QMedCONNECT: December 2011

QMedCONNECT Newsletter: December 2011

Dear friends,

Another year comes to an end and a new one begins. We wish all of you a Very Happy New Year. We hope all of you achieve all that you wish for. The year 2010 was very fruitful for us, especially since we were able to do some great strategizing and have come up with brand new plans for 2011. Do read more about our Friends of the Foundation program that we've been talking about in the last two issues.

On the 29th of January, we will be celebrating our Foundation Day. This year the theme is "Bringing Students and Health Science Libraries Closer" and we have invited students to participate in an Essay competition. On the 29th, we plan to have a panel discussion based on inputs received from these eassays and we hope to integrate them in our Friends of the Foundation program. We believe that these efforts will help Institutions, libraries and health science students & professionals.

I am also happy to share that I wrote an article "My dream for medical students" in a journal launched by medical students - the International Journal of Students Research.

This month we got a donation of Rs. 5000/- from an individual who told us "I believe you are doing good work - so here is a cheque for you"! Such donations are treasures, because of the wishes and the expression of trust that comes with them. We'd be very happy to have more such donations.

And, we do seek the best wishes, blessings and help of all our readers for achieving our dreams for medical students, colleges and their libraries!

Vasumathi Sriganesh

Just For You

Our Foundation Day

QMed Knowledge Foundation was registered on December 19, 2007. We celebrate our Foundation Day in January every year. This year we have the event on 29-January-2011, and the theme is

"Bringing Students and Health Science Libraries Closer"

We have announced an Essay competition for students and recent graduates in any stream of health sciences. Through the competition we hope to get ideas and solutions that we can share with institutions and their libraries. Faculty are also welcome to participate, but prizes are reserved for students! The deadline for submissions is 20th of January. We plan to have a panel discussion based on inputs received in the essay competition, at the event, and we hope these inputs will be of immense help for our Friends of the Foundation program too! Do join us for the event.

Please fill in this form to let us know if you can come or otherwise. Even if you cannot make it or are unsure, please do take a moment to fill it in, it helps us know that you ARE interested in the event!

Do You Know?

Free Online Plagiarism checker.

The word "Plagiarism" keeps surfacing every now and then, in several contexts. We know that in the simplest sense it means "copying". But when we sit down to write an article several doubts come up. "If I reference whatever I have copied, does that constitute plagiarism"? "If I copy from my previous article is that plagiarism"? And, if these doubts do not enter our heads, the Editorial Board members ensure that they do!

The Free Online Plagiarism Checker (Searchengine reports) checks and points out online sources from where matter may have been copied. Here is a tip for everyone writing an article - before submission, please upload the text on the Plagiarism checking tool provided.

Remember that Editorial Board members use such tools too! So do them a favour and do yourself a favour. Use this and if it points out that you have copied something, you could easily do one of two things - a) Rewrite the lines/paragraphs in your own wordswithout looking at the same text. b) Put the text in quotes, and before the copied part add the words "As xyz says" (use the author's last name), add a reference number and write down the correct reference at the end! Please do study the websitewww.plagiarism.org - many things are explained very simply out there. You will save yourself and the editor a lot of headaches!

Thank you Akshay Sharma for this contribution to QMedCONNECT.

Friends of the Foundation Program

After intense brainstorming we have come up with a plan for creating our "Friends of the Foundation" program! We will have Institutional Friends and Individual Friends. This will replace all our "membership schemes" and will add more value to recipients. "Memberships" were more of transactions, whereas the Friendship program will be more on a partnership basis. We believe that we have a lot to offer and teach people and institutions, but on the other hand we will also learn from them and from our experiences and share the knowledge further.

Institutional partners who we choose to work with in the coming months will broadly have three benefits

A LinkOut facility of their journal collection in PubMed. This facility helps them know which articles in a PubMed Search result are available in their own library collection
A minimum of three lectures for their students and faculty on literature searching
A "train the trainer" program where we will conduct at least four half day programs for a set of people and help them become local resources to train others

We are in the process of finalizing the nuances and will work at getting the project funded so that the institutions get a subsidy towards this.

Individual Friends will get our support for literature searches, articles and short training sessions over Skype. The final details with all finer points should be available on our website during this month.

Other Events of Interest

South Asian Cochrane Network & Centre - Workshops on Systematic Reviews - More details

Clinical Research Workshop Series. Conducted by the Public Health Foundation of India. More details

May 11th - 14th 2011: Medicon 2011: Medicon is an annual international research conference for undergraduate medical students organized in India. It presents a platform for young scientists and future doctors to meet, interact and present their research.

If you are organizing or know about other conferences, pre-conference workshops or training programs related to medical research, do let us know; we would like to include these in our website and newsletter.

Resources for You

Supercourse Lectures. Supercourse is a repository of lectures on Global Health and Prevention designed to improve the teaching of Prevention. Supercourse is a library of 3623 lectures in 30 languages. It has been produced at the WHO Collaborating Center University of Pittsburgh, with core developers Ronald LaPorte and others.

Our Foundation has received a CD of entire content, and are distributing it for free to institutions during our training programs and also to anyone requesting for the same. This will be useful if you do not wish to view all lectures on the Internet for various reasons. Please get in touch with us at info@qmedkf.org.in if you wish to receive a copy.

Article of the Month

Smith R.

Strategies for coping with information overload

BMJ 2010; 341:c7126

Richard Smith, the former editor of BMJ discusses how doctors cope with "Information Overload". He discusses various approaches that doctors take. He highlights Cochrane Reviews, UpToDate, BMJ Point of Evidence and other sources - where experts summarize evidence and make them available. However as he rightly says - quoting Muir Gray - we have an information paradox - there is far too much, and yet we don't find answers!

Our Founder has responded with some comments in the Indian context. Do read her note:
Isn't it time to recognize the need for a "Super Specialty Role" of Information Specialists and Librarians?

What we did – December 2011

Training Programs / Talks: Literature searching/ Consultative meetings

5th December, 2010 - Training program - PubMed Basics for members of the Indian Academy of Pediatrics, Navi Mumbai.

6th December, 2010 - Talk on Literature Searching at the MECOR - Mumbai course.

7th December, 2010 - Training program - PubMed Advanced and Cochrane Library for researchers at FRCH, Pune.

12th December, 2010 - Training program - PubMed Basics for pediatricians at Wadia Hospital Mumbai.

Document Delivery of Journal Articles

In the month of December 2010, we delivered 81 articles to individual members, libraries and corporate clients. The total number of documents delivered since April 2010 is 1136.

Funding

We are happy to have received donations for both PubMed programs for pediatricians. We also received an individual donation of Rs. 5000/- from Mrs. M. Gourishankar of Chennai.
We accept donations by cheques in favour of Quality Medical Knowledge Foundation. You may send the cheques to our address, or you could ask us for our account details. You will get the applicable IT Exemption for donations under Section 80G of the Indian Income Tax Act.

Quote of the Month

With so much information now online, it is exceptionally easy to simply dive in and drown.

-Glossbrenner, Alfred (Writer)

Directory of Indian Medical Sites (www.indianmedicalsites.in)

We have added 25 new sites in the month of January and the total number of sites is 3220.

We invite volunteers to add new sites. If you would like to help, do write to us and we will send you a set of instructions that will make it easier for you to work. Please write "Volunteering for Indian Medical Sites" in the Subject of the email.