The IV Session of the Scientific Committee (SC) of the Latin American and Caribbean Center on Health Sciences Information was held on December 3, 2018. The SC performs advisory functions before the Advisory Committee and the Director of PAHO/WHO.
The current SC is comprised of experts from the following areas of knowledge, Scientific Communication, Scientific Research, Information Management, Education and Knowledge Management, and Knowledge Engineering and Information Systems. In addition, the director of BIREME and the managers of the technical and administrative areas participate. This session was attended by the Director of the Organization, Dr. Carissa F. Etienne, and Dr. Amanda Wilson, Coordinator of the National Network of the National Library of Medicine of the United States, as observers. At the opening of the meeting, Efren Carlos Oropeza Abúndez, representative of Mexico and Jaider Ochoa Gutierrez of Colombia, were elected president and rapporteur of the session.
The program began with presentations on the Governance and Management Structures and the Biennial Work Plan 2018-2019, by BIREME Administrator Silvia de Valentin, who detailed the functions of the SC and explained the composition of the Center’s Institutional Framework, formed by four pillars: the PAHO/WHO Strategic Plan and Technical Cooperation Plan; the BIREME Statute; the Biennial Work Plan 2018-19; and Financial and Resource Management through the PMIS. The presentation of the Administrator motivated a series of questions from the members of the Central Committee, which were satisfactorily answered.
The following presentation was given by Verônica Abdala, Manager of Services and Information Products, who detailed the products and services of technical cooperation in information management, highlighting the Virtual Health Library (VHL), its main source of information, the Latin American Literature in Health Sciences (LILACS) and the controlled vocabulary DeCS - Descriptors in Health Sciences. The manager also highlighted products of knowledge translation, such as the Second Formative Opinion of the Telehealth program, highlighting integrative health practices through of the VHL MTCI and the online courses of search and access to information. Again, the issues raised by SC members about the presentation were promptly answered.
Renato Murasaki, Manager of Methodologies and Information Technologies, presented the fourth theme "Information technologies for technical cooperation", when he had the opportunity to respond to the questions formulated at the III Meeting of the SC, in December 2017. Renato highlighted the creation of a repository of health legislation, the participation of BIREME in the development of the platform for the Regional Base of Health Technology Assessment Reports (BRISA), the coordination of the Global Index Medicus, the extension of DeCS, and the support to the Open Educational Resources Repository of the CVSP, to name but a few.
Lilian Calò, coordinator of Scientific Communication and Institutional Communication of BIREME presented the products and services of her area, such as the orientation to editors on the management and improvement of scientific journals, selection of specialists, indexing situation of LA&C journals in databases, and face-to-face scientific communication courses for researchers, health professionals and graduate students. Regarding institutional communication, she mentioned the monthly publication of the BIREME Bulletin in three languages, weekly update of the BIREME page at PAHO Intranet, weekly update of the institutional website, daily update of the internal bulletin PSI and management of social networks Facebook and Twitter whenever necessary. Lilian as well responded to the questions presented by the SC.
The Director of BIREME, Diego González, presented the theme "Advances and Implementation of the Recommendations of the Third Session of the Scientific Committee", where he highlighted BIREME’s identity and work. The members of the Committee were unanimous in highlighting the results obtained, considering the one-year interval since the last SC meeting and the small number of collaborators at the Center dedicated to implementing technical cooperation activities.
The main recommendations of the Scientific Committee are summarized below:
- Disseminate questions from health professionals and their answers;
- Encourage and train in the use of virtual environments;
- Encourage thematic libraries, including specialties for which they have not been developed;
- Mapping knowledge, not just metadata;
- Provide platforms and instruments to evaluate the quality of documents, expanding partnerships with organizations working on the issue;
- Think of an open data platform and reproducible search;
- Generate alliances to explore new metrics with different approaches (scientometrics altmetrics, social visibility) and technologies;
- Continue working on the different components of open science, strengthening and deepening much more. BIREME should take a leading role in this issue;
- Work on mechanisms and tools for digital preservation;
- Document the impact that is being generated with the processes and projects developed in partnership with other institutions;
- Cooperate with various sources, commit to interoperability and technology platforms, for example by collaborating with ORCID;
- Consider the political actions that are being worked out; for example, the National Transformation Plan; there are structures for collaboration and work, especially at a strategic level;
- Continue working on the repositioning of BIREME;
- It is necessary to shield the financial resources for the operation of BIREME, even with the approach to the private and commercial sector for sustainability;
- Be transparent with the conflict of interests in open science and scientific communication;
Participation of Dr. Carissa Etienne
PAHO Director participated in the second half of the IV Session of the Scientific Committee and made the following remarks:
- It is necessary to consider the role of information in Agenda 2030, as it is of the utmost importance to generate new programs and policies and access to information for a healthy life and well-being;
- BIREME evolves from the contributions of the committees (Scientific and Advisory Committees) and PAHO should interact with these experts;
- Access to universal health depends not only on medicines, but on health determinants (3 Ps: political will, public policies and partnerships between sectors)
- Try to understand what public we do not reach and why;
- Turn all evidence into easy to use information;
- Support the open science and availability of resources by Member States;
- To aim to use scientific information as a basis for decision-making.
- It was suggested to the Director that PAHO should have a repository of publications in periodicals of its collaborators in open access.
The members of the SC were unanimous in highlighting the results presented by BIREME and made recommendations, with emphasis on adopting the principles of Open Science; establish partnerships with new institutions to prospect technical cooperation projects seeking alternatives to the Center's financial sustainability; working with digital preservation mechanisms and tools; and to explore metrics to assess the scientific impact of BIREME's sources of information (scientometrics, altmetrics, social visibility, etc.), among others.
At the end of the IV Session, the President, Efren Carlos Oropeza and the Director of BIREME, Diego González, thanked the members of the Committee and Dr. Carissa Etienne for closing the meeting.
