WikiDoc News: News Team Resources
Editor-In-Chief: C. Michael Gibson, M.S., M.D. [1]
How Do I Sign Up For News Services to be Emailed to Me Automatically?
In general most newspapers and journals will email you with daily or weekly updates.
Links to Key Journals and Media Outlets
Journal of the American College of Cardiology
The American Journal of Cardiology
Cardiac Catheterization and Intervention
The Journal of Thrombolysis and Thrombosis
WikiDoc Manual of Style
General
- Do not post a “rough draft”. If you “want to float this by you” or if “these are some thoughts that I had”, then talk to the Editor-In-Chief.
- Revisions are the key to good writing. Revise your articles no fewer than 3 times.
Technical
- “Sloppy” articles will reflect poorly on you as a contributor.
- You should spell check your article.
- If you create a table, it should include both the numbers of patients and percents.
- Use the Bibiography manager for references Help:Editing
- When you are making reference to studies, you will need to spell out the full name of the study before using their abbreviation. Go to the home page of http://www.clinicaltrialresults.org and search for the name on the page called Trial Acronyms. For example, TIMI would first be referred to as the Thrombolysis In Myocardial Infarction (TIMI) study group.
The Language of Statistics
- Many things are associated with mortality, but they do not predict who is going to die.
- Therefore, do not use the word predictor. Use the words “associated with” unless there is a validation cohort and sensitivity and specificity are quoted.
Grammar
- Use the present tense, your writing should be terse and not flowery.
- Use short sentences with simple sentence structure rather than long run on sentences.
- Work long and hard to remove the passive tense from your writing (remove words that end in “ing”)
- Use search and replace to eliminate the casual phrases “I” and “we”. These phrases reduce the objectivity of the grammar.
- Use search and replace to remove and replace the following overworked words.
- Replace the following words with those in parentheses:
- after (following)
- given, use or received (administered, etc)
- in patients (among patients)
- seen (observed)
- shown (demonstrated)
Writing Your WikiDoc News Article
Your By Line
You should insert your name and a picture if you would like. Use the syntax [2] to include your email address.
The Date
It is important to date and time stamp the story, and indicate if it was revised.
The Introductory Sentences
The first sentence should state the overall results of the study or the main point of the article. "Physicians from ____ today report that ____ in the Journal _____ (use bibliography manger to insert the reference here)
After the first sentence, bridge with a sentence that states what is known. “Prior studies have demonstrated that ….”. The bridge sentence is: “The goal of this study was to extend previous observations to examine ….” The last sentence should read “The authors hypothesized that …..”
The Methods Sentences
This study was
- Randomized or non-randomized
- Placebo controlled
- Open label, or single blinded (pt does not kwno what they got) or double blinded (neither doctor nor patient knows what they were administered)
- The doses of the agents were:
- Number of patients: ___ randomized to active drug and ____ randomized to placebo.
- This was a single center, multicenter study with patients enrolled at ____ centers in the US or internationally.
- The duration of follow up was a median of ____ and a maximum of ____.
The Results Sentences
- Compared to placebo, _____ was associated with an absolute reduction in the the pre-specified primary endpoint of ____ from __% (n= ) to ___% (n= )(p=0.0_), which is a relative risk reduction of ________. Secondary endpoints included ________. Include the 95% confidence intervals surrounding results whenever possible.
The Discussion Sentences
The discussion sentences should begin with the punch line of the study, not what was found in the past 20 studies. “This study extends prior observations and demonstrates that …. Or "This is the first study to demonstrate"...
The latter part of the discussion sentences can be more speculative, but you should minimize this. Use bridging terms such as “It could be speculated that the mechanism of action..." "Further areas of study include..." "It could be hypothesized that.. but this requires further study."
The Limitations Sentences
Place concepts like ascertainment bias here. “This analysis is a non-randomized retrospective analysis, and as such it is possible that both identified and unidentified confounders may have influenced the outcomes. Strict enrollment criteria are used in clinical trials, and the results observed here may not be applicable to all patients in clinical practice. The sample size was small and may have limited the statistical power.
The "Putting it in Perspective" Sentences
- You should describe how the data presented here builds upon what is known rather than reciting a thoughtless “laundry list” of all that is known. You should comment on how this piece of the puzzle fits with all the others, rather than simply presenting all the individual pieces of the puzzle.
- You should ask a clinician how this affects practice if that is relevant.
Acknowledgement of Support
You should always cite the entity that supported the study, if any one.
Examples: The study was supported in part by a grant from Smith Kline Beecham, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (TIMI 4); Genentech, Inc., South San Francisco CA (TIMI 10A & B); Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Cambridge MA and Schering-Plough Research Institute in Kennilworth, NJ. (INTEGRITI); Merck and Co, Blue Bell PA (FASTER); Aventis Pharma, Antony, France (ENTIRE); Centocor and Eli Lilly Inc., Malvern PA and Indianapolis Indiana (TIMI 14).
Citation of the ClinicalTrials.gov Number
If available, please cite the clinicaltrials.gov number.
Inserting References
WikiDoc asks that you use the following syntax for references. This will allow readers to follow a link and view the abstract and potentially the full text in PubMed. It is quite simple to do. It is like having your own mini bibliography manager! For instance, if you move the text, the references will be renumbered as well!
Example:
Say you want the following PubMed reference to appear:
Copy the PubMed ID from the PubMed page (in this case the PubMed ID is 15541835) and insert the ID in the bibliography section like this:
<biblio> #gibsonref1 pmid=15541835 This is free space so that you can describe the reference if you want </biblio>
The part of this that says gibsonref1 is a label. It cannot contain spaces, but otherwise it will say whatever you want. This is a tag you will use to refer to the reference in your text.
On the page, the bibliography will be rendered like this:
<biblio>
- gibsonref1 pmid=15541835 sample gibson reference
</biblio>
Typing <cite>gibsonref1</cite> in your text will create a link to this reference for you, assign the reference a number like this: gibsonref1.
Multiple references, <cite>gibsonref2 otherreference<cite>, will be rendered like that: gibson_tmpg otherreference.
The numbers link to the bibliography section, which looks like this:
<biblio>
- notcited This reference is not cited, so it appears at the end of the list
- otherreference This is another free entry, which is cited
- gibsonref1 pmid=15541835 sample gibson reference
- gibson_tmpg pmid=12913404 Gibson article about TIMI Myocardial Perfusion
</biblio>
Note that, in the raw code of the bibliography section, the references can appear in any order and can contain notes that are not displayed on the active page. This is what the raw code of the bibliography section looks like:
<biblio> #notcited This entry is not cited, so it appears at the end of the list #otherreference This is another free entry, which is cited #gibsonref1 pmid=15541835 sample gibson reference #gibson_tmpg pmid=12784359 Gibson article about TIMI Myocardial Perfusion </biblio>
Place Your Article into a Category
Use of Categories is how organize content on the site. All articles should be placed in the News Category.
To do this, you type the following in at the bottom of the page;
[[Category:News]]
You should also place it in one of the following Sub-Categories by typing in the following:
Acute Coronary Syndrome News, Health Policy News, Heart Failure News, Cardiovascular Imaging News, Electrophysiology News, Interventional Cardiology News, General Cardiology News, Prevention News, Hypertension News, Diabetes News, Peripheral Arterial Disease News, Biomarker News, Guidelines News, Valvular Heart Disease News, CT Surgery News,
Understanding Copyright
You can read about copyright in detail at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright .
Copyright myths: http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html
Stanford site on Copyright and the Fair Use Doctrine: http://fairuse.stanford.edu/
Read about the fair use doctrine at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use
The Fair Use Doctrine and News Reporting
The Fair Use Doctrine, which appears in Section 107 of the Copyright Act, lists the purposes for which the reproduction of a work can be considered “fair use.” These purposes include criticism, commentary, parody, scholarship, research, and news reporting. For the purposes of the news service, this simply means that copyrighted works (such as articles in a scientific journal)can be referenced without the express permission of the author.
There are, however, loosely defined limits to what can be reproduced and how much of it can be reproduced. The fair use doctrine lacks definitive standards, but there are four basic factors that are weighed to determine whether or not a use is fair. These factors are:
- The purpose and character of the use — for example: news reporting, teaching, commercial literature
- The nature of the copyrighted work — Is this a work of fiction, a scientific paper, etc…?
- Amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the work as a whole
- The effect of the use on the potential market for the copyrighted work
These four factors should not weigh heavily on the use of information for the WikiDoc News Service since there is a great deal of latitude granted to news reporting and the use of scientific publications. However, the amount and significance of the material referenced should still be taken into consideration.
Secondary Sources and Attributing Credit
Material from news outlets (such as USA Today, The New York Times, or TheHeart.org) should be treated with the same professional ethics applied to all secondary source material. If you reference material from these sources it is a good idea to pay very close attention to the phrasing you choose for your own article. Although ideas and facts are not copyright-protected, the author’s original expression is protected. Therefore, the words, phrasing, and organization of the original source are all relevant.
Things to consider when dealing with secondary sources:
• Taking a quote from an interview that appears in a source and dropping it into your own work is generally considered bad journalistic form, even if properly cited. • If you simply must borrow a quote it is essential that the original source be attributed. For example, you might write: “In an interview with USA Today, John Doe contradicted his earlier comments, insisting, ‘I could not possibly have committed all these crimes.’” (And then provide the appropriate footnote)
Information on citing sources can be found at:
MLA Style citations: http://www.liu.edu/CWIS/CWP/library/workshop/citmla.htm
Citation of Electronic Sources: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/cup/cgos2006/basic.html
Understanding Plagarism
Read about Plagiarism at the following sites: