Minutes of the ModMan Advisory Group Meeting held at The Good Hope Centre, Cape Town, South Africa on Thursday, 26 October 2000

Minutes approved on 6 December 2000

Present: Mandy Collingwood, Jane Dennis, Sonja Henderson (chair), Katherine Henshaw (Minutes), Rasmus Moustgaard, Graham Mowatt, Lois Sims, Phil Wiffen

Contents:
1. Welcome
2. Approval of agenda
3. Approval of minutes and matters arising - not on this agenda - from MAG meeting (2 April 2000)
4. Feedback from SDG
5. Future development of ModMan
6. Editorial tracking system
7. Contact details in ModMan
8. Any other business
9. Date of next meeting

Welcome

Sonja welcomed everyone to the meeting.

Approval of agenda

The agenda was approved.

Approval of minutes and matters arising - not on this agenda - from MAG meeting (2 April 2000)

The minutes of the meeting of 2 April 2000 were approved.

1. Item 3 (b) (Sonja)
   Sonja reported that Mark Starr had been asked to circulate a list of all HM and SR codes to each CRG so that individual RGCs could pass these on to their reviewers to help them identify their Group's Specialised Register and publications in The Cochrane Library. This had not yet happened. Lois agreed to talk to Mark Starr.
   Action: Lois

2. Item 3 (d) (Sonja)
   Sonja had sent a message to Adminors before the last Module submission to recommend to RGCs that they give the hyperlink address to the Master List of journals in their Module. Sonja had passed this information to Mike Clarke so that this can be added to the Module guidelines the next time they are updated. It is unclear how many groups are actually doing this.

3. re Item 5
   The code for ModMan has not been passed from Update Software to the Nordic Cochrane Centre. It was agreed that if the code was required, Rasmus would put in a request for it.

4. re item 7
   Jane gave Sonja a list of the FAQ she had compiled to date

5. re item 10
   The ModMan Discussion List had been set up by the German Cochrane Centre.

Feedback from SDG meeting

1. The SDG had agreed that currently identified bugs could be published on a web page and that Jini Hetherington should be informed of the bugs so that new RGCs could be alerted to them from the outset.

2. The Cochrane Nordic CC is responsible for further development of ModMan.

3. Sonja presented the results of the tracking survey, in which the main recommendation was that the review tracking process should be separate from ModMan.

4. It was agreed that MAG would extend its remit to include advising on tracking.

Future development of ModMan

It was agreed that ModMan itself should be kept as simple as possible, but be capable of integrating with the main information management system. On this basis, Rasmus suggested that an interim version of ModMan should be considered. An interim version, i.e. based around ModMan 4, could be ready a lot sooner than a completely new version. Also, a new version would require a lot more testing because of the possibility of introducing new bugs. An interim version could be ready by Spring of next year but in order to give more information about the likely timescale for developing an interim and a new version of ModMan, Rasmus would need more detailed information about the requirements. Sonja had already sent a brief list of requirements to Rasmus following the last MAG meeting as follows:

1. Main function to submit Modules
2. Simple to use
3. Safe haven for protocols/reviews and group details
4. Should not be able to edit protocol/review details within ModMan
5. Should be able to easily import/export protocols, reviews and group details
6. The documentation should contain advice on establishing a back-up policy
7. Able to be used on a network
8. Easy to see status of protocols and reviews
   
9. Only include contact details for the CRG contact person
   

More requirements had been gathered from RGCs at their meeting on 25 October 2000. These included:


10. ModMan should not be connected to RevMan. Most RGCs preferred reviews to be imported from RevMan into ModMan when ready for publication.
    
11. Improved reports based on currently held information
12. Retain chasing system for interim version.

In addition, the RGCs expressed an interest in the following requirements:
To be able to:

13. print a list of IDs
14. print all contacts
15. import contact details from RevMan, Access, etc but general agreement that contact details should not be kept in ModMan
16. print different bits of editorial information
17. edit topic list more easily
18. navigate the topic list more easily by having collapse and expand facility for each level of the tree
19. ability to search the topic list
20. export parts of the topics list
21. scope tree print out should display the structure as seen on screen
22. separate tracking from ModMan
23. robust program not susceptible to crashes
24. spell check
25. export a list of titles in ModMan
26. do not want to see red deleted title/protocols/reviews
27. replace man in a suit with a brief case
28. ability to print to HTML file

It was then decided that we should start with what we have at present and think about what we want to add or take away. This would be done for each screen within ModMan. Mandy agreed to do this in time for the next MAG meeting.
Action: Mandy

Sonja reported that at the RGCs meeting she had also asked for RGCs to inform her of bugs or problems they had experienced with the current version of ModMan and had compiled this list from discussions at the meeting:



Bugs in/problems with the current version


• Totals tally for module export sometimes incorrect
  
• Printing problems
  
• Problems with save prompt
  
• Inability to create zip file
  
• Crashing and data corruption
  
• Addition of blank lines to text of module
  
• Slow running for large modules
  
  

Sonja reported that RGCs at the RGC meeting had agreed that the current problems did not stop them sending their Modules to Update Software. They agreed therefore that it did not warrant a major 'fix' of the current version of ModMan. However, it is important to let RGCs and new RGCs know of the problems so that they did not waste time investigating and reporting them. Sonja agreed to ask Jini Hetherington to add information about these problems to the induction pack for new RGCs, and Lois agreed to ask Mark Starr to add this information to the Update Software website. Update to tell Phil Wiffen when the information is available, so that Phil can ask Gerd Antes to put a link on the Cochrane website. Sonja also said that she would send a list of current problems to Adminors for them to return comments if they feel strongly that fixes are needed.
Action: Sonja, Lois, Phil

Editorial Tracking system


Sonja reported that 14/18 respondents to the tracking questionnaire said that tracking should be kept separate, as did a further three representatives of larger groups that Sonja asked directly. 2/18 said that it should not be separate. Tracking to be discussed in more detail at the next MAG meeting.


Contact details


It was confirmed that contact details held in ModMan are not being used either by Update Software or by the German Cochrane Centre. Update take the details as they appear in RevMan. Therefore, there is no need for RGCs to maintain contacts in ModMan. Sonja had informed RGCs at their meeting of this decision and agreed to circulate this information on the Adminors discussion list to ensure that everybody was aware of this information.
Action: Sonja

Any other business



No other business was raised.

Date of next meeting



Date of next meeting was confirmed for 6th December 2000 in Oxford.

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