interessante!
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Peter Suber peter.suber@gmail.com Date: Tue, Mar 1, 2011 at 10:31 AM Subject: [BOAI] Can wikis transform medical publishing? To: SOAF post SPARC-OAForum@arl.org, BOAI Forum post < boai-forum@ecs.soton.ac.uk>
[Forwarding from Open Medicine. --Peter Suber.]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Can wikis transform medical publishing? Open Medicine explores the use of a wiki to update and improve peer-reviewed systematic reviews.
OTTAWA, Tuesday, March 1—Today, Open Medicine (openmedicine.ca) is pleased to announce the publication of a wiki version of a new systematic review of second-line diabetes drugs. To the best of our knowledge, Open Medicine is the only peer-reviewed medical journal using wikis as a publishing platform. “Knowledge is dynamic and a wiki is a publishing tool that truly reflects that,” says Anita Palepu, MD, editor of Open Medicine. “Our hope is that this manuscript will evolve as our knowledge evolves and, ultimately, be improved by contributions directly from our readers to our authors.”
The systematic review is authored by a team of researchers affiliated with the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH; cadth.ca). It examines the safety and efficacy of second-line type 2 diabetes drugs in patients who cannot achieve optimal control of their blood sugar using metformin, a first-line treatment, alone. “CADTH is always looking for innovative ways to share its products with customers. This is an innovative, collaborative way for readers to not only comment but contribute to our work using Wiki technology,” says Jane Farquharson, acting vice-president, Programs, at CADTH.
According to the Canadian Diabetes Association, nine million Canadians live with diabetes or prediabetes. By 2020, it is estimated that diabetes will cost the healthcare system $16.9 billion per year. Therefore, a clinician’s choice of second-line therapies has important implications for Canadians. “Given the prevalence of diabetes and limited dollars in health care budgets, this work is important to examine the effectiveness of these therapies not only from a cost perspective but also comparing them with others available to ensure maximum benefit for the patient,“ says Farquharson.
Prior to publication as a wiki, this systematic review was peer-reviewed to ensure it satisfied Open Medicine’s editorial standards. Access to the wiki version will not be limited to health experts, but readers must register, state their affiliations and complete a competing-interests statement before they can contribute. Changes will be monitored by the journal’s staff and substantive edits will be brought to the attention of the review authors.
Systematic reviews can become rapidly outdated as new research is published. Providing authors and readers with an updated document offers several advantages, yet biomedical publishers have rarely done so. The advantages include: 1) Changes to a wiki are publicly available as soon as they are made, 2) Wikis create a centralized document for easy editing, 3) Readers can track the changes that have been made to a document, provided a form of post-publication peer-review; For a more thorough discussion of the potential role of wikis in biomedical publishing, see “Medical research and social media: Can wikis be used as a publishing platform in medicine?” an editorial by the editors at Open Medicine published in 2009 when the journal first piloted a wiki.
Citation: McIntosh, B., Cameron, C., Singh, S.R., Yu, C., Ahuja, T., Welton, N.J., and Dahl, M. (2011) Second-line therapy in patients with type 2 diabetes inadequately controlled with metformin monotherapy: a systematic review and mixed-treatment comparison meta-analysis Open Med 5(1):e35-48
To access the wiki version of this article, visit: http://livewiki.openmedicine.ca
About Open Medicine Open Medicine is a peer-reviewed, independent, open-access general medical journal published in Canada. It makes original medical research, as well as reviews, commentaries and articles on practice, policy and ethics available freely and immediately to everyone over the Internet. It is a not-for-profit organization.
About CADTH The Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH) is an independent, not-for-profit agency funded by Canadian federal, provincial, and territorial governments to provide credible, impartial advice and evidence-based information about the effectiveness of drugs and other health technologies to Canadian health care decision makers.
For more information, contact:
Anita Palepu Editor, Open Medicine 604-682-2344 ext. 63194 apalepu@openmedicine.ca
Tarek Loubani Associate Editor, Open Medicine 519-488-6475 tarek@tarek.org
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