Archive: Newsletters

Mid Year Newsletter 2015

Welcome to our latest newsletter, designed to keep you up to date with news and information from PaPaS. We have had another busy start to the year, with welcoming a new member of staff, attending international conferences, and continuing to publish high quality protocols, reviews and updates. We’re working hard on continuing to improve efficiencies in the editorial process, updating guidance documentation for our contributors, and monitoring our timelines to publication. We are building partnerships and improving engagement on social media, and we are collaborating on prioritisation projects in areas such as chronic pain, paediatric palliative care and end of life care. We are also planning an exciting event in 2016. Read on to find out more!

Thank you to all of our valued contributors, Anna Hobson

Managing Editor W: papas.cochrane.org  E: anna.hobson@ndcn.ox.ac.uk    T:+44 (0)1865 225762

Staff update

We are delighted to  introduce Tess Cooper to the PaPaS team. Tess is  working with us as a Systematic Reviewer, a post funded by our NIHR programme grant. 

 

2015 to date (at 14 August)

  • 19 new reviews
  • 18 protocols
  • 17 updates

Social Media

We now have an amazing 2920 followers of #painevidence. Help us make it to 3000! Share our latest news and reviews: follow us @CochranePaPaS.

Useful hashtags and people, that may be of interest to our authors:

  • #PaPaStheme: we have a different theme every month, follow for reviews, blogs, articles and more.
  • @UKCochraneCentr: home of the new #blogshot, accessible infographic summaries of the latest Cochrane reviews.

Guidance

Conflicts of Interest policy: the policy relating to conflicts of interest has been updated, see here. All authors are now advised to list their declaration of interest individually.

New automated 6 month de-registration of titles: titles will be de-registered if a first draft protocol is not received  6 months after title registration (extenuating circumstances may apply).

Common screening errors: are being added to the guidance documentation. The documentation will be available from our Resources page here.

Implications for research: new suggested  subheadings for ‘Implications for research’ are being added to the guidance documentation. The documentation will be available from our Resources page here.

Covidence: new software available for authors. See here. “Covidence improves healthcare evidence synthesis by improving the efficiency and experience of creating and maintaining systematic reviews”.

New website

Following our recent rebrand, we would like to introduce our new and updated website.  Here you will find information about us, our reviews, our editorial procedures (including lots of useful information for authors and peer reviewers), PaPaS and Cochrane news, plus the Palliative Care Database, as well as lots of other really useful information. Take a look and tell us what you think!

NIHR Programme Grant

Addressing the unmet need of chronic pain: providing the evidence for treatments of pain

In 2014, we were awarded a UK National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Systematic Reviews Programme Grant to undertake systematic reviews and appraisal of the evidence for pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions in chronic pain.

The grant focuses on three areas of significant unmet need in the UK population:

1. Pain in children

2. Chronic non-cancer pain (neuropathic)

3. Cancer pain (neuropathic)

For more information, see here.

2014 Impact Factor

The 2014 Impact Factor for PaPaS is 7 (75 publications cited 525 times). A review published by PaPaS in 2012 or 2013 was cited, on average, 7 times in 2014.

Recent and upcoming meetings

We have been to:

We are going to:

•European Pain Federation Congress, 2-5 September, Vienna, Austria

 

•Cochrane Colloquium, 3-7 October, Vienna, Austria

    

Don’t forget to tell us about your meetings and conferences in 2015.

Email Anna Hobson at anna.hobson@ndcn.ox.ac.uk or Tweet us @CochranePaPaS

Impact

January, Issue 1

Palliative pharmacological sedation for terminally ill adults (Update)

NIHR Cochrane Incentive Scheme 2013, UK; Award Reference Number: 14/175/01. Priority arose from development of NICE guidance for end of life care; completed by deadline of 31 Dec 2014.

March, Issue 3

As required versus fixed schedule analgesic administration for postoperative pain in children (New review)

This review was commissioned by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) in the UK in response to a National Health Service (NHS) 'decision problem' regarding outpatient management of postoperative pain in children. National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), UK; NIHR Directly Commissioned Cochrane Incentive Scheme, Award Reference Number: 13/180/13.

April, Issue 4

Corticosteroids for the management of cancer-related pain in adults (New review)

Cochrane podcast (not yet published)

Feverfew for preventing migraine (Update)

Cochrane podcast (not yet published)

May, Issue 5

Pharmacological treatments for fatigue associated with palliative care (Update)

Cochrane featured review (see here); Cochrane podcast (not yet published)

Sweet tasting solutions for reduction of needle-related procedural pain in children aged one to 16 years (Update)

Cochrane podcast (not yet published)

June, Issue 6

Topical NSAIDs for acute musculoskeletal pain in adults (Update)

Cochrane featured review (see here); blogshot (see here) and blog on Evidently Cochrane (see here)

23rd Cochrane Colloquium 2015

This year’s 23rd Cochrane Colloquium will be held in Vienna, Austria with the theme Filtering the Information Overload for Better Decisions.

•Registration open until 9th September.

•There has been a record number of abstract (708) and workshop (164) submissions.

•We will be at the Meet the Groups  session. See here. Come and say hello!

Birthday Party

In 2016, PaPaS will celebrate 18 years since registering as an official Cochrane review group. We would like you to join us in this celebration. We are planning a day of events on Thursday 21st July 2016 in Oxford. More details will follow, but please be sure to save the date in your diaries.

 

2014: What a year!

Our core funding contract with NIHR has been extended to 2020, and we were successfully awarded a 3-year NIHR Programme Grant on addressing the unmet need of chronic pain.

We have seen some staff changes during 2014: Assistant Managing Editors, Yvonne and Rebecca, left to pursue exciting new ventures. We welcome new AME, Kerry, to the team, and we have also been expanding our Editorial Board. In September, we were delighted to hear that Chris Eccleston, Co-ordinating Editor of PaPaS, was elected to the Cochrane Collaboration Steering Group (CCSG).

More highlights are included in this newsletter, and you can always keep up to date with our latest news on Twitter (@CochranePaPaS) and on our ‘What’s New Page’: http://papas.cochrane.org/whats-new-papas

We would like to thank all of our contributors for making 2014 another successful and memorable year for PaPaS, and we look forward to continuing to work with you in the future.

Season’s greetings,

Anna Hobson

Managing Editor

---The PaPaS office is closed  from 5pm Friday 19th December, returning Monday 5th January---

W: papas.cochrane.org/whats-new        E: anna.hobson@ndcn.ox.ac.uk    T:+44 (0)1865 225762

Issues 1 to 12, 2014:

16 new reviews

22 protocols

11 updates

Total publications:

215 reviews

47 protocols

=262 on the CDSR

Social Media

We now have an amazing 2200 Followers of #painevidence. Help us share our latest news and reviews: follow us @CochranePaPaS.

Useful hashtags and people, that may be of interest to our authors:

  • #cochranetoptips: for advice, and sharing experience and guidance.

  • @UKCochraneCentr: home of the blog, Evidently Cochrane; for well-presented, accessible summaries of the latest Cochrane reviews.

  • Regular #cochraneauthor Tweetchats.

  • We’ll be reporting the results of our own Tweetchat on patient-preferred outcomes for fibromyalgia (#CCFibro, 9 Dec) early in 2015. More info here.

 Cochrane Policies

  • Gold open access: immediate open access upon payment of an article publication charge, see here. Authors should inform the PaPaS editorial office as soon as possible in the review development process if immediate open access is required.

  • Conflicts of interest: the policy relating to conflicts of interest and Cochrane Reviews has been updated, see here. All authors are now advised to list their declaration of interest individually.

  • Co-publication: see the Requirements for co-publication page here. All authors should contact the editorial office if they are intending to publish a summary of their Cochrane review elsewhere.

  • Plagiarism policy: the Cochrane Collaboration takes measures to prevent, detect, and address plagiarised content in Cochrane Reviews, see here.

  • Screening update: new resources are available from the Cochrane Editorial Unit (CEU). The CEU has compiled two resources using information gathered from the CEU screening process, see here.

CRG and Funding update 

Funding update 

  • PaPaS Core Infrastructure funding has been renewed for another 5 years, from April 2015. Our main funder is the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) in the United Kingdom, as part of the Research and Development programme.

  • We were successful in our application for the NIHR Programme Grant. We have been awarded a three-year grant to support the project, ‘Addressing the unmet need of chronic pain: providing the evidence for treatments of pain.’ We will be producing 49 new reviews, overviews and rapid reviews. 

Impact Factor Report

Every year, our publishers, Wiley, produce a report of impact factors and usage data. Highlights from the 2013 report as follows:

Cochrane Collaboration in general

  • 2013 Impact Factor for the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR) increased from 5.785 to 5.939; The CDSR is ranked 10th (of 150) in the Medicine, General & Internal category; The 5-Year Impact Factor increased from 6.553 to 6.706.

PaPaS

  • Increased Impact Factor (7.184 from 5.558), and highest among similar journals (table below);

  • Above average for accesses (figure below);

  • 4th out of 53 CRGs with % publications on CDSR (figure below);

A Helping Hand

  • Guidance documents: see our Resource Hub for all our guidance documents, in particular updated MECIR guidance documents for protocols  and updated reviews with no new studies and our new screenshots of common issues. In particular, note that authors can amend their own affiliation details in their Archie person record.

  • Translators: if you need help translating papers so that you can assess them for inclusion/exclusion, you can send us your screening info/eligibility criteria and the papers and we can try to identify a relevant speaker using Archie. We are always keen to increase our network of those whose first language is not English.

  • Dissemination: we routinely Tweet new reviews and updates, but we can also utilise Cochrane podcasts and press releases by submitting proposals to the CEU.

  • Have you installed the latest version of RevMan, version 5.3.5? Download it here or use Help > Check for Updates. Exciting new features include:

    • MECIR Reporting standards are now visible in the right-hand panel.

    • The Risk of Bias (RoB) summary table for an outcome can now be viewed in data tables and the Forest Plot window can be included in Figures based on forest plots.

    • Study Centric review. It groups all information regarding each study under the Study ID in the outline pane: References, Characteristics, Risk of Bias and Analysis results. The default view is also still available.

  • Do contact the tech team directly at techsupport@cochrane.org for support

  • RevMan What’s New

Save the date

Don’t forget to tell us about your meetings and conferences in 2015. Email Anna Hobson at anna.hobson@ndcn.ox.ac.uk or Tweet us @CochranePaPaS

 

22nd Cochrane Colloquium 2014

This year’s 22nd Cochrane Colloquium was held in Hyderabad, India with the theme Evidence-Informed Public Health: Opportunities and Challenges.

  • If you missed it you can watch videos of the plenary sessions here.

  • See Anna’s blog post on Evidently Cochrane.