IMSG minutes, 25 June 2002

Minutes approved on: 15 November 2002

Present: Gerd Antes, Chris Cates, Mike Clarke, Monica Fischer, Sonja Henderson, Julian Higgins, Rasmus Moustgaard, Mark Starr.

In attendance: Claire Allen (minutes).

Apologies: David Booker, Elizabeth Pienaar, and Phil Wiffen.

Contents:
Welcome, introductions and apologies
Approval of agenda
Format of 'Potential conflict of interest'
Potential conflict of interest for members present at this meeting
Approval of minutes and matters arising from the minutes of the previous meeting (20 March 2002)
RevMan 4.2
Additional testing of RevMan analyses
Feedback from the Steering Group to the Recommendations from the Needs Assessment Survey
Plan for implementing recommendations of the Needs Assessment Survey - the next generation of the Information Management System
Employment of the new IT person at the Nordic Cochrane Centre
IMSG relevant posters at the Stavanger Colloquium
Additional members of the IMSG
Any other business
Date of next meetings

Welcome, introductions and apologies

Monica welcomed everyone to the meeting.

Approval of agenda

The agenda was approved and the items 'Dates of next meetings', 'Splitting reviews' and 'Data protection', were added.

Format of 'Potential conflict of interest'

It was agreed that the existing way of describing members' potential conflict of interest should be expanded to include roles and group membership. Monica agreed to prepare a table with columns headed 'Name', 'Group represented', 'Other group membership' and 'Other potential conflicts of interest' and circulate it for everyone to complete and return to be part of the minutes of this meeting. It was also agreed that if a member had a conflict of interest in relation to a specific item, this should be stated and recorded with the minute of this item.

Action: Monica, everyone

Potential conflict of interest for members present at this meeting

Name	Group represented	Other group membership/roles	Other potential conflicts of interest
Gerd Antes	Steering Group	Director of the German Cochrane Centre (GCC)	GCC is responsible for managing the Cochrane Collaboration's web site. GA is line manager for David Booker, whose work may be affected by decisions taken by the IMSG.
Chris Cates	Criticism Management Advisory Group	Reviewer and statistical editor in the Airways CRG
Mike Clarke	RevMan Advisory Group (Convenor), Steering Group (Co-chair)	Editor of the Cochrane Reviewers' Handbook;Deputy director of the UK Cochrane Centre; reviewer and editor in several CRGs
Monica Fischer		Director of the Collaboration's IMS, employed at the Nordic Cochrane Centre	Job dependent on in-house software development. Receives funding from the Cochrane Collaboration to coordinate the development of the IMS.
Sonja Henderson	ModMan Advisory Group (Convenor)	Review group co-ordinator of the Pregnancy and Childbirth CRG (PCG), which is the largest CRG in the Collaboration	The PCG desperately requires a review tracking system.
Julian Higgins	Statistical Methods Group (Co-convenor)	Co-editor of the statistical section of the Cochrane Reviewers' Handbook; Editor of the Developmental, Psychosocial and Learning Problems Group; statistical advisor and reviewer in several CRGs
Rasmus Moustgaard	Technical Implementation Advisory Group (Convenor)	Employed to work on software development at the Nordic Cochrane Centre	Job dependent on in-house software development.
Mark Starr	Update Software (Director)		Involved in the development of commercial software, e.g. Metaxis, and software for the Cochrane Collaboration as publisher of The Cochrane Library and derivative products.

Approval of minutes and matters arising from the minutes of the previous meeting (20 March 2002)

Monica advised that item 5b in the third paragraph should read "It was agreed to pursue option 1, i.e., that RevMan 4.2 should submit...". With this correction, the minutes of the previous meeting were approved.

Attachment of a comment to a review when it is first published (Item 4.a)

Sonja advised that she had canvassed RGCs about their use of the section entitled 'Published notes'. The resulting document had been passed to the PPG who agreed that the Published notes field should be more prominent in The Cochrane Library. Mike advised that the Handbook Advisory Group would be looking at writing a more detailed guideline for appropriate use of the 'Published notes' field. It was suggested that the field be renamed 'Published editorial notes' in RevMan (and simply 'Editorial notes' in the Cochrane Library) to encourage editorial bases and reviewers to put appropriate information into that field.
Action: Mike

Pre-publication comments by editorial teams

It was agreed that pre-publication comments should be posted to the comments and criticisms web site rather than included in the 'Published Notes' field of the review when it is published. They could then be included in future versions of the review. Chris agreed to add this information to the guidelines on the Collaboration web site.
Action: Chris

Improvement of the comments and criticisms web site

Chris reported that a workshop would be held during the Stavanger Colloquium for the Criticism Management Advisory Group to discuss how to make the comments and criticisms web site more prominent. For this purpose, it was suggested that the group should discuss whether comments should have a citation similar to the one used for e-letters in the BMJ.
Discussion also took place on the prominence of the feedback button within The Cochrane Library. It was suggested that this should be renamed so that it is made clearer to the user of the Cochrane Library that by clicking on this button, when reading a specific review, the system will not only allow the user to submit feedback but also show feedback which has been submitted by other users.
Action: Chris

Operations of the Criticism Management Advisory Group

Chris raised concern that it had been difficult to obtain feedback from the Criticism Management Advisory Group via the e-mail discussion list and he agreed to discuss the following options with the group: have a yearly face-to-face meeting, or organise regional meetings to discuss specific issues. In case of the latter, Chris could liaise with the organisers of the regional Cochrane Collaboration meetings already being organised with regular intervals in Australasia, Continental Europe, the UK and north America.
Action: Chris

Translations of non-English comments and criticisms

Gerd agreed to raise the issue of translation of non-English comments and criticisms at the Centre Directors meeting during the Stavanger Colloquium.
Action: Gerd

RevMan 4.2

Monica reported that only a few things were outstanding before RevMan 4.2 could be released for beta-testing. These include:
• Update of the 'Permission for publication' form.
  Action: Mike
• Update of user documentation (help file and user guide) and editorial approval.
  Action: Jacob, Mike
• Style Guide: A new style guide has been developed by Harriet MacLehose (Infectious Diseases) in collaboration with the Review Group Co-ordinators in the NW of England, including Sonja with input from Phillippa Middleton and Jini Hetherington. Sonja agreed to raise the following issues with them: 1) ensure that everything in the current version of the Style Guide in RevMan is covered in the new style guide; 2) consider whether a handy guide for the new Style Guide should be developed for RevMan (it was felt that it would be inappropriate to include the full Style Guide with the software because it is very comprehensive); 3) consider where to keep the most up-to-date version of the Style Guide on the Internet so that a link to this can be provided in RevMan; 4) consider how users of the Style Guide can easily identify whether they have the most up-to-date version of the Guide (e.g. by including a dated 'What's new' section in each update). Sonja agreed to update the IMSG after the July 2002 meeting of the Style Guide working group.
  Action: Sonja
• Removal of FAQ from RevMan and link to a FAQ housed on the RevMan web site.
  Action: Rasmus
• Handbook Update.
  Action: Mike
• Development of guidelines for using additional figures. This is pending the new publishing agreement.
• Replacement of the image processing component (used to support the inclusion of the additional figures).
  Action: Rasmus
• Finalising the Beta release information.
  Action: Rasmus, Monica
The timing of beta testing RevMan 4.2 is pending further discussions on the new publishing agreement. Rasmus agreed to present an overview of RevMan 4.2 at the RGCs' meeting in Stavanger. Sonja agreed to check if the RGCs would welcome this and will tell Rasmus.
Action: Sonja, Rasmus

Additional testing of RevMan analyses

Monica reported that the group of statisticians (affiliated with the Cystic Fibrosis and Genetic Disorders Group in Liverpool) which had tested RevMan Analyses, would be asked to carry out a second round of testing after RevMan 4.2 has been beta-tested. Julian, who had coordinated the first test with the Liverpool group, reported that it had taken two weeks to carry out that test and he expected this would be similar for the second test.
Action: Monica, Julian

Feedback from the Steering Group to the Recommendations from the Needs Assessment Survey

Monica presented the recommendations that had been discussed by the Steering Group at its meeting in April 2002. The Steering Group had accepted the recommendations, but there had been some confusion with regard to including a Collaboration-wide register of studies in the integrated IMS. Mike clarified that a study-based register should be included, but for the time being, the Steering Group wanted the IMSG to assign low priority to its development.

Following its meeting in April 2002, the Steering Group had asked the IT team at the Nordic Cochrane Centre to suggest a plan for the implementation of the recommendations, including a provisional timeline and budget This had been discussed by the Executive of the Steering Group and the Steering Group had agreed to allocate funding to the project for the next two years. Part of this funding would be used to employ an additional system developer.

Plan for implementing recommendations of the Needs Assessment Survey - the next generation of the Information Management System

Rasmus presented the outline for the proposed system, which is a fully integrated Information Management System (IMS) based on Internet technology. He stressed that no detailed plans had been developed and that the next six months should be spent analysing the needs, designing the new system and recommending how it should be implemented. The outcome of this work would be a report for the Steering Group, which should help them to reach a decision about the future of the IMS.

Mark raised concern about developing software in-house, and the implications for supporting it in the future. It was agreed that the project plan should include a discussion about this. A number of other issues were raised by the IMSG, which were noted by the Rasmus and Monica for consideration when they start to design the new system.
Action: Rasmus, Monica

Monica had been asked to submit a paper about the preliminary plans for the next generation of the IMS for the Steering Group and attend its meeting on 31 July 2002 in Stavanger, Norway. The paper will incorporate the feedback from the IMSG, in particular that tracking of reviews should be given high priority in the development of the next generation of the IMS. Monica agreed to circulate the document for further comments (for submission to the Steering Group by 8 July).
Action: Monica

It was agreed in principle that the Nordic Cochrane Centre should develop the Internet system but Monica agreed to include in her report to the Steering Group that a person should be identified to evaluate commercial publishing packages. Jan-Arve Dyrnes (at the Norwegian Branch of the Nordic Centre) has investigated non-Cochrane tracking systems, but had not yet reported the results of the investigation.
Action: Monica

It was agreed to discuss the specifications for the proposed IMS at the RevMan and ModMan meetings taking place on 14 November 2002.
Action: Mike, Sonja

Employment of the new IT person at the Nordic Cochrane Centre

Monica informed the group that the Nordic Centre had advertised for a system developer to work on next generation of the Information Management System. It was hoped that this person would be in post by September 2002.

IMSG relevant posters at the Stavanger Colloquium

The IMSG would present two posters at the Stavanger Colloquium:
• A central Cochrane contacts database - that works (Jacob).
• Cochrane software needs assessment survey (Mike).
The proposed third poster about a new IMSG web site had been withdrawn. This development awaits recommendations from David Booker's work on the Cochrane Collaboration's web-site.

Jacob will design the layout of the two posters and the posters will be displayed next to each other in Stavanger. If there is time, it was agreed to send the draft posters to the IMSG for comment.
Action: Mike, Jacob

Additional members of the IMSG

Given that the next generation of the Information Management System will incorporate a study-based register, it was agreed that the CENTRAL/CCTR Advisory Group should be represented formally on the IMSG. Monica agreed to contact Kay Dickersin about this.
Action: Monica

There had been two external suggestions for adding new members to the IMSG. Hilda Bastian had suggested that the Consumer Network should be formally represented on the IMSG, and Kay Dickersin had suggested that one of her staff members from the Providence Office of the New England Cochrane Centre, who has a particular interest in IT, should become a member of the IMSG. After discussion, it was agreed that the IMSG should ask people with relevant interest and knowledge to attend its meetings when there were special issues to be discussed rather than adding extra full members. Monica agreed to relay this information to Hilda and Kay. Monica also agreed to ask David Booker to think about how he could get input and advice from Cochrane entities and individuals on his development of the Cochrane Collaboration’s web-site, i.e. by setting up a focus group, to consult before and after IMSG meetings.
Action: Monica

Any other business

Splitting reviews

Rasmus asked the group for advice on the correct procedure for splitting reviews. Mike advised that if a review is split into two or more new reviews, one should retain the unique ID and both (or more) should refer to each other in 'Other published versions of this review'. If a review is being split into two or more new protocols, then the unique ID should not be reused and the old review should be withdrawn when the CRG feels it is appropriate to do so (this might be as soon as the protocols are published or when the new reviews are ready). The new reviews should refer to the old one in 'Other published versions of this review'. Mike advised that the guidelines for splitting, merging and withdrawing reviews would be included in the next edition of the Handbook. Mike agreed also to discuss with the Handbook Advisory Group, the issue of including guidelines for setting up umbrella reviews, which intentionally pull together evidence from smaller reviews without replacing these.
Action: Mike

Data protection

Monica agreed to ask Jini Hetherington to consult with the Cochrane Collaboration's lawyers to clarify the legal position with regard to Data Protection legislation.
Action: Monica

Date of next meetings

Monica agreed to ask Phil, Elizabeth and David whether they were available on 4 and 11 October 2002 for a meeting in Copenhagen.
Action: Monica

Monica also advised that the next RAG, MAG and IMSG meetings would take place on 14 November 2002 (MAG: 8.30 a.m. - noon), (RAG: noon - 5 p.m.), and 15 November 2002 (IMSG: 9 a.m. - 3 p.m.). Mike and Sonja agreed to circulate the dates to their constituents.
Action: Mike, Sonja