Journal of Medical Library and Information Science

Introduction: The goal of this study was the comparative review of MSc syllabus in librarianship and information science in selected countries and presentation of an updated medical curriculum.

Methods:  This applied research is of descriptive type reviewing the websites of universities using Delphi technique, which was conducted in two phases with checklist and questionnaire as data collection tools. In the first phase, the curricula of selected universities were collected. In the second phase, the summarized curricula were sent to faculty members of Department of Library and Information Science at MOHME in the form of a questionnaire in two rounds of Delphi.

Results: The results indicated that 98% of the professors participating in Delphi agreed to update the curriculum. Moreover, majors such as advanced scientometrics, familiarity with evidence-based medicine and its databases, clinical librarianship, advanced health research methodology, and familiarity with the basic concepts of source finder, and crucial indicators in evaluating information resources were their recommended majors to be included in the suggested syllabus in addition to those extracted from universities’ websites, which were subject to survey by professors in the second round.

 Conclusion: The findings of this research suggest that the views of professors participating in Delphi on curricula were largely aligned with those extracted from websites of the universities under study. Finally, the proposed syllabus was designed considering the review results of curricula and opinions of faculty members. The findings of this thesis can be a guide for curriculum planners at the Ministry of Health and Medical Education.

Introduction: Proper knowledge of the factors affecting science production is essential to accelerate scientific progress and achieve the goals of the country's vision document and comprehensive scientific map. The present study aimed to identify the factors affecting the science production to move toward third-generation universities.

Method: In this descriptive-analytical survey, the sample was based on a stratified random sampling of 270 people selected from 918 faculty members of the Iran University of Medical Sciences. The research tool was a questionnaire designed based on available literature. The collected data were analyzed by SPSS software version 23 using descriptive statistics, Student's t-test, and Friedman test.

Results: The results revealed that all managerial, structural, cultural, and human factors were influential in discussing science production from the faculty members’ perspective (P <0.05). Also, from the faculty members' perspective, the essential components of the above-mentioned factors include the university innovations management, scientific structure, communication and collaboration, entrepreneurs, and innovative, entrepreneurial, and community-oriented managers, respectively.

Conclusion: From the faculty members’ perspective, all the studied factors were effective in producing science. Therefore, paying more attention to these factors to move toward the goals of third-generation universities can improve the status of the university.

ntroduction: This analysis aimed to investigate the global research output in Iron Deficiency Anemia from a bibliometric perspective.

Methods: All 29,789 publications in IDA indexed in Scopus from 1934-2019 were included. Using MeSH-assigned keyword search, this research analyzed and visualized the bibliometric data, including annual publication trends and languages and  publications, as well as  active and influential authors, research institutes, countries, and journals. The scientific visualization was done by co-authorship, co-citation, and word co-occurrence techniques in VOSviewer.

Results: The trend in IDA annual publication growth was increasing. Publications were in over 40 languages, with English as the predominant one. The majority of publications were original research. The highest scientific collaboration was between the USA and UK. Seven out of 13 top authors were from the USA. The top high influential journals were the Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine and Blood, respectively. Highly-frequent keywords were in two clusters: epidemiology and IDA management, iron metabolism, and Iron Deficiency Anemia pathophysiology.

Conclusion: The increasing trend of publication growth in IDA demonstrates the importance of research on it and being as an international concern. IDA needs to be investigated from many perspectives, with the main contributions of developing countries where the disease has its causes and consequences. More prolific and highly-cited journals in Iron Deficiency Anemia are of prestigious and known journals that can potentially widen the reach of publications and increase their readability and citation rates. Research on Iron Deficiency Anemia has found its way, and many topics have been considered.

Introduction: The improving electronic health record becomes one of the essential goals of social security medical centers. The present study aims to investigate the factors related to the usage behavior of employees towards electronic health records considering the role of behavioral intention in Social Security Medical centers of Khorasan Razavi Province, Iran.

Methods: The present correlational research is conducted in 2020. The statistical population was the staff of the social security medical centers (N=180) using the counting method. The data collection tool was a standard questionnaire that its validity and reliability had been verified in the previous studies. The data were analyzed by SPSS and SMART PLS software.

Results: Hope for effort (path coefficient: 0.240 and t-statistic: 2.984), social impact (path coefficient: 0.194 and t-statistic: 2.453), facilitation of conditions (path coefficient: 0.150 and t-statistic: 2.005), and personal innovation in information technology (path coefficient: 0.225 and t-statistic: 3.005), positively and significantly affected behavioral intention. Also, behavioral intention (path coefficient: 0.462 and t-statistic: 7.495) positively and significantly affected staff’s usage behavior in e-health record acceptance. This is while the expected performance (path coefficient: 0.048 and t-statistic: 0.548) and resistance to change (path coefficient: 0.106 and t-statistic: 1.690) didn't significantly affect behavioral intention.

Conclusion: Considering the positive effect of hope for effort and social impact and facilitation of conditions and personal innovation in information technology, and behavioral intentions on the behavior in e-health record acceptance, it is recommended that Social Security Medical centers of Khorasan Razavi to train and strengthen the above-mentioned factors.

Introduction: The organizational climate is the organization's personality and employees' perceptions of its environment. The study aimed to determine the relationship between organizational climate and staff attitude in Iranian medical university libraries.

Methods: In this cross-sectional study, all librarians of three Iranian medical libraries were included. Data was collected using the ClimateQUAL questionnaire. Specialists confirmed its validity and reliability, and Cronbach's alpha obtained 0.953. The collected data was analyzed in terms of descriptive and inferential statistics (p-value<0.05) in SPSS software version 22. 

Results: The overall mean of the organizational climate for the studied medical libraries was 111.87±49.00. There were no significant differences between these libraries based on the organizational climate (p=0.711). Regarding staff attitudes, the lowest and highest total mean were for job satisfaction and work unit conflict, respectively. There was a significant relationship between the organizational climate and staff attitudes (r=0.352).

Conclusion: The reinforcement of demographic diversity, customer service, teamwork, and continual learning in medical libraries can be more effective in improving the organizational climate of these libraries. The positive organizational climate has a positive effect on staff attitudes, job satisfaction, and continuing to work with the library.

Introduction: The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of social capital on the emotional-cognitive readiness of faculty members for scientific collaborations with the presence of a mediation of psychological capital.

Methods: This practical research was conducted in an analytic-survey method. The statistical population consisted of all faculty members of two medical universities in Iran (709 people), and the sample size is calculated to be 250 people. The stratified and random sampling method was used. All data for this study were collected using three standard questionnaires: (a) Nahapiet and Ghoshal's social capital questionnaire, (b) emotional-cognitive readiness questionnaire, and (c) Lathan's psychological capital questionnaire. The Kolmogorov–Smirnov test was used to check the normality of data distribution. Spearman correlation and Structural equation modelling (SEM) were used to analyze and test hypotheses using PLS 3 and SPSS version 25.

Results: The results showed that social capital and psychological capital and their dimensions affect cognitive-emotional readiness for scientific collaboration. Also, the findings indicate that the level or the degree at which social capital alone contributes to cognitive-emotional readiness is weaker than when it is mediated by psychological capital.

Conclusion: Through the creation and development of social and psychological capital, university administrators can gradually create a common language and, as a result, common insight among faculty members to provide the basis for more scientific collaboration.

Introduction: This study aims to identify the challenges of providing health information prescription services and review the proposed solutions.

Methods: This qualitative research was conducted using the thematic content analysis approach. The statistical population included librarians, medical library faculty members, treatment staff, patients with experience in information prescription, and clinical librarian or patient education. Thirty-seven participants were selected by purposive sampling. The interviews lasted from December 2020 to August 2021. Qualitative analysis was then performed using MAXQDA software version 20.

Results: After analyzing the data, the challenges of providing information prescription services were categorized into five main themes: challenges related to service improvement, patient, staff, infrastructure, organization, and 25 sub-themes. Some essential strategies have been training, protocol development, and designing educational topics according to the necessary skills, culture building, and budgeting.

Conclusion: Providing appropriate and effective health information prescription requires designing and developing protocols, workflow diagrams, and explaining qualified professionals.

Introduction: There are different national and international university ranking systems in the world which rank universities in terms of numerous metrics. Previous studies have investigated some educational and research indicators, but research and innovation metrics have not yet been compared. The present study aimed to compare research performance and innovation-industry indicators in the national and international university ranking systems based on measured dimensions, data extraction sources, and find the highest innovational and research-oriented ranking systems than others.

Methods: This cross-sectional study covered the 2020 edition of each ranking, and the data were collected in January 2021. According to the inclusion criteria, 20 national and international university rankings were selected among 75 ranking systems. This study used a thematic method for data analysis.

Results: Among 20 included university rankings in the study, 17 were international and three national university rankings that all have research performance indicators, and seven of them applied innovation-industry indicators. The highest research-oriented rankings were CWTS, NTU, U.S. News, URAP, and Research Excellence Framework. The highest innovative-industrial-oriented rankings were U-Multilink and Scivision. The U-Multilink and the Scivision were the most research and innovative-industry-oriented rankings, among others.

Conclusion: The international university rankings are more innovational and research-oriented than national rankings. So, the national university rankings must introduce new national research and innovation-industry indicators for their universities' performance evaluation.

Introduction: The government of India has started concentrating on developing rural health infrastructure to provide primary health care services to most of the rural population, which had been by and large remained neglected. Though the government provides healthcare facilities to rural people, they are not effectively reaching them. The purpose of the study is to explore the public health information services, which ascertain the information needs of the Balasore district's rural inhabitants, and to develop an integrated Public Health Information Service (PHIS) model for health communication that promotes public health.

Methods: A survey was conducted with the help of a structured questionnaire developed to gather information regarding public health communication infrastructures and services rendered by the medical officers, rural inhabitants, and the librarians of the medical college and public libraries of the Balasore district of Odisha.

Results: The authors found a situation that demands an assessment of a suitable PHIS model to fulfill the health information requirement of the rural inhabitants of the Balasore district of Odisha.

Conclusion: This integrated public health information service model is conceptualized and is based on the suitability of health information exchange for rural people.

Introduction: Urology and nephrology are the main sub-categories of internal medicine, and relevant research had been grown in recent years.  The present study aimed to analyze the Iranian scientific publications in urology and nephrology indexed in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) from 1900 to 2020.

Methods: This cross-sectional and scientometric study was conducted in 2021. The urology and nephrology records were extracted from the Web of Science Core Collection (WSCC) with a time limitation from 1900 to 2020. Data analysis was performed in the Excel software in terms of descriptive statistics, and the scientific maps were visualized in VOSviewer.

Results: Until 2020, 3439 urology and nephrology scientific publications by Iranian researchers were indexed in the SCIE. These articles had received 25393 citations in total, with an h-index of 55. More than half of the articles (56.12%) were original, and the majority were published in 2012 (345; 10.03%). Tehran University of Medical Sciences was the most productive and top-cited organization on urology and nephrology, with 914 (26.57%) documents and total citations of 7741. Kajbafzadeh (140; 4.07%) and Basiri (133; 3.86%) were the most productive authors. The most productive journals were the Iranian Journal of Kidney Disease (650; 18.90%) and the Urology Journal (386; 11.22%).

Conclusion: The results demonstrated increasing of Iranian scientific publications, citations, co-authorship, and international collaboration. While the authors published their articles in higher ranking journals, more significant research budgets and open scientific diplomacy are necessary to promote visibility and motivate international collaboration among Iranian researchers.

Introduction: The Nigerian healthcare system faces a shortage of healthcare workers, facilities, and equipment. Moreover, massive corruption has been found to bedevil the healthcare system, i.e., the little resources allocated to the health sector are often embezzled by those saddled with the responsibility of implementation. The objective of this study is to examine the current state of the country's health sector and how it combats the Coronavirus.

Methods: A one-time survey was adopted in this study; 60 hospitals comprising public and private were randomly selected from the six geopolitical zones, and questionnaires were administered to 3000 purposively selected respondents comprising health workers and patients. One hundred fifty in-depth interviews were conducted with 100 in-patients and 50 health workers.

Results: The findings revealed that the problem of inadequate healthcare facilities, such as hospital buildings, bed spaces, hospital equipment, and personal protective equipment for health workers and patients, inadequate health workers characterized almost all the health facilities investigated either at maximum or minimum degrees.

Conclusion: Therefore, it was recommended that the government at all levels of authority should prioritize investing funds in the health sector and increasing the coverage of the health insurance scheme.

Introduction: Knowledge is considered the most critical resource in the global economic environment, and knowledge management is considered a service lever in libraries. The current study aims to investigate the effects of knowledge management components, including information technology, culture, and organizational strategies, in improving information services in medical sciences libraries in Iran.

Methods: This survey is conducted with a statistical population of 630 in the year 2021. The statistical population was selected from the managers of the central and affiliated libraries of the universities of medical sciences in Iran. The sample size was determined to be 373 people using Cochran's sample size formula. Besides, sampling was done using simple random. The research tool was a consolidated questionnaire that included two standard questionnaires: the Asian Productivity Organization and the LibQual questionnaire. Data analysis was done through descriptive and inferential statistics using Amos software.

Results: The results revealed that knowledge management technology had the strongest correlation with the quality of information services, with a beta coefficient of 0.26. The organizational culture variable, with a beta value of 0.23, was in second place, and the strategy variable was in third place, with a beta value of 0.22.

Conclusion: Among knowledge management components, information technology, organizational culture, and organizational strategies impact the promotion and optimization of library information services, respectively. Therefore, to provide the best information services, library managers should pay special attention to promoting information technology in libraries. Then, to improve the organizational culture, they should enhance the processes and structural strategies.