Abstract selection

The featured abstracts in the newsletter and in the website’s database have undergone a multistep review process before reaching our viewers. Members of the Consortium for Implementation Science created and approved a search strategy, comprised of key terms related to implementation and dissemination science and outcomes, prominent authors in the field, and national and international health journals. This layered search string yields between thirty and seventy articles when a one-month timeframe is applied. Each month, I download all of the most recent article results into Endnote, deleting duplicates from prior months and also removing articles without abstracts. Endnote allows me to import all the titles and abstracts into Excel, where I perform the first round of review.

I conduct a triage process informed by criteria and tagging guidance, created and approved by members of the Consortium. I read through each abstract and mark for inclusion if it satisfies the criteria, and then I code it according to the topics you see under each title in our abstract database. The article types we aim to feature include methodologies, primary research, systematic reviews, and editorials. They focus on instrument/measure development, reports of experimental intervention, reports of observational study, and theories, frameworks, and/or taxonomies. Topical areas we include range from mental health and substance abuse, chronic and communicable disease, healthcare and public health policy, to organization and delivery of health services.

When I have completed the triage, I pass the total list of abstracts to the second reviewer, or the Associate Editor serving for the month. The Associate Editor reviews all of the abstracts, takes into consideration my inclusion/exclusion decisions and coding, but ultimately decides which articles we will feature. Additionally, a member from the Consortium scans the Implementation Science journal each month for seminal articles to feature in both the newsletter and database. After final decisions have been made on all abstracts, I share the final list with our Managing Editor to post to the database and in the newsletter.

If you would like for your implementation science publication to be considered for feature, please submit it to cis@consortiumforis.org, and you might see it in a future issue!

contributed by: Juliana Saracino