Repository of Training Opportunities in Journalology

Resources from Sources other than WAME

 

James Galipeau1, David Moher1,2

 
1Ottawa Hospital Research Institute (OHRI), Knowledge Synthesis Group
2University of Ottawa, Department of Epidemiology& Community Medicine
 
 
This MS Excel file includes a list of ongoing training opportunities for authors of peer-reviewed scientific publications, manuscript peer reviewers, and editors of scientific journals. It was developed as part of a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR#278874) funded project, which also included a systematic review of the effectiveness of training programs in writing for scholarly publication, manuscript peer review, and journal editing (i.e., journalology). The purpose of the repository is to provide a resource for authors, peer reviewers, and editors to obtain information about the range of training options that exist in to improve the quality of reporting of studies in scientific journals.   
 
Training opportunities were located through an “environmental scanning” technique, using the Google search engine.Search results were mined for potentially eligible ongoing training opportunities, using pre-specified eligibility criteria. Keywords related to journalology were taken from the journalology systematic review search strategy and formed a 6 (terms related to training) x 8 (terms related to authors, peer reviewers, and editors) x 2 (terms related to the health field) matrix consisting of 96 multi-word search combinations (e.g., course “peer review” medical).  For each combination, the first 50 links of the Google search were reviewed to determine whether any of them potentially described a training opportunity. If an appropriate training opportunity was identified in the first 50 links, the next 10 links were reviewed. If any of these 10 links contained a new training opportunity, the next 10 links were examined; continuing this way until a set of 10 links contained no new training opportunities. This process was repeated for each of the 96 searches. 
 

Eligibility Criteria

 
To be included, training opportunities were required to be:
  • Ongoing or offered on a regular basis (e.g., yearly)
  • Potentially available (for free or for a fee) to:
    • The general public 
    • A subset of the general public (e.g., developing countries, students, nurses)
    • Members of a particular governing body or related professional organization 
The database excluded:
  • Text-based resources (articles, books, instructions, etc.) 
  • PowerPoint slide presentations (unless accompanied by an audio presentation)
  • One-time offerings of workshops, courses, etc.
  • Restricted access workshops, courses, etc. (e.g., restricted to a particular company’s employees or a university’s faculty members) 
  • Training opportunities in Languages other than English
  • University or College courses (see tab 3 of the MS Excel file [Table 2])
 
  • Table 1 (tab 2 of the Excel file) contains the Master List of training opportunities, as described above.
  • Table 2 (tab 3 of the Excel file) contains links to University or College courses related to writing for publication, manuscript peer review, and journal editing. 
  • Table 3 (tab 4 of the Excel file) contains other interesting links that were relevant, but did not fit the criteria for Tables 1 or 2.
 
Note - An extensive search for videos relating to journalology was not conducted. So it is expected that there are many more video-based resources available on-line than are represented in this list.