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Category: Health Sciences Research Commons

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Picture of a student standing in front a research poster talking to another student.
Image from https://smhs.gwu.edu/news/celebrating-generation-knowledge-research-days

The GW Research Showcase is just around the corner! The School of Medicine and Health Sciences (SMHS) Research Showcase is at the University Student Center on April 25, 2024. This year’s Keynote Speaker, Omaida C. Velazquez, MD. will present “Gene-Modified MSCs and Direct Gene Therapy as Novel Strategies for Vascular Regeneration and Wound Healing.” The medical student poster session will be held from 1:30 pm to 3:30 pm.

While the deadline for submitting abstracts has passed, you may still be working on putting your poster together. Himmelfarb Library can help! Our GW Research Day Resources Guide has helpful resources and tips that can help make your poster stand out. The Creating Effective Posters page has poster templates, official GW logos, and the official GW Color palette to help you stay consistent with GW’s brand. If you are creating your poster using PowerPoint, the video below on Designing an Effective Poster Using PowerPoint has useful tips on size, color selection, font choices, and including graphs, charts, and photographs in your poster.

The Poster Design and Layout page also has great tips on selecting the right font, resizing images, and getting posters printed. When choosing fonts, it’s best to keep things simple and use familiar fonts like Times New Roman or Arial. Images should be 300 dpi JPEG files or full-size PDF files. If you need to resize an image, make sure that you keep the proper proportions so the image doesn’t appear distorted and “squishy” looking on your poster. 

Once your poster is ready, it’s time to start thinking about how you’ll impress the judges. Here are some great videos that can help you prepare for giving your poster presentation:

The GW School of Public Health (GWSPH) Research Day was yesterday, April 9, 2024. If you participated in the GWSPH Research Day, don’t forget to submit your poster to Himmelfarb’s institutional repository, the Health Sciences Research Commons (HSRC). Archiving your poster in the HSRC is a great way to ensure that your poster is available to the global community of scholars! Archiving your work in the HSRC has several advantages:

  • Your poster will have a unique URL that you can include in your CV and use to promote your research. This unique URL will remain active even after you graduate from GW.
  • The HSRC is indexed in Google Scholar, which allows other researchers to find your work through Google Scholar searches. 

Submitting your poster to the Health Sciences Research Commons is easy! Simply email hsrc@gwu.edu to submit your poster directly or to ask for more information.

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Last month, European researchers launched a program to identify errors within scientific literature. With an initial fund of 250,000 Swiss francs - roughly 285,000 USD - team leaders Malte Elson and Ruben C. Arslan are seeking experts to investigate and discover errors in scientific literature, beginning with psychological papers. 

Here’s them in their own words: 

ERROR is a comprehensive program to systematically detect and report errors in scientific publications, modeled after bug bounty programs in the technology industry. Investigators are paid for discovering errors in the scientific literature: The more severe the error, the larger the payout. In ERROR, we leverage, survey, document, and increase accessibility to error detection tools. Our goal is to foster a culture that is open to the possibility of error in science to embrace a new discourse norm of constructive criticism.

(Elson, 2024)

Their program follows a growing awareness of what researchers in the early 2010s called “the replication crisis:” the inability to reproduce large amounts of scientific findings. For example, the former head of cancer research at the biotechnology company Amgen, C. Glenn Begley, investigated 53 of his company’s most promising publications (pieces that would lead to groundbreaking discoveries). Of those 53, his team could only reproduce 6 (Hawkes, 2012). While 53 is not a large sample size, Nature surveyed 1,576 researchers and more than 70% reported trying and failing to reproduce published experiments (Baker, 2016).

ERROR founders Malte Elson and Ruben C. Arslan point to a poor incentive structure: “error detection as a scientific activity is relatively unappealing as there is little to gain and much to lose for both the researchers whose work is being scrutinized (making cooperation unlikely)” (Elson, 2024). 

Nature concurs. Journals, they report, are less likely to publish verification of older work or work simply reporting negative findings (Baker, 2016). Reproduction gets deferred, because reproduction requires more time and money (Ibid). 

Not to mention that even in science, biases can crop up - the siren call of new discoveries can lead people to publishing versus confirming results. In a noteworthy example, Begley - the aforementioned Amgen researcher - approached a scientist and explained that he tried - and failed - 50 times to reproduce the results of his experiments. The scientist answered that “they had done it six times and got this result once but put it in the paper because it made the best story” (Hawkes, 2012, emphasis added). 

Bearing these issues in mind, the ERROR program hopes to incentivize error-detection and change the publication culture: opening the perception of negative results as useful data (Elson, 2024). To foster a positive environment, authors must agree to be reviewed, and hopefully, these authors can even benefit from the verification (Lee, 2024). 

Since at least 2005, researchers have called for attempts to address the replication crisis (Pashler, 2012; Loaandis, 2005). While time will decide whether the ERROR program makes a difference, it provides an interesting answer to that call. 

REFERENCES

Baker, M. (2016). 1,500 scientists lift the lid on reproducibility. Nature 533, 452–454. https://www.nature.com/articles/533452a.

Elson, M. (2024). ERROR: A Bug Bounty Program for Science. https://error.reviews/

Hawkes, N. (2012). Most laboratory cancer studies cannot be replicated, study shows. BMJ 344. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.e2555 (Published 04 April 2012)

Lee, S. (2024). Wanted: Scientific Errors. Cash Reward. The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/article/wanted-scientific-errors-cash-reward

Loannidis, J. (2005). Why Most Published Research Findings Are False. Plos Medicine 19(8). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1004085

Pashler, H., Harris, C. (2012). Is the Replicability Crisis Overblown? Three Arguments Examined. Perspectives on Psychological Science, Volume 7 (6). https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1745691612463401

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

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Health Sciences Research Commons

Did you recently present at a conference or during a workshop? Would you like to share your conference poster with other scholars? Are you interested in archiving your research in a central location? The Health Sciences Research Commons (HSRC) is Himmelfarb Library’s online institutional repository and allows researchers to store their research in a reliable location so it may be accessed by other researchers. 

Here are a few benefits to storing your research in the HSRC:

  1. Your conference poster will be placed in a permanent collection with a consistent link. This link may be embedded in your resume/CV or on your researcher’s website. It may also be shared with your peers and connect them with your conference poster. 
  2. Your work is archived according to your departmental affiliation, so your work is situated among the collective output of your colleagues. 
  3. Your research is discoverable via search engines such as Google Scholar, thus allowing your work to reach a broader audience. 
  4. Lastly, you can measure the impact and reach of your research through PlumX metrics and Altmetrics data. 

Archiving your poster in the HSRC is a reliable alternative to conference websites which may not be maintained once the conference ends. The HSRC is able to accept most file formats and you may upload a full image of your poster. Library staff members maintain the repository and will archive your research for you. Send an email hsrc@gwu.edu and a Himmelfarb Library staff member will respond to collect more information. 

Are you interested in  a preview of how your poster will appear in the institutional repository? Visit the 2023 Research Days Posters collection or any of the other collections in the repository.

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Black and white photograph of young woman standing up through a sun roof on a car waving a white shirt and smiling with eyes closed in celebration of Biden being elected President.
“Biden Victory Celebration - Harvard Square” by Dylan Parsons (35mm film photo)

The Himmelfarb Library 34th Annual Art Show made its return this year! We hope you’ve had time to come check out the wonderful submissions in-person. The in-person art show is drawing to a close this week. You have until Friday, May 6th to  view submissions on the library’s first floor. Come support your colleagues in their artistic endeavors and get one last peek at these fantastic pieces!

Can’t make it to Himmelfarb in-person to view this year’s submissions? No problem. You can view this year’s submissions to both the in-person and virtual art show in the Himmelfarb Library Annual Art Show 2022 collection of our institutional repository, the Health Sciences Research Commons. 

This is also a perfect time to brainstorm what you might like to submit to next year’s art show! Do you enjoy photography, knitting, crochet, needlework, painting, stained glass, pottery, drawing, or mixed media art? You have a whole year to work on possible submissions to next year's art show! Whether you’re looking for inspiration for your own creativity, or you just appreciate beautiful artwork, stop in and see this year’s art show before it ends on Friday, May 6th! We can’t wait to see you!

In the meantime, enjoy the following selection of submissions!

Photograph of a 3D printed knee joint with dark red sealing wax mimicking blood dripping from the joint.
“Bad Joints” by Sair Lazzaro (3D print, sealing wax)
Abstract painting
“Discolouration” by Chrisopher Aduwari (Acrylic on canvas)
Photograph of the National Archives building in Washington DC with golden sunlight hitting the top third of the building and the bottom third of the image is in shadows.
“Archives” by Wesley Baker (Architectural Photography)
Photograph of the Lincoln Memorial at dusk.
“Warm Evening by the Memorial” by Bilal Ahmed (Digital photography)
Colored pencil sketch of a human heart with DNA strands throughout.
“Heart of Genomics” by Zach Falk (Colored pencil sketch on paper)

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Photo of a woman presenting her research poster to another woman.
"2018 Earth Science Applications Showcase (NHQ201808010017)" by NASA HQ PHOTO is marked with CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

With the GW Research Showcase (April 11th-14th) and the SMHS Medical Student Research Day (April 28th) just around the corner, it’s time to put the final touches on your poster! Himmelfarb Library can help! Our GW Research Day Resources Guide is filled with helpful resources that can help you make your poster stand out.

The Creating Effective Posters page has poster templates, official GW logos, and official GW color palette to help you stay consistent with GW’s brand. Are you creating your poster using PowerPoint? Watch Barbara McGowan’s video (below) on Designing an Effective Poster Using PowerPoint for tips on size, color selection, font choices, and content choices including using graphs, charts, and photographs. 

Check out the Poster Design and Layout tab for helpful tips on choosing fonts, resizing images and getting posters printed. When it comes to fonts, keep it simple and choose standard fonts like Times New Roman or Arial. Images should be 300 dpi JPEG files or full-size PDF files. If you need to resize an image, be sure to keep the proper proportions so the image isn’t distorted and “squishy” looking. For more tips on Optimizing Your Post Design and Layout, watch a recorded session led by Barbara McGowan and Himmelfarb’s own Catherine Sluder (access is restricted to members of the GW community). 

Want to know more about what judges are looking for in poster presentations? We have videos that cover that too! Learn how to impress the judges by watching the How to Present Your Poster and Wow the Judges video (access is restricted to members of the GW community). Learn more about Giving Effective Poster Presentations and Poster Presentation Practice and Feedback in these videos.

Once your poster is finished, don’t forget to archive your poster in the Health Sciences Research Commons (HSRC), Himmelfarb’s institutional repository! You can view posters from past years in the HSRC if you need some inspiration or just want to see examples of past posters. To find out more or to submit your poster to the HSRC, contact Sara Hoover at shoover@gwu.edu. 

All of us here at Himmelfarb Library wish you the best of luck at GW Research Showcase and SMHS Medical Student Research Day!

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Himmelfarb Library extends congratulations to all the GW Research Showcase prize winners, and the residents and students who participated in this year’s event! Formerly GW Research Days, the Showcase highlights research and innovations across all GW disciplines. This year’s presentations were held via Zoom April 12th-14th.

If you participated and would like to provide a way for those who couldn’t Zoom in to see your poster/presentation, consider making it available in Himmelfarb’s Health Sciences Research Commons (HSRC). The HSRC has a space dedicated to Research Days/Showcase content and will make presentations searchable not only within HSRC, but also in Google Scholar.

HSRC record of a 2017 GW Research Days poster

Depositing presentations in a searchable, open access archive helps you build a CV and easily share and promote your work. Posters and presented papers are great candidates for HSRC as they are often not published in other sources. If you have published posters, presentations, or research articles, it can still be advantageous to include them in HSRC. Many publishers allow pre-prints of works to be archived for sharing. Even if this is not allowed, having citations linking to your works in one centralized space provides a unified online CV where others can see all of your research activities and interests.

Information on how to contribute works to HSRC is in the Author FAQ. If you have additional questions, please contact Sara Hoover, Metadata and Scholarly Publishing Librarian at shoover@gwu.edu.

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Health Sciences Research Commons

Did you know that GW produces research on education in the health sciences?  Now you can do and can find it all in the Health Sciences Research Collection which is part of the Health Sciences Research Commons.   

The Health Sciences Research Commons is GW's online repository for gathering, archiving, and disseminating the research output of the Milken Institute School of Public Health, the School of Medicine and Health Sciences, the School of Nursing, and the Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library. 

The Health Sciences Research Collection tracks all health sciences education research from 2009 through the present.  Citations are identified by routine database searches and literature scans, and you can also submit your research publications directly.  


To get an idea of the breadth of this collection, check out the GW health sciences educational research that's already been published in 2021: 

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The Health Sciences Research Commons continues to grow on a daily basis, allowing medical and health sciences researchers and scholars affiliated with the George Washington University to disseminate their research around the world. As we review our highlights from last year and this year, we’re happy to announce that “Improved Outcomes Associated With an Early Mobilization Protocol Among Hip and Knee Replacement Patients” by Emily Emma, a graduate of the Doctor of Nursing Practice program, is currently one of the HSRC’s most accessed articles. This entry has garnered over 5000 downloads between August 2019 and October 2020 and in total has been downloaded over 9,000 times since it was first archived in the repository in late 2017. As an online repository, the HSRC is an easily accessible tool that has countless benefits for scholars and researchers who are in the early stages of their careers or those who are relatively new to the world of academic publishing. 

Archiving your work within the HSRC allows you to contribute to the ongoing dialogue within the medical research field. For students who wish to preserve any final presentations or research papers, the HRSC provides a working link that can be placed on a resume or CV. Your work is also discoverable via Google Scholar or other search engines. If you are unsure of what to do with a final project, presentation or poster, consider archiving it within the HSRC!

Have additional questions about the HSRC and how it can help you? Reach out to Sara Hoover, the Metadata and Scholarly Publishing Librarian,via email at shoover@gwu.edu. If you have research that you would like to archive within the repository, please send an email to hsrc@gwu.edu. We’re more than happy to archive your work and help you share it with the global medical research community! 

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The 2019-2020 academic year was a period of extensive growth for our institutional repository, the Health Sciences Research Commons (HSRC). Despite the COVID-19 pandemic uprooting our normal way of life, medical researchers have adjusted to the interruption to their workflow and publication output remains strong. As we settle into a new academic year, let’s take a moment to reflect on some of the HSRC’s highlights from last year. 

From September 2019 to August 2020, over 13,000 entries were added to the repository and publications within the HSRC were downloaded over 123,000 times. Articles were accessed in 191 different countries, meaning publications within the HSRC were read by a diverse population. Through the use of Plumx Metrics and Altmetrics, researchers and published authors can easily track the level of engagement their entries receive and any social media mentions. Though we’re only a month into this near academic year, new entries have been added to the HSRC and it continues to serve as a valuable asset to researchers and scholars in various stages of their careers. 

In response to the growing body of medical research and literature on the COVID-19 pandemic, a separate collection was established within the repository to shine a spotlight on GW faculty members and affiliated researchers who have published work pertaining to this current pandemic. This special collection was established in the summer of 2020 and since then has collected nearly 100 relevant publications. At the time of writing, the ‘COVID-19 Publications by GWU Authors’ collection has gathered 93 publications and continues to grow with each passing week. 

As we continue to settle into this new school year, the staff at Himmelfarb Library are here to help you archive and promote peer-reviewed articles, conference posters/presentations or other scholarly publications. We’re eager to see how the HSRC continues to grow this academic year and in subsequent years. Feel free to explore the collections within Health Sciences Research Commons at https://hsrc.himmelfarb.gwu.edu/. If you have published an article/poster/presentation/or other scholarly publication and would like to add it to the repository, please send an email to hsrc@gwu.edu. If you have any additional questions about the HSRC, please email Sara Hoover, the Metadata and Scholarly Communications Librarian at shoover@gwu.edu.

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Photo by Robert Ruggiero on Unsplash

Are you looking to publish your research, but need to find a journal in which to publish? Want to find a journal that will ensure your article will be widely read and cited? Choosing where to submit your manuscript can be a daunting task for any researcher. But don’t despair - Himmelfarb Library has resources that can help.

A great place to start is our Journal Selection webinar, part of Himmelfarb’s Get Yourself Published, Promote Your Research webinar series. In this webinar, Sara Hoover, Metadata and Scholarly Communications Librarian, provides an overview of tools and resources that can help you select an appropriate journal for your research. Learn about the difference between aggregation based journal selection tools and publisher based journal selection tools and utilize comparison rubrics to evaluate multiple publications. Additionally, you’ll have a chance to locate journals relevant to your field of study. 

Want to explore some tools to help you choose a journal? Himmelfarb’s Scholarly Publishing Guide has links to numerous tools that can help you select the right journal for your research. Two useful tools to consider are the Cofactor Journal Selector and the Journal/Article Name Estimator (JANE). The Cofactor Journal Selector can help you identify a journal in which to publish based on subject, peer review, open access, speed of review and other considerations. JANE takes a different approach by allowing you to enter your article title and/or abstract and providing a list of potential journals that may be appropriate for your submission.

Another strategy is to search the Health Sciences Research Commons (HSRC), Himmelfarb’s institutional repository. You can search the HSRC by discipline, collection, or school to see where your colleagues have published their research. You could also search for articles on your topic in PubMed and identify potential journals to consider for your research.

An important consideration to keep in mind when choosing a journal is whether or not the journal is predatory in nature. Predatory journals make false peer-review claims while collecting exorbitant fees from authors who publish in their journals. Because these journals do not actually provide peer-review services, your article could be published next to bogus research and will not be widely read or cited. If you’re going to publish, make sure you are choosing a legitimate, scholarly journal for your work! To learn more about predatory publishing, including how to evaluate a journal to determine whether or not it is predatory, check out our Predatory Publishing Guide.

While choosing a journal that’s right for your research isn’t an easy task, librarians can be a great resource for authors in selecting the right journal. If you are getting ready to publish, don’t fret - Himmelfarb has resources that can help!

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