Scholarly Communications Corner: New NIH Public Access Compliance

By Jeanene Light, MLS

As most National Institute of Health (NIH) Principal Investigators (PI’s) and authors have heard, beginning in Spring 2013, NIH may delay funds from grant-holders not in compliance with the public access policies. The public policy requires all peer-reviewed articles published with direct NIH support to report PMCID numbers within 12 months of publication.

MyNCBI has been adapted to serve PI’s as a tool for determining compliance and for reporting PubMed Central (PMC) articles. Author-researchers can “associate” their publications with their NIH grants, track their compliance in PMC, and create bibliographies for reporting to the NIH. It is as simple as signing into MyNCBI with an eRA Commons username and password.

The University of Vermont’s Sponsored Projects Administration (SPA) , and Jeanene Light, MLS, Dana Medical Library, have teamed up  to provide tools to assist PI’s and authors reach compliance. The Dana Medical Library’s research guide at: http://danaguides.uvm.edu/NIH-Public-Policy provides assistance in identifying journals that submit automatically to PMC, specifies procedures for submitting articles “manually”, and offers copyright transfer agreement advice.  The research guide also includes links to NIH FAQ’s and videos, as well as contact information for Ms. Light and SPA administrators.

Additionally, the Sponsored Project Administration office now has access to the Public Access Compliance Monitor which provides the current compliance status of all journal articles that NIH believes a particular grantee institution is responsible for under the terms of the Public Access Policy. In addition to classifying articles according to compliance status, the compliance monitor provides detailed information about each article: a full citation; associated grants and program directors/principal investigators (PDs/PIs); the PubMed ID and related IDs where available; and a link to the PubMed record. Institutions can also track the status of papers deposited into the NIH Manuscript Submission (NIHMS) system.

For a quick, eight minute video highlighting the changes and the procedures, watch the video produced by NYU’s Health Sciences Libraries: bit.ly/11Q39kY. If you have further questions, please contact Jeanene Light or your SPA administrator.

Scholarly Communications Corner is a new column in the Dana Medical Library Newsletter featuring relevant information on a variety of scholarly communications topics from open access to digital repositories.

Letter to Medical and Health Sciences Students

Marianne Burke, MLS, AHIP,
Director, Dana Medical Library

We know that study space is a problem for medical and health science students at UVM. We share the concerns of graduate students in the MD, MePN, MSN,DPT, MS/CSD programs, and those  in graduate research programs, who have not had study seats available to them during the crowded University exam periods. We have also heard the concerns of undergraduates in Nursing, Rehabilitation & Movement Science, Medical Laboratory & Radiation Science, and Communication Sciences & Disorders who have also experienced this crowding, and we want to assure you that there is study space at Dana for you as well.

At Dana Library, we want to maintain as much study space as possible for our primary student groups. To that end, Dana library has established a reserved medical and graduate student study area. The area contains 26 table seats and six lounge chairs and it is located in the front-side, south end of the Library. Medical and graduate students in College of Medicine and College of Nursing and Health Sciences (CNHS) programs are welcome to study in this area. The remaining study seats at tables and carrels are available to CNHS undergraduates and others on an open seating basis. UVM faculty, FAHC residents and attending physicians, nurses, and other professional staff also appropriately conduct study and research in the Library.

To reduce the incentive for students in non-CNHS undergraduate general enrollment classes to study at Dana, we will no longer have reading materials on reserve for those classes. However, all reading materials associated with programs in CNHS will still be available at Dana.

While providing quiet study space is an important Library service, other teaching, learning, and research activities of the Academic Health Center and the University take place at Dana Library. Activities such as finding and checking out books, using electronic information sources, consultation with a librarian, and attending classes taught by the librarians on information competency and evidence-based practice are important uses of Library space. We hope you will find the physical library a great place to study, but also take advantage of the many other services the Library offers both in the building, and online at the Dana website: library.uvm.edu/dana.

Please let us know your comments and concerns, and give us your feedback concerning study seating at Dana Medical Library, including the new Med/Grad study space.

Wishing you success with your course of study and career,

Marianne Burke, MLS AHIP

Director, Dana Medical Library

Student Workers Finish Up Great Year at Library

Thank you to the student workers who worked  at the Dana Library this past academic year: Shane; Caitlin; Katie; Brittany; Kaitlyn; Taylor; Ryan; Brian; Katie; Vanessa; Andreas; and Kristen. These students worked over 70 hours a week  helping our  patrons. We wish the best to Caitlin and Kristen as they complete their graduate program studies next. And a final congratulations to Shane, Brittany, Ryan, and Andreas on your graduation from UVM!

Changes in Service for Print Journals and New Reserve Policy

Free Delivery of Print Journal Articles to UVM-FAHC Community

As a pilot project during the 2011/2012 academic year, Dana Library staff in Document Delivery will locate, scan and send materials from Dana’s print collections free of charge. In past years, the charge was $5 per article for staff to pull, scan and send journal articles from the shelf.

Please note: this free service is not offered if the item is also available as a UVM subscribed electronic journal. If you are having difficulty locating an article that is available online, we are more than happy to help. Contact Reference at 656-2201 or danaref@uvm.edu.

Reserve Items May Leave the Library

Dana Library now allows reserve items to leave the library. Patrons may borrow a reserve book for 2 hours, as always, but now may take the book out of the library during the day. Patrons may also borrow one reserve book overnight. Patrons may take the book within 2 hours of closing, no sooner, with the item due back within 30 minutes of opening.

Please contact Access Services if you have any questions: 656-2200.

News Briefs

More Space and Improved Wireless

Renovations at Dana Library have made more room for quiet study. The back corner of the Library near the small study rooms now has additional carrels. While the carrels do not have network jacks, they are wired, however. An additional wireless router has been added in that area to boost connectivity to the carrels and surrounding area. This space was created by condensing Dana’s print and audiovisual collections. Some older titles were discarded and some moved off site.

Free Delivery of Print Journal Articles to UVM-FAHC Community

As a pilot project during the 2011/2012 academic year, Dana Library staff in Document Delivery will locate, scan and send materials from Dana’s print collections free of charge. In past years, the charge was $5 per article for staff to pull, scan and send journal articles from the shelf.

Please note: this free service is not offered if the item is also available as a UVM subscribed electronic journal. If you are having difficulty locating an article that is available online, we are more than happy to help. Contact Reference at 656-2201 or danaref@uvm.edu.

Reserve Items May Leave the Library

Dana Library now allows reserve items to leave the library. Patrons may borrow a reserve book for 2 hours, as always, but now may take the book out of the library during the day. Patrons may also borrow one reserve book overnight. Patrons may take the book within 2 hours of closing, no sooner, with the item due back within 30 minutes of opening.

Please contact Access Services if you have any questions: 656-2200.

More Social Than Ever: Follow Us!

Twitter users can follow Dana Medical Library for up to the minute information about programs, collections, and services. Just click on the icon at the top of the home page to get started.

“Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.” Twitter. (n.d.) Retrieved January 26, 2009, from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter.

Community Doctors Brush up on Medical Evidence on the Internet

Bob Sekerak, MLS demonstrates the evidence pyramid.

Primary care physicians gathered in St. Albans, Barre, and St. Johnsbury to attend late afternoon classes on finding evidence-based information using the Internet and the resources of Dana Medical library. The classes, named “Timely Access to Evidence-Based Information for Patient Care,” were approximately an hour long and conferred one Continuing Medical Education (CME) credit.

Librarian and outreach educator Bob Sekerak, MLS, conducted the classes in cooperation with the UVM College of Medicine Office of Primary Care and the Northeastern and Champlain Valley Area Health Education Centers (AHEC) to reach community physicians who teach medical students (preceptors). Attendees learned how to answer patient care questions as they arise in clinical practice on a daily basis. The instructor showed how searches using free Internet search engines such as PubMed, TRIP and Google can be combined with Dana Library licensed databases such as DynaMed to identify quality medical information from the literature. He also demonstrated how to distinguish the level of medical evidence and assess the quality of scientific information. Locating the full text of electronic medical journal articles was also covered. The focus was on information resources that preceptors can use where they practice and teach without being on the UVM/FAHC campus.

Responses to the classes to date have proved positive.  One student participant, a clinical faculty member, remarked,  “[there's a] huge variety of information available via Dana….”  Another commented,“[Today’s session showed how to] access all the information I need to practice evidence based medicine.” Only one preceptor attending the classes previously knew about access to Dana’s resources and services, although he did not know their breadth and depth.

Additional classes were given at the Thomas Chittenden Health Center, Williston, and the Plainfield Health Center. Additional classes are planned at Grace Cottage Hospital, Townshend; the Porter Medical Center, Middlebury; and at the Dana Medical Library on 3/16 and 4/13 from 5 – 6 pm.

Funding for this statewide education series was received from National Institutes of Health contract with the National Network of Libraries of Medicine-New England Region. Additional support was provided through the UVM AHEC/Office of Primary Care SEARCH program funded by Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA).

For information about additional time and locations for the “Timely Access to Evidence-based Information” class series or to register, contact: Bob Sekerak, MLS, Outreach Education Coordinator, at 802-656-8471 or rsekerak@uvm.edu.