This year, we hosted 475 complimentary live training sessions – that’s a lot of available knowledge. We host these for researchers, labs, start-ups, biotechs, and individual departments. You can sign up for one today! 

Over the year, we cranked out 45 new features, including 200 additional platform enhancements. If we spread that out, that’s almost 4 new features added per month!

Our user base has added 64.5 million documents in the libraries that we support across the Papers community. If you lay all those pages out end to end, that’s enough to circle the earth 2.7 times.

There were 10 million new PDFs uploaded into Papers this year. That’s about 27,398 new PDFs every day. If you stack all those pages, it’ll get you up over 19,685 feet high – or to visualize that, about 7 Burj Khalifas tall.

Papers is home to over 86,000 collaborative spaces driving lively discussions across research teams.

Our users have made over 8.2 million annotations in the Papers app this year. That’s about 16 notes made per minute!

Over the year, about 162 million pages were read in Papers. That’s almost 444,000 pages read each day. If you lined up the pages end to end, the length in walking distance would take you about 235 days.

Papers supports research at over 5,000 research institutions globally, including 60% of the world’s Top 20 Pharmaceutical Organizations! 

Interested in learning more? Sign up for a no-obligation 30-day trial today and start your new research year right – with Papers.

The post Papers 2022 in Review appeared first on Papers.

A robust reference manager can help researchers find relevant literature, add chosen citations to a reference library, store papers and their bibliographic metadata in a cloud-based storage database for later retrieval, and directly insert citations and references in a chosen citation style when creating manuscripts and reference lists. You can use these platforms for one-time writing projects or as a secure repository for long-term projects.

But before you choose a platform for yourself, your organization, or your business, here’s what questions to ask:

What features does the reference management software have and will it meet our needs?

The most robust reference managers allow direct importing from bibliographic databases through direct access from the reference manager and/or bookmarklets that import content from the web browser. Alternatively, you can import references from other platforms with the help of import tools. The citations can then be used to generate citation lists and bibliographies.

A searchable library

The library needs to be searchable and have the ability to index and label references. Your  reference manager should also offer tools for organizing the references into folders and subfolders. You may also want to include full-text papers in PDF format that you can annotate and search, and the tool should then be able to extract metadata from the PDF to create a citation.

Members using the same reference database

You should be able to share references via the internet and organize each reference library into workgroups. This allows all members to use the same reference database. Next, you will want to sync your entire library including notes, lists, annotations, and highlights across all of your devices and operating systems.

Tools for exporting citations into Word and Google Docs

The most sophisticated reference managers offer cloud storage and tools for exporting citations and references into word processing software like Word and Google Docs simply by selecting relevant items from the citation library. Users should be able to select a citation style from a readily accessible tool that contains styles for a wide array of journals and scholarly publishers. 

Another key feature for a reference manager is the ability to save customized styles and formats for projects that fall outside the purview of standard journal publishers.

Does it offer a wide variety of citation styles?

Citation formats within the life sciences are typically based on one of several styles:

Vancouver/National Library of Medicine

References are consecutively numbered throughout the text. If the source is referred to again, the same number is used. The numbered citations are then used to create a citation list. In the broad sense, the Vancouver system refers to any author–number system regardless of the formatting details.

Harvard

The author and year are cited in-text (Pears and Shields, 2019), and an alphabetical citation list is generated. This system is the basis for American Psychiatric Association (APA) style, which is used in many social science and nursing journals.

American Medical Association (AMA)

The AMA reference style is Vancouver style, and its formatting differs in some minor details from the NLM/PubMed style.

Although many science and medical journals have small, tweaked individual differences in their citation formats (i.e., brackets vs. parentheses, number of authors cited, etc.), most are based on Vancouver.

Test the software before making a commitment

The increase in scientific literature has led to the development of several reference managers. The best way to choose a reference manager is to uncover  the needs of your stakeholders to find out which features they need. 

If you’re considering a switch from an existing system, you’ll want to ensure that all of the current citations can be exported to the new platform. You’ll also want to consider what your future looks like: will your user base  grow? Will you need more collaborative features?

Don’t hesitate to ask each software platform for a trial subscription so that your teams can test each feature personally.

Learn more about how Papers can dramatically improve how you find, access, organize, read, share, and cite scholarly literature.

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Some libraries implement a mixed model approach, and most will re-evaluate their offerings every few years based on usage statistics, company growth, and budget.

Here’s a brief overview of each of each model:

Individual article access (non-subscription)

In this model, the library provides no subscriptions for users. Instead, users access journal articles directly from individual publishers’ websites. They must use a credit card to download a copy of the article to their computer. In most cases, the article is not shareable with other colleagues, per terms of copyright.

Pros:

• Library incurs no upfront costs
• No library support staff required

Cons:

• Articles are not shareable
• Reimbursement for credit cards takes time and resources
• The same article will probably be downloaded multiple times by multiple people, incurring a new cost each time

Site-wide subscriptions

In this model, the library pays an upfront subscription fee directly to the publisher for digital access. The library patrons trying to access the article receive dedicated login credentials to access the article. If there are any restrictions around sharing the content, the user must strictly follow them. The library needs to prepay the subscription fee(s) via purchase orders. Terms of the subscription are typically one, two, or three years; and the pricing improves as you move into longer terms.

Pros:

• Can obtain usage statistics from the publisher
• Allows downloads without providing a credit card

Cons:

• Requires upfront payment to the publisher
• Difficult to break a contract during the subscription term
• The same article can be downloaded multiple times by multiple people, incurring a new cost each time

Tokens/pay-per-view

Users receive articles through the pay-per-view option by a token model. Administrators purchase tokens in bulk from the publisher based on a negotiated price and quantity. Tokens are used to download journal articles not included in a subscription. The options are available via different pricing models, with the most common being a prepaid token bundle purchase, in which the library prepays a set of tokens. Typically, the higher the volume of the purchase, the lower the price per token.

Pros:

• Instant access to a broad range of full-text material to which your institution does not currently subscribe
• Seamless purchasing on the part of the user
• Cost per download may be less expensive than individual access using a credit card
• Token usage included in monthly statistics reports from publishers

Cons:

• Tokens often have an expiration date and unused tokens are not refundable
• Tokens may not be applicable for all downloads
• Requires careful analysis when initially purchasing tokens, as overestimation of usage may cause them to expire before they are used

Document delivery

Document delivery supplements an organization’s existing subscriptions and provides one-click, self-service access to full-text articles across popular publishers and journals. Documents are delivered quickly and directly to the user, and the platform links directly to open-access, subscriptions, and purchased tokens, avoiding duplicate purchases. Expect to pay a fee for both the article and an additional document delivery fee.

The most efficient document delivery systems are embedded within a cloud-based, total literature management solution. This cloud-based program allows users to download articles on demand, import articles into shared libraries, annotate articles within libraries, and create complex bibliographies. 

Although the features are designed to be self-serve among the users, the platform’s management usually requires at least one dedicated support staff person.

Pros:

• Eliminates duplicate purchases
• Allows for self-service article delivery
• Most full-text articles are available to the user within minutes

Cons:

• Publisher’s article fee plus additional document delivery fee

Papers Enterprise offers integrated subscription management and document delivery service that seamlessly integrates with users’ workflows both within the Papers apps and across the web.

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Work’flow: ‘A collection of fixed tasks or sequences performed to accomplish a business process according to a set of predefined rules.’ 

Workflows are an essential element in any organization, allowing work teams to complete tasks with less manual input systematically. Ideally, this should help your team members have more availability to work on tasks that require more individual attention.

But regardless of how elegantly a workflow was originally designed, it may become less effective over time, causing lags that show up as delayed internal processes, reduced customer service, or increased time spent manually overriding the workflow. For example, let’s say that a particular workflow relies on input from an external department overhauled in a recent merger. Without that input, the workflow is likely to become bogged down and should be changed.  

When you improve old business processes, you can utilize your resources more efficiently, and your employees can work more strategically. This is especially true in bottleneck scenarios. Particularly with old business processes, many stakeholders could be performing tasks that are no longer needed. When your business becomes leaner, then task-associated costs may also go down. 

Therefore, it’s important to review your workflows at least once a year to ensure that they’re viable and pertinent to the way things still work. Here are some tips for reviewing and improving workflow efficiency:

Collect hard data.

While not an exhaustive list, you want to look at some of these items:

• Number of items in the workflow initiated over a specific period
• Number of items completed
• Amount of time taken to complete each task
• Number of times a task is sent back or rejected
• Number of times an item requires extra clarification

If, for example, you find that the many items are sent back for extra clarification and require manual resolution, then you may want to build a step into the workflow that addresses all the possible clarification criteria.  

Collect soft data. 

Ask for feedback from existing staff and users about what frustrates them in the day and what works well. Inventory the entire office, from the filing system to the network systems. Assess the age and ability of computer hardware, software, and phone systems. Evaluate the use of paper in the office, including how forms are used, processed, and archived. You may find that an older computer network is delaying deliverables to your users or that your files are poorly named, causing longer-than-average retrieval times. 

Look at the big picture. 

Determine why a workflow exists. Is it to speed up a process, or to minimize errors? Is the original workflow still relevant? How does it add value to the strategy of the company at this point in time? 

Who are the stakeholders? Do they still exist? Is each step really needed? Can we bring in more automation? By marking down the areas for improvement and removing the inefficient steps from your processes, you will be able to create a process that’s in its ideal state. 

Once you’ve got an overall picture of your workflows based on your initial review, consider the following as you consider revising them:

• Use ‘recipe cards’ to outline the steps to refine a new work process. List out “ingredients’ such as hours necessary to complete a project, the tools needed, and the type of content required. Ensure you involve stakeholders at appropriate steps and test the process at various stages among various users. 

Make documentation and knowledge sharing a priority. 

• Choose a workflow management tool that allows you to manage and share files and documents among all appropriate stakeholders.  

• Choose a workflow process that incorporates staff management and communication, making it easier for team members to stay on the same page. This will allow staff to connect easily with the team—avoid manual engagement such as emails and calendaring—and allow you to circumvent any loss in the output should someone leave the department. In fact, surveys suggest that employees are interrupted by email every five minutes, slowing down productivity and making it a less effective communication channel for immediate decisions.

• Prepare your team to adjust. Change the processes based on your results. Notify all stakeholders of any change, and let them know if there will be any downtime or how to handle items in the middle of a changed workflow.

Once you have the new process in place, provide training, and explain that the new process is there to help everyone be happier and more productive. New procedures do take time to implement, so be patient, as employees might revert to old, comfortable ways at times. Remind them of the process, and track it. You might find the new method works brilliantly, but most of the time, you’ll need to make adjustments along the way.

The post New Year’s Resolution #1: Review and Adapt Your Work Flows appeared first on Papers.

One way to overcome this mentality is to create a consolidated system where information can be stored and accessed by anyone who needs it.  Implementing such a system can actually lead to more productive staff because they don’t have to waste time duplicating the efforts of past employees. According to the 2019 Global Intelligent Information Management (IIM) Benchmark report, at least 80% of workers worldwide are forced to recreate lost documents already in existence because they cannot locate them!  Data also suggest that employees who can fully engage with a company and its information feel more a part of the team. These are important issues to keep in mind for maintaining a productive and enthusiastic workforce.

In some industries, data and documents may exist in up to 20 different departments, each of which may exercise proprietary ownership of their data.  Therefore, breaking down the silo mentality is an exercise in departmental buy-in.  Individual departments must be convinced that their data are valuable and will benefit the company as a whole.  Ideally, this effort will be led by a company-wide data champion who is empowered by senior leadership to build a team that includes representatives and input from all the silo owners.  And importantly, data integration cannot be viewed by the silo owners as an optional activity, but rather as a strategic initiative that will be included as a key performance indicator at annual review time.

Here are a few key steps to consider as you begin to break down the silos:

Educate, work, and train together 

One way to break down silos is to educate, work, and train together in cross-departmental exercises. Because companies already figure training costs into their budgets, collaborative training across divisions is a way to dovetail required training with collaborative, silo-breaking practices.

In addition to collaborative training, the silo mentality can also be eradicated through inter-company interactions.  Perhaps you might consider convening a company town hall to point out the dangers of silo mentality and outlining the plan to change the corporate culture to increase cooperation, communication, and collaboration.

Make documents discoverable 

Knowledge locked away in restricted documents is knowledge wasted. Whether you use a cloud-based storage system or a literature management system, set up your pages and documents to be collaborative. Make them open by default with as few usage restrictions as possible.  

Use shared chat rooms liberally

Group chat isn’t just for exchanging info with your immediate team. Tools such as Slack or Teams can be set for specific workstreams, projects, and interests. That way, people from anywhere in the company can pop in to ask a question or get up to speed by scrolling back through the chat history.  Encourage folks to use these channels instead of email, which by its nature, locks information into a silo that is available only to the people on the distribution list.  

Information and the speed at which it flows throughout an organization is a key determinant of business success—the faster your staff can find and leverage information, the better your chances to achieve a competitive advantage.   By using strategies that encourage individuals to think of themselves as part of the broader organizational team, more cross-functional collaboration can become a reality.

The post Overcoming the Information Silo Mentality appeared first on Papers.

The CRP program expands on these efforts to provide COVID-19 researchers with access to a broader set of content needed in the course of their research. Rather than pre-filtering access to specific articles related to COVID-19, the CRP allows researchers to access any article from participating publishers they may need while studying COVID-19, including both open access and content behind paywalls. The ability to access related and prior work can be particularly helpful to researchers studying ways of improving therapies, clinical, and public health outcomes. For example, topics such as ventilators or respiratory syndromes often remain behind paywalls.

Additionally, the program can support COVID-19 researchers who are now working remotely and require remote access to literature.

Key aspects of the COVID Research Pass:

Instant Full-Text Access. Pass holders can access any full-text article (or book chapter) required for use in the context of their COVID-19 research.

Collaboration. Participants can generate temporary sharing URLs that provide read-only access (printing and downloading disabled) to the full text to anyone outside the CRP program. These links may be posted on social networking sites. Private collaboration groups are also accessible.

Explore articles across a range of fields such as the one’s below:

Prevalence of Depression Symptoms in US Adults Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic

https://rdcu.be/cbIYi

The prevalence of depression symptoms is estimated to be more than 3-fold higher during COVID-19 compared with the most recent population-based estimates of mental health in the US.

Suicide Prevention in the COVID-19 Era Transforming Threat Into Opportunity

https://rdcu.be/cbI5v

Policymakers, health care leaders, and organizational leaders must consider implementing steps to mitigate suicide risk during and after the COVID pandemic.

Digital Health and COVID-19

https://rdcu.be/cbIYb

As the global coronavirus pandemic continues to increase,  teams around the world are rolling out an array of digital health initiatives. 

Artificial intelligence for the detection of COVID-19 pneumonia on chest CT using multinational datasets

https://rdcu.be/cbIX9

Data suggest that algorithms based on artificial intelligence can readily identify CT scans with COVID-19 associated pneumonia, as well as distinguish non-COVID related pneumonias with high specificity in diverse patient populations.

Machine learning based early warning system enables accurate mortality risk prediction for COVID-19

https://rdcu.be/cbIYa

A mortality risk prediction model for COVID-19 (MRPMC) utilizes patients’ clinical data on admission to predict physiological deterioration and death up to 20 days in advance

Visit the portal via https://covid19.readcube.com

The post Accelerating Access to COVID-19 Research appeared first on Papers.

We are excited to announce two new additions to the ReadCube family.

We’d like to welcome Ryan Clark, joining us as VP of Enterprise Sales, and Darren Medeiros, as Sr. Director of Enterprise Sales. Together, Ryan and Darren bring over two decades of experience with a proven track record driving sales and building strong client relationships. 

What’s more, both have vast experiences working with companies seeking to streamline knowledge management and facilitating full-text access across their organizations. 

“Ryan and Darren not only bring the skills we need to keep pace with our rapid growth in the Enterprise market but also come armed with novel ideas to continue to drive innovation in this area. That level of talent and enthusiasm makes them a perfect fit with our broader team. We are excited to have them.” Miles McNamee, SVP of Enterprise Sales at ReadCube.

The post We’re Growing! appeared first on Papers.

“ReadCube is known across the industry as an innovator, developing smart researcher-centric technologies to transform the way researchers (and their organizations) work with scholarly literature,” says McNamee, SVP of Enterprise Sales, ReadCube. “I am thrilled to be joining such a dynamic team and look forward to sharing my vast experience to continue to drive sales.”  

“We are excited to have Miles join the ReadCube team to lead our continued investment into the biotech and pharmaceutical markets,” said Alex Hodgson, CCO of ReadCube. “His depth of industry and sales leadership experience, coupled with his passion for innovation, makes him a perfect fit to lead this pivotal phase of ReadCube’s expansion. We are looking forward to him driving sales efforts to new heights.”

The post ReadCube Hires Miles McNamee as Senior Vice President of Enterprise Sales appeared first on Papers.

The full list of participating titles includes:

Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases

Archives of Disease in Childhood

BMJ Case Reports

BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine

BMJ Innovations

BMJ Leader

BMJ Quality & Safety

BMJ Sexual & Reproductive Health

BMJ Simulation & Technology Enhanced Learning

BMJ Supportive & Palliative Care

British Journal of Ophthalmology

British Journal of Sports Medicine

Considerations In Medicine

Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin

Education & Practice

Evidence-Based Mental Health

Evidence-Based Nursing

European Journal of Hospital Pharmacy

Emergency Medicine Journal

Fetal & Neonatal

Frontline Gastroenterology

General Psychiatry

Gut

Heart

In Practice

Injury Prevention

International Journal of Gynecological Cancer

Journal of Clinical Pathology

Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health

Journal of Investigative Medicine

Journal of ISAKOS: Joint Disorders & Orthopaedic Sports Medicine

Journal of Medical Ethics

Journal of Medical Genetics

Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry

Journal of NeuroInterventional Surgery

Journal of the Royal Army Medical Corps

Medical Humanities

Occupational and Environmental Medicine

Postgraduate Medical Journal

Regional Anesthesia & Pain Medicine

Sexually Transmitted Infections

Student BMJ

The BMJ

Thorax

Tobacco Control

Veterinary Record

Veterinary Record Case Reports

WJM Western Journal of Medicine

If you have any questions, or to learn more about ReadCube Papers Enterprise Plans, please contact us at support@readcube.com.

More about BMJ.

BMJ is a healthcare knowledge provider with a vision of helping to create a healthier world. We share knowledge and expertise to improve experiences and outcomes worldwide. See our full list of products and resources at BMJ.

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