We usually call sensitivity and specificity, like getting you your answer to the question,
but not too much and not too little, right?
All of that stuff.
Because we do all of this, we frequently, at least for evidence synthesis, we frequently
ask for authorship.
And so a lot of times people are surprised when we ask that.
But we're like, we've contributed a lot intellectually to this project.
But not for everything, obviously.
If you write to ask me for an answer to a cocktail question, cocktail party question,
I'm not asking for authorship.
So whatever big data projects, I probably would.
And the institution question.
Yes, thank you.
I was like, oh wait, she asked me a second part.
So I would say, so we just got back from our Medical Library Association conference, which
is a huge conference with all of us spread out across the country and the world.
And it varies a lot from institution to institution.
But most of us do offer all of these services.
They all depend on budget and staffing.
But in some way, shape or form, depending on what institution you're at, your librarian
will at the very least be able to point you in the right direction for help with any of
those things.
This is all pretty typical.
Yeah, agreed.
And just one thing that I would add in terms of one thing about our role that every clinician
researcher should know is that we're also educators.
So whether that's teaching clinicians, the researchers, trainees, students, we're teaching
you and the team skills, including how to use the citation management software like
EndNote or Zotero, thinking about data, best practices and management, using tools and
software to help create your NIH bio sketches, how to craft searches in PubMed and so on.
But as Leila said, we don't serve in that administrative assistant capacity.
So we don't manage your EndNote libraries for you, but we teach you how to do that.
So we really want to teach you so that you can do your work effectively.
And we really focus on that whole lifelong learning.
We want you to be successful.
We're here to help.
Absolutely.
And there are times like with systematic reviews, really our involvement is really required.
But for a lot of other things, we really do also see ourselves in with an educator mission
as well.
We really want you because you don't want to have to wait for me to check my email and
then look at the answer and then get back to you if you can do it yourself.
So a lot of times we'll actually ask that when we do you want to know how to do this
yourself?
Do you want me to do it for you?
Or do you want to?
And almost everybody wants to know how to do it themselves.
So they don't have to rely on it.
We all love to learn and we all want to be experts at what we do.
And so most people want to learn.
Sure, so I hear in that also you empower people to do their jobs better as well.
Efficiently, hopefully.
If you know we have this cool tool, we get very excited about it.
Yes.
Empower is the right word.
I can't name how many tools I've learned just emailing and it seems like Leila, you're the
one who's always checking the email.
And I just love me.
We must have a connection.
It is that too.
That too.
I recently shared a trick you taught me in Scopus about how to find what journals publish
articles that are similar to one that you're working on, which was so neat.
I shared that at a conference a couple of weeks ago and people were like, I've never
heard that.
I'm like, you've got to talk to your library.
I'm so glad.
So if you want to know how to do that, just write to the library and one of us will show
you that it's a really super easy, simple trick.
You've got lots of tricks, which is why my next question is tell us about a life hack
that you can share with researchers.
I can start this one and I'll let Leila share one too, because I think we have so many life
hacks as you've alluded to Toyosi.
We have so many different things that we can share that are really with that aim of making
your life easier, especially in terms of areas related to searching, to research impact analysis,
to management planning, and so much more, and finding that right home for your manuscript,
like what journals are publishing on this topic.
One life hack that I would like to share, particularly for the earlier career clinician
researchers, is making sure that you're starting to get that handle over your kind of what
I would call scholarly profile.
You can think about it like a CV, right?
But in this case, I'm talking about making sure that you set up an ORCID profile, and
I'm going to explain what ORCID is.
It's O-R-C-I-D.
And then I'm going to want you to link your ORCID profile to Scholars at Duke, and if
you know that you're going to need to be putting together NIH bio sketches to Science CV.
So ORCID is a nonprofit organization that provides you with a 16-digit unique researcher
profile number.
So it's like a social security number that's personalized to you.
And it's an online system that essentially allows you to build a researcher CV where
you're linking out or providing your work history, your publications, your awards, your
grants, all in kind of one public-facing profile.
And also the really nice thing about that unique 16-digit ID is that also helps disambiguate
you from all of the other researchers who may have a similar name to you or the same
name as you.
So by setting up your ORCID, which you may have done if you've ever had to submit an
article for a publication and the Scholars One profile system asks you what your ORCID
is, you may have quickly created one and you have the number, but have you actually populated
your profile?
Have you put the publications in there?
Because I like to, you know, there's the work harder or work smarter, not harder.
Sorry, work smarter, not harder.
And ORCID allows you to do that.
So you're just going to manage your publications and claim them in one spot in ORCID.
ORCID will like go pull things for you.
It will.
Automatically.
It's not like you're sitting there typing it all in.
No, no, no, no.
You're going to search and link.
And then ORCID talks to other systems, such as our faculty profile system, Scholars at
Duke.
So you just need to go into your settings and link your ORCID.
So you don't have to sit there and claim all your publications in your Scholars at Duke
profile.
You just link your ORCID.
Similarly, that works with Science CD.
You don't have to sit there and generate a new bibliography each time.
You can link your ORCID and pull publications into your biosketch that way.
Unless it's institution agnostic.
So we don't want you to leave Duke.
But if you left Duke, it is not tied to the Duke system.
And there's a good chance that wherever you go, you're going to be able to use it again.
So start building that ORCID profile now.
And if you have questions about it, that is the perfect thing to have a consultation with
us about.
I have the ORCID ID in my signature line in my email.
So that just to promote myself.
So it'll be like, here's all my stuff and here's my ORCID.
You'd like to go see my publications.
So I think it's a really great marketing self-promotion thing as well.
I like it.
And it's a low key self-promotion thing.
Yeah.
Come see all the cool stuff I do.
So do you have a life hack to add?
Oh, gosh.
Well, we've talked a little bit about citation management.
And I'm still surprised by meeting scholars and researchers who are not using some sort
of reference manager or citation software.
Some of times it's because they tried once, like way back in the day, and it was really
overwhelming and they didn't like it.
So they just bailed.
But the tools are getting better and easier.
If one doesn't work for you, another might.
And we're very familiar with most of them.
So you could come to us and say, I tried EndNote and I found EndNote to make my head
implode.
And so can you suggest something else?
And we'll suggest something else.
Or I'm using Zotero, but it maybe doesn't have all the things I need it to do.
Could you show me how to use EndNote?
And it's easy to swap back and forth.
But what these do, for those of you who have not heard of one, is they help you gather
all your researches or trolling around databases and in the internet.
And somebody suggests something on Twitter and all that kind of stuff.
You can gather it all in one place and organize it like your own personal library of all the
citations that you care about.
And not just like in PubMed that has like 38 million citations or something like that.
It'll be just the stuff that you would care about in your research.
You can attach the PDF and then you can take that tool and write with it.
So most people are probably using or have touched one at one point or another.
But that's kind of a big one we get asked about a lot.
Sarah, did you want to maybe talk about like search alerts?
That's how I certainly help.
Yeah, I guess.
Yeah, there's probably just two things I can quickly touch on.
Other hacks really include setting up PubMed search alerts so that you receive email notifications
when new articles get published on topics of interest to you.
We know that it's really hard to keep up with research in your field.
And what we've found is, I mean, the librarian can help you craft a targeted search and will
show you how to do that search in PubMed, set up a customized search alert that would
just notify you weekly, monthly, any time new citations appear in PubMed that meet those
search parameters.
And that can also be helpful for journal article table of contents too, where we can just set
up a search for specific journals in PubMed.
And again, you'd be alerted through email anytime there's a new issue out.
And then the databases, sorry, any of the databases will actually do this.
So if you prefer, PubMed is the one we're all familiar with, but we have a lot of really
super cool databases there.
My personal favorite is Embase, and you can do a search in there and it will send you
search alerts as well.
And they have a different journal set.
I mean, there's an overlap, but there's also a bunch of unique journals in that database.
And so you could set up a couple of different ones.
You're always getting information from around the world.
And the last thing, oh, I'm so sorry.
The very last thing is that you should remember that we subsidize interlibrary loan fees.
That's another jargon, late in term, but interlibrary loan is just the process that a library uses
to obtain articles and books that we don't personally have in our collection.
We can get it to you through a sharing opportunity with other libraries.
So some places charge for this service.
We do not.
We, our library, absorbs those costs.
So if there is an article or book that you need and it is not in our collections, we
don't pay for it.
Don't pay for it.
Come on.
Don't pay the $40 to $60.
We can request it from another institution at no charge to you.
And the turnaround time can be as short as one business day.
Sometimes plan ahead, plan ahead, but plan ahead.
And that's awesome.
I'm also hearing that you save people time.
So you have these hacks that are really productivity hacks to help people not keep having to do
things over and over again.
It's like, do the orchid and then you're done.
Do the alerts and then you're done.
That's awesome.
Exactly.
That's awesome.
So we're excited about this next question.
What is one new item that all clinician researchers should know right now?
I am so excited to share this news.
So our libraries recently entered an institutional agreement with the journal publisher PLOS to
cover article processing charges for Duke published research.
So basically this agreement stipulates that any Duke corresponding author, so you do have
to be the corresponding author.
But if your work is accepted into any of the PLOS journals, you will not have to pay the
associated open access fee.
PLOS is a highly regarded journal publisher.
These are really high researching impact.
Yep.
They are top tier.
And those open access fees are typically between like $3,000 to $5,000 per article.
So through this agreement, if your work after peer review is accepted and you're the Duke
corresponding author, you will not have to pay the article processing charges.
And I will also add that according to some of the internal publication analyses that
our library has done of Duke authored publications, PLOS journals actually are kind of the top
journals that Duke is publishing in.
Like by raw numbers, Duke authors are publishing in PLOS journals the most.
So we really hope that you will all take advantage of this incredible agreement that we've entered
into.
Saving so much money.
Wow.
That is incredible.
So now adding to your role, saving and investing.
Because it's an investment, right?
You get your article into a highly ranked journal and that does help you in terms of your ability.
Yes, that's right.
That's right.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Wow.
That's so awesome.
All right.
Now I have to go look at my list of upcoming manuscripts or submission and see if there's
a fit.
What are the journals in the PLOS family, if you don't mind sharing?
Oh gosh.
Sarah's like looking that up while I stall.
They have quite a few in it.
Every time we talk about it, they've added another like specialty journal.
Yes.
I will say, which journal?
Okay.
These include PLOS One, PLOS Medicine, PLOS Water, PLOS Sustainability and Transformation,
PLOS Pathogens, PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, PLOS Global Public Health, PLOS Genetics,
PLOS Digital Health, PLOS Biology, PLOS Climate and PLOS Computational Biology.
Okay.
That's got a broad range.
PLOS Medicine definitely seems like a potential fit.
A lot of people publishing in PLOS One.
Okay.
Because that was the original.
Yeah.
Got it.
Now, I want to say from my viewers who are not from Duke, is this something that other
institutions are thinking about?
Can others look forward to these kinds of agreements?
Yes.
I think so.
It is certainly costly, but for I would say large research one universities, this is definitely
I think where some of the scholarly services are going to, where we are trying to explore
these what they're called as transformative agreements.
What we want to avoid, at least like here at Duke and I think a lot of other libraries
as well, is paying for research twice.
So, and what I mean by that is a lot of journals now have hybrid open access models where you
might be, your article might be accepted and you can either publish in the traditional
way or they might have an open access option for you where you would have to pay and then
but your article is made visible.
What we want to avoid is we used to have something called the COPE fund where all the libraries
would contribute to this and Duke researchers could submit requests to have their article
processing charges covered.
We always had to say no to those requests for those hybrid journals because it's like
we are already paying thousands and thousands of dollars per year to have a subscription
to that journal and now having to then pay on top of that so that some researcher can
make it open access in that journal.
Just there is like there's like this disconnect, but there's a lot going on in publishing and
scholarly communications right now.
I would say like for us it's exciting.
There's like a lot of new and interesting things happening and we really are trying
to support the research community as much as we can and I think entering in some of
these transformative agreements with journal publishers where it just makes sense like
something like PLOS where we know Duke authors have traditionally published quite a bit and
we're going to try to keep exploring those.
We also have agreements with all Cambridge University press journals and then two BMJ
journals, BMJ open quality and BMJ case reports.
With all of those journals if your work gets accepted you do not have to pay the processing
charges.
Unbelievable and awesome.
What a plug for open science.
Awesome news and just oh wow now I have to go and figure out which of the PLOS journals
I can publish in.
Thank you for sharing that news.
It is really cutting these transformative agreements are really sort of cutting edge.
They're just starting to get like sort of negotiated.
So you guys are kind of like in on the you know hearing about it now and you'll hear
more and more as the years go on and universities systems start picking this up and if you're
at a smaller institution smaller institutions do it as well.
It just sort of again depends on your institution and their library and your research output
and that kind of thing.
But I think yeah I was just going to say I mean I guess one thing I could say about open
science is you know open access in publishing is just one piece of that.
You know sharing data management plans and your data is another part of that of increasing
visibility of really stressing reproducibility of research and breaking down the some of
the systems that have led to inequities in accessing information and that's my big passion
with open access is it breaks down that barrier and makes the research visible and accessible
to all.
So those who aren't as fortunate or privileged to be at an institution like Duke you know
to be able to access this information to build on it in their own settings without that those
additional burdens in place I think is so incredibly important.
We encourage it go open if you if you can possibly do it go open spread your spread
your research.
We want people to see it right.
Absolutely absolutely.
Thank you thank you that was so awesome and actually a great segue into the next question
which is like so you brought up a lot of things which I myself am like oh I didn't know that
I didn't know that I need to find out about that.
So for everyone who's listening how what how do they engage their librarians like I know
we've talked about what's the best way to come prepared but just for everyone who's
listening it's like I've never even ever talked to my librarian what's the first step.
Okay so if you are trying to reach us if you were at Duke and you're trying to reach a
Duke librarian emailing us is the best way to do it.
We have a super easy email address it is medical-librarian so medical-librarian at duke.edu but if you
are trying to kind of the best way to get most librarians and libraries is actually
through their websites so many of our services come through our websites databases instructional
guides resources wayfinders to point you in all different directions it's all through
our websites.
If you wanted to come to the Duke Medical Center Library website we are actually separate from
main campus so if you google Duke Library you're actually going to get main campus library
which is a great library don't get me wrong but if you want the medical center library
you can google Duke Medical Library and it will bring you to our website that will be
way easier than me trying to spell out our URL so what I've decided to default to in
most library websites there will be email addresses and that's probably most librarians
preferred way of getting a request because then you can provide all that information
we talked about like when and where and what new and context and all that good stuff but
most libraries also have a chat feature so we have a little chat bot box that you can
Monday through Friday 9 to 5 you can send us a quick question like hey I'm trying to
get this article you know can you tell me whether or not Duke has it and we'll say yes
we do or no we don't you're gonna have to send it through interlibrary loan hey I'm
doing a really quick search can you suggest some terms for me that kind of thing so you
wanted or we can you can say I'd really like to meet with a librarian can I set up a time
to meet with you and we can do a zoom so I will also add for people who aren't even at
institutions that have you know deep and rich library services the National Library of Medicine
is there for you as well they're not going to be able to necessarily have the capacity
to provide as much of the in-depth searching support and it would really be for some of
the searching questions in particular or questions related to PubMed My NCBI Sci NCV you can absolutely
reach out to them and they also have a lot of just-in-time videos and trainings available
on their websites as well that is super awesome thank you thank you so much this has been
so informative is there any closing piece of information that we haven't talked about
they really feel it's important to share I would just say don't be a stranger you know
so friendly we love these people right yeah yeah you know I will say that if we if you
are not from Duke we will try to point you in the right direction or connect you to somebody
at your institution it is you know the case that our particular library services are for
our Duke faculty staff and students but there's likely something at your own institution or
there are sets of freely available resources that we can also point you to we frequently
get people asking for systematic review services for example and so we'll say I know the librarian
at x y or z institution and I can direct you there or I'll find out if there's somebody
there can help you with that I'm also thinking like area health education centers which will
also provide library support depending on which state and region you're in is another
one yeah that's awesome I yeah thank you thank you for sharing that and it sounds like if
if people are not able to connect with you directly if they're not from Duke or don't
have a Duke collaborator you're often able to show them other resources that they may
have access to that perhaps they don't know we love talking to librarians at other institutions
so it's like totally an excuse for us to make a new friend awesome awesome I love it I love
it thank you so much that has been so wonderful you gave me a lot of information that I feel
like I need to go follow up on you will be getting emails from me shortly I'm sure I
just want to say thank you so much for the wisdom that you've shared with our listeners
all right everyone you've heard Sarah you've heard Layla librarians are your friends they
are not just librarians they are so much more they're informaticists is that no no no what
is information that's information you got it I like yours you're sounded fancy but really
that you're helping us manage information you're helping us disseminate information
and even helping us store it as well doing so many things helping us invest helping us
get promoted just so so many so many things that that you're doing and I just want to
thank you for your work I want to thank you for the work you do here at Duke for the work
that I've benefited from because I've worked with both of you personally and it's always
such an amazing and wonderful experience so when you started out talking about how the
biggest gift you feel and the biggest value you bring the people I agree I think it's
just it's such a wonderful experience to work with you not just getting the information
but just also having a pleasant experience collaborating with you and working with you
so thank you both for for for all that you do thank you thank you for having us thank
you I want to say to our view to our listeners if there's anybody who needs to hear this
information who maybe doesn't know perhaps you know all of this and you have a mentee
who needs to know our colleague who might need to know please share this episode with
them and and definitely help them get plugged into services that will really enhance their
research as well all right everyone thank you for listening Leila and Sarah thank you
so much for being here thank you bye bye bye bye everyone
Thanks for listening to this episode of the clinician researcher podcast where academic
clinicians learn the skills to build their own research program whether or not they have
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