dissemination of public health information: key tools utilised by the

DOI:10.1111/j.1471-1842.2012.00977.x

Dissemination of public health information:key tools utilised by the NECOBELAC networkin Europe and Latin AmericaPaola De Castro*, Daniela Marsili*, Elisabetta Poltronieri* & Carlos Agudelo Calderon***Istituto Superiore di Sanita, Rome, Italy and **Instituto de Salud Publica, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogota, Colombia

Abstract

Background: Open Access (OA) to scientific information is an important step forward in communicationpatterns, yet we still need to reinforce OA principles to promote a cultural change of traditional publishingpractices. The advantages of free access to scientific information are even more evident in public healthwhere knowledge is directly associated with human wellbeing.Objectives: An OA ‘consolidation’ initiative in public health is presented to show how the involvement ofpeople and institutions is fundamental to create awareness on OA and promote a cultural change. This ini-tiative is developed within the project NEtwork of COllaboration Between Europe and Latin AmericanCaribbean countries (NECOBELAC), financed by the European Commission.Methods: Three actions are envisaged: Capacity building through a flexible and sustainable training pro-gramme on scientific writing and OA publishing; creation of training tools based on semantic web tech-nologies; development of a network of supporting institutions.Results: In 2010–2011, 23 training initiatives were performed involving 856 participants from 15 countries;topic maps on scientific publication and OA were produced; 195 institutions are included in the network.Conclusions: Cultural change in scientific dissemination practices is a long process requiring a flexibleapproach and strong commitment by all stakeholders.

Keywords: education and training, electronic journals, health information needs, information and commu-nication technologies, journals, knowledge transfer, open access, publication output, publishers and pub-lishing, research networks.

Key Messages

Implications for Practice

C

E

T

R

O

ªH

• NEtwork of COllaboration Between Europe and Latin American Caribbean countries (NECOBE-LAC) supports cooperation between European and Latin American countries to make it easier tospread valuable heath information online.

• Modular training material on scientific writing and open access (OA) publishing is available on theProject website to be used to ‘train the trainers’ and then for local training activities.

• Course replication at local level contributes to create major awareness on health information dis-semination embedding best practices at workplace.

Implications for Policy

d NEtwork of COllaboration Between Europe and Latin American Caribbean countries networkingand cooperation among European and Latin American public health institutions favours the devel-opment of shared advocacy initiatives.

orrespondence: Paola De Castro, Direttore Settore Attivita Editoriali, Istituto Superiore di Sanita, Viale Regina Elena, 299 - 00161 Roma, Italy.

-mail: [email protected]

his paper is produced within the European Commission FP7 funded Project NECOBELAC 230583.

e-use of this article is permitted in accordance with the Terms and Conditions set out at http://wileyonlinelibrary.com/onlineopen#

nlineOpen_Terms

2012 The authors. Health Information and Libraries Journal ª 2012 Health Libraries Group

ealth Information and Libraries Journal, 29, pp.119–130 119

d

d

Dissemination of public health information, Paola De Castro et al.120

Institutions and individuals from EU and LAC countries involved in the training activities are pow-erful tools for the adoption of institutional OA policies.The project activity contributes to the national and international debate on scientific informationdissemination in Europe and LAC, but the full evidence of its impact will be shown in the longrun.

Background

Open Access to scientific information is now recog-nised worldwide as an important change in the infor-mation transfer process. The number of onlinesources is daily increasing, as well as the number ofstudies produced in this regard1 to support the tran-sition towards a digital environment giving freeaccess to information for all. In this framework, thedevelopment of OA journal publishing in the last10 years proves that the value of this new publica-tion model is currently considered as an alternativeway to spread high-value scholarly information.2

We are now in the OA ‘consolidation’ period whenwe still need to reinforce the OA principles at differentlevels to promote a cultural change in information dis-semination practices; the inclusion of new metrics forresearch evaluation, as an alternative to journal impactfactor from Journal Citation Report (JCR), plays arelevant role in such cultural change.3–5

Within this global scenario, an increasing num-ber of academic and research institutions utiliseOA journals, repositories and other infrastructuresto spread scientific information and data and arecommitted to foster the development of institu-tional, national and regional policies to support theadoption of OA publishing models.6

The changing conduct of science in the informationage is widely discussed worldwide under differentperspectives and there is a general consensus on theneed of a collaborative effort to guarantee the widestuse of research output at global level.7 The advanta-ges of free access to information are even more evi-dent in the field of public health where knowledge isdirectly associated with human well-being.8,9

This article is related to a ‘consolidation’ initiativein support of OA dissemination practices of scientificoutput in public health. Such initiative has beendeveloping in Europe and Latin America within aframework of many valuable experiences promotingOA publishing, such as DRIVER (Digital RepositoryInfrastructure Vision for European Research),

ª 2012 The authors. Health Info

OpenAIRE (Open Access Infrastructure Researchfor Europe) and COAR (Confederation of OpenAccess Repositories) in Europe 10,11 and VHL (Vir-tual Health Library), SciELO (Scientific ElectronicLibrary Online), Redalyc (Red de Revistas Cientıfi-cas de America Latina y el Caribe), CLACSO (LatinAmerican Council of Social Sciences), Lilacs (themost important and comprehensive index of scien-tific and technical literature of Latin America and theCaribbean) in Latin America.12–14

The European Commission is aware of the impli-cations of OA at different levels.15–17 In this frame-work, the NECOBELAC project, financed by theEuropean Commission within the 7FP- Science inSociety field for the years 2009–2012, represents aconsolidation initiative stressing the importance ofmaking high-quality health information free for all.

The project NECOBELAC aims to create a net-work of institutions to enhance the production anddissemination of scientific information in the fieldof public health through a specific training strategy(http://www.necobelac.eu).18,19

The project partners are represented by institu-tions both in Europe and Latin America conveyingdifferent skills and experiences in information dis-semination practices: Istituto Superiore di Sanita(ISS), Italy (project coordinator), Consejo Superiorde Investigaciones Cientıficas (CSIC) Spain, theUniversity of Nottingham (UNOTT), United King-dom, BIREME ⁄PAHO ⁄WHO, Brasil, the Institutode Salud Publica (ISP) Colombia, the Universidadedo Minho (UMINHO), Portugal.

The NECOBELAC project is an example of themany collaborations supported by the EuropeanCommission within FP7 to develop a Europe-LatinAmerica knowledge area.20

Objectives

The aim of this article is to present and discuss theNECOBELAC model to meet both the global com-mitment of the OA movement and the local needs in

rmation and Libraries Journal ª 2012 Health Libraries Group

Health Information and Libraries Journal, 29, pp.119–130

Dissemination of public health information, Paola De Castro et al. 121

the production, dissemination and use of healthinformation. This model envisages a major involve-ment of local institutions and may be usefullyadapted to other fields or in other geographical areasto promote a cultural change in favour of OA.

The model is applied in a wide area (Europeanand Latin American countries) showing diversescenarios in publishing practices associated to dif-ferent socio-economic, technological and culturalfactors, including language barriers, which oftenprevent the global circulation of valuable scien-tific information.21,22 The main actions includedin the NECOBELAC model are described toshow the results achieved so far and possiblefuture use of the model in different contexts,namely:

Capacity building

The aim of this action is to improve scientific writ-ing skills of professionals working in health sci-ences as well as to implement scientificcommunication systems based on the concept ofimmediate, open and permanent access to researchresults. This should increase the publication outputof institutions participating in the NECOBELACnetwork, improve their editorial quality and raiseawareness on OA opportunities.

Training tools

The aim of this action is to identify and realisenew training tools and resources to be utilisedwithin the capacity building programme (onlineand printed material, training programmes and sup-port to local training).

Networking

The aim of this action is the creation of a commu-nity of institutions able to promote the diffusion ofhealth information and, at the same time, developjoint research activities.

Figure 1 NECOBELAC two-level training strategy

Methods

The methodological approach followed to meetNECOBELAC objectives is described for eachaction line.

ª 2012 The authors. Health Information and Libraries Journal ªHealth Information and Libraries Journal, 29, pp.119–130

Capacity building

It includes the development and implementation ofa flexible and sustainable training programme onscientific writing and OA publishing (includingrepository building) for the diffusion of healthinformation. The training strategy envisages twolevels of training activities to guarantee the pro-gramme sustainability and impact (Fig. 1).23

d Training for trainers (T1 activities) on scientificpublishing, including both scientific writing andOA; teachers are NECOBELAC project partnersand local experts. This activity consists of eighttraining courses: four in Latin America and fourin Europe, with an average of 30 participants(future NECOBELAC trainers) per course.

d Local training for non-experts (T2 activities),performed by participants in the T1 activitiesand assisted by project partners and localexperts. The local training uses selected NEC-OBELAC training materials and tools (topicmaps) that focus on the contextualised needs ofacademic and research institutions in Latin

2012 Health Libraries Group


America and European countries in the con-cerned domain. The target has been set to have1000 participants in the T2 activities. The meth-odology of course replication (T1 and T2 activi-ties) will allow the exploitation ofNECOBELAC resources and tools also beyondthe NECOBELAC Project conclusion (January2012).Within this training programme, a questionnaire

was designed to evaluate participants’ satisfactionand provide useful feedback to meet informationrequirements in future training activities and pos-sibly develop new training contents. It is basedon an open source software (LimeSurvey Quickstatistics) and it is utilised in all T1 trainingcourses. The questionnaire was structured intofive sections (Personal information, General opin-ions about the course, Methodologies, Facilitiesand duration of the course, Suggestions toimprove NECOBELAC training initiatives, Impactof the course) and allowed for multiple-choiceanswers.

Training tools

Topic maps on scientific writing and OA wereidentified as an appropriate training tool for such alarge scale project requiring great flexibility. Topicmaps are based on the semantic web technology(http://code.google.com/p/ontopia/); ontopia has anavigator framework – a JSP tag library and JavaAPI – which enables the development of web-based interfaces associated with topic maps. Thistechnology permits the connection of relationshipsamong different factors, actors and initiatives andrepresent information using ‘topics’, ‘associations’and ‘occurrences’. The NECOBELAC topic mapsconsist of different modules on scientific publica-tion and OA, each one having a scheme, a brieftextual description, links to selected onlineresources and suggested points for discussion. Thisonline tool was selected for its modular structureand therefore adaptability to different local trainingrequirements.

Printed material explaining the NECOBELACtraining strategy and the use of online resources(topic maps) is provided to the participants in T1activities who commit themselves to replicate thetraining at local level.


Networking

An online sample survey was planned to have aninitial scenario of the areas where the projectwould operate. The survey was intended to collectdata on scientific and academic public health insti-tutions to be involved in the NECOBELAC capac-ity building programme, including data on theirpublication output and training activities in scien-tific publishing (the survey is available in fourlanguages at http://www.necobelac.eu/Surveys/necobel.htm). The responding institutions werethen invited to take part in the NECOBELACtraining programme for trainers.

The network developed as a consequence of thecontacts established among participants in thetraining activities and following the initiatives pro-moted for a progressive aggregation of Europeanand Latin American institutions within the projectobjectives.

By supporting local training activities (T2 activi-ties) for scientific writing and dissemination ofhealth information, the NECOBELAC networkalso promotes new scientific collaborations in pub-lic health and related disciplines among institutionsof the two interested geographical regions.

A discussion list and a newsletter were plannedfor up-dating on events, initiatives and publicationsrelated to the project themes and contribute todeveloping the network. Communication throughsocial media was also envisaged.

Results

The results of 2-year project activity are reportedaccording to the three methodological action linesdescribed above.

Capacity building

Seven training courses for trainers (T1) were rea-lised from April 2010 to August 2011. The pro-gramme of the training courses and teachingmaterial are available online on the project websitewith a Creative Commons Licence 3 and thereforecan be re-used without any permission (http://www.necobelac.eu/en/training.php). Table 1 showsthe overall geographical distribution of NECOBE-LAC training activities in Europe and Latin



Table 1 Geographical distribution of NECOBELAC training activities (2010–Aug 2011) according to type (T1, T2, planned),

number and attendants

Geographical distribution

T1* T2** Planned activities***

No. activities No. attendants No. activities No. attendants No.

Europe

Italy 1 33 4 235 2

Portugal 1 28 1

Spain 1 19 1 50 1

United Kingdom 1

Latin America

Argentina 1 34 4 102 2

Brazil 1 29 1

Chile 1 50

Colombia 1 20 4 120 1

Costa Rica

Cuba 1 50

Ecuador 1

Mexico 1 61 4

Peru 1

Uruguay

Venezuela 1 25 1

Total 7 224 16 632 16

Total training activities (T1+T2) 23

Total attendants (T1+T2) 856

*T1, Training for trainer.

**T2, Training replication activities.

***All planned activities refer to T2 except for the United Kingdom.


America: 23 activities for a total of 856 attendants;16 activities are planned in 2011 (up to August2011).

Data resulting from the course evaluation ques-tionnaire refer to five T1 courses (held in SaoPaolo, Rome, Bogota, Madrid and Buenos Aires)of a total of seven courses held so far (August2011). The five courses were attended by 135 peo-ple and 120 of them answered the questionnaire.

Results from the general questions which wereequal for each course are reported:d with reference to the course contents, 97% ofthe respondents declared that the course wasvery useful or useful; 98% of the respondentsaffirmed that the course met their expectations,definitely or somewhat; 94% of the respondentsaffirmed that they learned new concepts, defi-nitely or somewhat;

d with reference to training methodology andduration of the training courses, 88% of therespondents declared that they strongly agreedor agreed with the proposed methodology;


d with reference to the teaching material, 90% ofrespondents declared it was adequate for theirneeds, definitely or somewhat;

d with reference to the duration of course(3 days), 64% declared that the length of thecourse was about right.To support such positive data, there was also a rich

exchange of e-mail messages from attendants soonafter each course, as a mark of their involvement on theProject activities and accordingly in its community.

According to the participants’ feedback and tothe evaluation of the NECOBELAC partners whoplayed the role of teachers and facilitators in thetraining courses, the following considerations canbe highlighted:d the selection of participants in the training activ-ities for trainers is crucial to guarantee replica-tion of the training activity at local level withthe support of their institutions;

d the contribution of local experts creates a majorinvolvement at local level and helps balancelocal practices and priorities with international



quality standards in public health informationproduction and dissemination; in some cases,the presence of governmental authorities canhelp increase awareness in favour of the adop-tion of an OA policy to research results;

d the necessity to stimulate participation throughworking groups proved to be a useful tool foractive learning and results in the design of feasi-ble training programmes at local level;

d useful information on national and local prac-tices and initiatives provided by participants inthe courses helped highlight local differencesand common requirements and, accordingly,adjust the project strategy for a more focussedoffer of training tools and modules;

d participants in the training courses for trainersneed to be supported by the project partners,operating in their geographical area, for replica-tion of the courses at local level;

d the production of promotional printed material(leaflets, posters, bookmarks, etc.) helps dissemi-nate information on the project, in addition tothe fact that such documents are availableonline. Participants in the training activities alsoappreciate receiving NECOBELAC printedmaterial (e.g. the ‘Guide for trainers’) to becomemore familiar with the project training strategyand with online resources (NECOBELAC topicmaps) to use them in the replication activity.In the T1 training course in Bogota, active and

close interaction between NECOBELAC Projectpartners and the course attendants led to the draw-ing up and signing the Declaration of Bogota aposition paper stating the need of sound policiespromoting the quality of science communicationand information process in LAC countries and out-lining the commitment of the whole NECOBE-LAC community in this respect. The Declarationis now available in the four project languages onthe Project website (http://www.necobelac.eu) andis included among the Declarations in support ofOA (http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/Declarations_in_support_of_OA).

Training tools

The results achieved in this regard can be summedup into two basic groups: topic maps and supportto trainers.


Topic maps. The development of NECOBELACtopic maps required different stages:d knowledge representation through general andspecific topics in scientific writing and OA pub-lication; this task was also facilitated by theresults of an initial online cloud-storming ques-tionnaire utilised as a screening process foridentification of terms and concepts related tothose issues to determine their weight withindifferent audience. Figures 2 and 3 display suchknowledge representation showing differentinterconnected categories and sub-categorieswithin the topic maps. Examples of NECOBE-LAC schemes for scientific publication and OAare shown in Figs 4 and 5 respectively.

d A textual description of each category and sub-cate-gory along with a list of selected links to onlineresources (references, Web resources) and a list ofsuggested questions for discussion. This is a work inprogress subjected to continuous up-dating.NECOBELAC topic maps are now (August 2011)available in English and partly in Spanish, Italian andPortuguese (http://www.necobelac.eu/en/training.phpand). The publication of a printed and onlinebook reproducing the main topics and including anintroduction on the project aims and activities is alsoplanned by the end of the project (2012).

Support to NECOBELAC trainers. This action hasbeen developing through different tools:d A guide for trainers, both online and printed,was produced to support NECOBELAC trainersin their future replication activity. The guide fortrainers includes a brief description of the pro-ject strategy and the basic structure of the NEC-OBELAC training modules for scientificpublication and OA as well as useful points fordiscussion and a selection of online resources.

d Constant advice is provided by NECOBELACpartners to participants in the training courses(T1) to organise local training (T2).

d A re-packaging of all training material is alsoenvisaged to produce online training modules tobe exploited in a virtual learning environment.

Networking

The network of European and Latin Americaninstitutions involved in the project activities,



Figure 3 NECOBELAC topic map on open access

Figure 2 NECOBELAC topic map on scientific publication


starting from the initial project partner nucleus, hasbeen continuously increasing as a result of thetraining initiatives and parallel actions undertaken


to develop the NECOBELAC community. The ini-tial online survey, performed from October toDecember 2009, at the early stage of the project,


Figure 5 NECOBELAC scheme on institutional repositories

Figure 4 NECOBELAC scheme on scientific writing


was answered by 79 institutions in Europe andLAC and was important to establish a baseline ofinformation about the activities of institutions to


be involved in the network with respect to researchoutputs (in terms of publications) and trainingcourses in scientific writing and OA. The total




number of institutions now included in the net-work is 195 (78 in Europe and 117 in Latin Amer-ica); these institutions belong to 15 differentcountries. Detailed data are reported in Table 2.

Within the NECOBELAC network develop-ment, the bidirectional approach (EU-LAC) isfocussed to stress the advantages coming fromexchange of experiences and practices in healthinformation management and use. In this frame-work, NECOBELAC has been supporting themajor virtual library of Latin America, SciELO(Scientific Electronic Library Online, http://www.scielo.org) by suggesting European publish-ers of health journals to apply for inclusion in Sci-ELO. Currently Spain and Portugal have beencontributing in SciELO. Thanks to the NECOBE-LAC action, the science journal of the ItalianNational Health Institute (Annali dell’Istituto Supe-riore di Sanita) was accepted for inclusion in Sci-ELO, in April 2010, thus representing the firstItalian journal in the collection.

As a support to Europe and Latin America net-working activity and to promote the publication inOA journals, NECOBELAC sustains the publica-tion of articles in the OA journals belonging to the

Table 2 Geographical distribution of the institutions

involved in NECOBELAC network (Aug 2011)

Geographical distribution

Institutions

n

Europe

Italy 32

Portugal 22

Spain 21

United Kingdom 3

Total Europe 78

Latin America

Argentina 23

Brazil 32

Chile 1

Colombia 24

Costa Rica 3

Cuba 1

Ecuador 4

Mexico 22

Peru 2

Uruguay 4

Venezuela 1

Total Latin America 117

Total Europe + Latin America 195


institutes participating in its network. Furthermore,in the beginning of 2010, the project launched aninitiative to pay for publication fees of articles co-authored by European and Latin Americanresearchers in public health and related disciplines.Although it was warmly welcomed by the NEC-OBELAC community, this initiative did not pro-duce any results to date (August 2011). As anexample of the low number of articles co-authoredby European and Latin American researchers, asurvey on BMC Public Health journal was under-taken to depict the scenario of scientific collabora-tion in public health. From a selection of papers forthe years 2006, 2007 and 2008, selected accordingto the author affiliation, only few cases show anauthorship referred to co-authors from EU andLAC countries. Only 19 of 1106 were co-authoredpapers, despite the great number of articles appear-ing per year (429 for 2008, 359 for 2007 and 314for 2006). The majority of the articles wereauthored by scientists from European countries inall the years surveyed.

To develop the NECOBELAC network the pro-ject has also been establishing contacts with theother EU funded Projects within the 7th Frame-work Programme in the domain of health scienceand OA publishing, where both Latin Americanand European institutions are involved. The projecthas also been establishing positive relationshipswith several collaborative experiences linking Eur-ope and Latin America, in particular, institutionsfrom Italy, Argentina, Ecuador and Colombia col-laborating on public health issues including rarediseases, medicinal products, environmental andoccupational health.24–27

Within the OA global scenario, NECOBELACshares the commitment to participate in the Interna-tional OA Week (http://www.openaccessweek.org/),an annual event that is sustaining OA initiativesthroughout the world. For the OA week held in2009, NECOBELAC organised a conference inItaly at Istituto Italo-Latino Americano (IILA,http://www.iila.org) to foster EU-LAC scientificcollaboration; in 2010 the project organised a train-ing course for trainers in Italy to stress the impor-tance of being part of an international communitysharing the same objectives for OA promotion; in2011 a series of NECOBELAC events wereplanned both in Europe and Latin America.



The NECOBELAC discussion list (subscrip-tions at: [email protected]) is very active andalmost every day an up-dating on articles, news,events, documents and other relevant initiativescirculates among its members. The newsletterstarted in April 2011 and is now regularly issuedmonthly (http://www.necobelac.eu/en/newslet-ter.php).

A number of video interviews to NECOBELACpartners and course participants are also availableon the website thus raising close involvement ofpeople and institutions (http://www.necobelac.eu/en/VideoLink.php). Communication has also beendeveloping through social media (Facebook, YouTube, Linkedin, etc.).

Conclusions

The NECOBELAC project is dealing with the dis-semination of scientific health information as apart of the challenging process towards a wideradoption of OA practices. Accordingly, the projectaim is to contribute to a cultural change both inthe production and dissemination of scientifichealth information. In this regard, the project isoffering positive results in terms of training andnetworking activities thus meeting the needs toimprove health information production and dissem-ination and contributing to capacity building at dif-ferent levels.

The experience gained in the training activitycarried on in Europe and Latin America, lead us tohighlight the following considerations:d the ‘core’ content of training courses for trainersmust be adapted to the different local needs withhigh flexibility to maximise its impact. To createmajor involvement at local level, in each train-ing activity local experts provided a useful con-tribution by reporting on local practices injournal management and OA publishing, includ-ing repository building. This favoured discus-sions among participants and helped providing acritical vision of the different geographical sce-narios;

d group work is a basic element of training activi-ties as it facilitates active learning and the devel-opment of friendly relationships amongparticipants, thus promoting the organisation ofjoint local training activities as a required com-


mitment from the participants in the trainingcourses for trainers;

d the use of online resources is fundamental toempower scientific authors, editors and informa-tion specialists in respect of their differentresponsibility in the information transfer pro-cess, nevertheless vis a vis communication is apre-requisite in the initial training stages;

d replication of training activity at local level hasto be supported by NECOBELAC partners toensure its realisation and therefore guaranteeefficacy. Follow-up initiatives (such as commu-nication through ad hoc mailing list, personalcontacts, etc.) are required after the realisationof the courses for trainers to ensure the partici-pants feel that they can rely on the nucleus sup-port;

d in some cases, there is lack of knowledge ofsuccessful initiatives developed in others conti-nents, for example, in Italy the existence of theVirtual Health Library and SciELO was gener-ally unknown. Actions finalised to create aware-ness on such initiatives have to be stressed tocontribute promoting new channels of informa-tion diffusion;

d the sustainability of the network requires a long-term impact strategy. In particular, the onlinetraining material must be available also after theproject term to support the existing network.Finally, we can say that NECOBELAC has

been following different paths to improve andpromote the exchange and sharing of informa-tion resources for the benefit of public health.Training in scientific writing and OA dissemina-tion of research output is a way to contribute toa more equitable use of information resourcesworldwide and, at the same time, it is an oppor-tunity to create new and long-standing researchcollaborations in public health among the Euro-pean and Latin American countries participatingin the project.

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Sandra Salinetti, EdoardoBelardi and Emanuele Borgognone for their supportin the NECOBELAC project dissemination activi-ties and for the editorial assistance provided forthis article.




Conflicts of interest

The authors declare that they do not have any con-flict of interest.

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Received 24 January 2011; Accepted 5 December 2011



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