With
the current issue of Evidence Based Library and Information Practice (EBLIP),
we will have published over 250 evidence summaries. That’s an average of 8 per
issue, or 32 per year. When the journal was created, the goal of publishing
these summaries was to provide concise evidence to assist with knowledge
transfer, with the eventual hope that readers would use the evidence to inform
decision making and practice (Koufogiannakis, 2006).
Over
the past seven years, this goal remains unchanged, and members of the editorial
board have undertaken two separate studies to determine the effectiveness of
evidence summaries in meeting it. The first study (Kloda,
Koufogiannakis, & Mallan, 2011), a content
analysis, revealed that evidence summaries tend to convey mixed messages about
the quality and applicability of the research being summarized; while the
second study (Kloda, Koufogiannakis,
& Brettle, 2012) entailed the development and
testing of a tool to assess the impact of evidence summaries on professionals’
knowledge, practice, and user community. Preliminary findings from the second
study suggested that evidence summaries add to librarians’ knowledge and,
occasionally, to their professional practice and decision making. There is, as
yet, little indication that evidence summaries contribute to larger changes in
the workplace, or that these changes impact users of library and information
services.
Evidence
summaries are brief critical appraisal reviews of current research articles.
The summaries follow a standardized format to ensure consistency and ease of
use for readers. They are produced by our team of approximately 20 writers, who
are selected through an application process. All evidence summaries undergo
double-blind peer review by at least two reviewers before being considered for
acceptance. Typically, revisions are required before an evidence summary is
accepted. Evidence summaries cover a range of topics in all domains relevant to
library and information practice, including education (including information
literacy), collections, reference, management, information storage and
retrieval, professional issues, and scholarly publishing, and cover a range of
settings, including academic, health, school, public, and specialized
libraries.
The
2011 content analysis demonstrated that the evidence summaries published in EBLIP
tended to have rather lengthy commentaries in which authors focused on
describing all the shortcomings of the methodology. Little space remained for
discussion of applicability of research findings to information practice.
We
therefore decided to make some changes to the evidence summaries format,
changes which the editorial team hope will be received as improvements by the
journal’s readers, and perhaps increase the readership of evidence summaries.
In this issue, we introduce eight evidence summaries that follow revised
guidelines. Each summary now includes:
·
A
title describing the major finding(s) of the study being appraised.
·
A
structured abstract providing an overview of the key elements of the research.
The format has been revised to be more concise, highlighting each study’s
features more generally and summarizing main findings. This revised format is
designed to allow the reader to quickly determine the relevance and importance
of a study.
·
A
commentary, generally not exceeding 450 words, which briefly situates the
research study in the broader context of research on the topic, and addresses the
strength of the evidence provided. The commentary concludes with a statement on
the significance of the research as well as its practical applications.
To
date, EBLIP has made incredible progress in creating and disseminating
these research summaries, and we will continue to do so. As the associate
editor for evidence summaries, it is my hope that these improvements will be
welcomed by our readers. I welcome your feedback, and suggestions for further
improvements.
References
Kloda, L., Koufogiannakis, D. & Brettle,
A. (2012, May). Assessing
the impact of evidence summaries in library and information studies: A mixed
methods approach. Medical Library Association
Annual Meeting, Seattle, WA, USA. Retrieved 7 Sept. 2012 from http://www.slideshare.net/lkloda/kloda-mla-2012-impact
Kloda,
L. A., Koufogiannakis, D., & Mallan, K. (2011). Transferring
evidence into practice: What evidence summaries of library and information
studies research tell practitioners. Information
Research, 16(1), paper 465. Retrieved 7 Sept. 2012 from http://informationr.net/ir/16-1/paper465.html
Koufogiannakis, D. (2006).
Small steps forward through critical appraisal. Evidence Based Library and Information Practice, 1(1), 81-82. Retreived 7 Sept. 2012 from http://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/EBLIP/article/view/26/64
2012 Kloda. This is an
Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons-
Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike License 2.5
Canada (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/ca/), which permits
unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the
original work is properly attributed, not used for commercial purposes, and, if
transformed, the resulting work is redistributed under the same or similar
license to this one.