Sarah McCann works at the QUEST Center of Berlin Institute of Health (BIH) at the Charité . (Photo: private)
Working as an international network, CAMARADES also supports the production of preclinical reviews. The Berlin CAMARADES team now wants to use COReS to provide the basic structure for long-term integration of the systematic review into the research pipeline, initially for medical research institutions in Germany. Building on the existing CAMARADES infrastructure, the COReS project aims to enable such important syntheses of results on a broad basis, by means of a specific collaboration platform and team-building initiatives.
One example of how COReS could work is that doctoral students from research teams additionally join a local or national COReS group, where they participate in creating an overview of the existing literature in their respective research field. The results flow into their own experimental work. The data from this are in turn transferred directly into the review.
How can this be achieved?
Within the framework of COReS, we plan to initiate one or more such groups at Charité. This model community will be adapted to the needs of the members and then extended to our selected "early adopter" institutes in Germany. The most important thing is that by involving the researchers themselves we can build a community-driven network, which will eventually be self-sustaining.
The most important thing is that by involving the researchers themselves we can build a community-driven network
How does "the system" need to change?
We need to bring about a real cultural shift – away from individual to team-based research. We also need recognition of the benefits of high-quality and reproducible science. This might sound self-evident, but unfortunately the prevailing academic structures present an obstacle to such a perspective: A first or senior authorship of a publication in a "high-impact" journal is still mainly considered as a quality feature per se – and not the quality of a study or even its necessity in the context of the overall state of research.
We need to bring about a real cultural shift – away from individual to team-based research
What steps are needed to bring about such a shift?
In our opinion, university education must play a role here, especially since many researchers are not so familiar with topics such as systematic review or synthesis of results. Ideally, they should already be dealt with in the curriculum. Or at the latest when setting out as an early researcher. We want to raise awareness of the benefits of systematic reviews among doctoral students and postdocs, for example, and give scientists the skills they need to create such reviews themselves and integrate them into their workflow. All of this costs time and money. We are pleased that the Volkswagen Foundation sees the value of what we want to do and is offering support.
For which disciplines outside biomedicine might your project also be of interest?
For most! In any field, it is important to first get an overview of the data situation and the quality of the data. The results of a single study are unlikely to be sufficient to decide which direction research should take in the future. Apart from biomedicine, many other disciplines have already embraced systematic review. But to our knowledge, we are the first to specifically encourage the formation of collaborations with the goal of synthesizing and integrating data. As part of our pilot project at the Charité, we have developed training materials for workshops on the topic and have so far provided them to more than 170 trainees and researchers. So far, we have been able to provide methodological support for 23 projects. We use a free, open-access online platform, "SyRF", with which systematic reviews and meta-analyses can be created. This tool supports the networking of researchers worldwide. More than 850 scientific projects are registered with SyRF, mainly those that also work with animals in the context of biomedical research.
What obstacles have to be overcome?
Researchers are usually very busy and often not so familiar with the methods we propose. We are aware of the pressure of time and resources that most have to struggle with. We therefore focus on raising awareness of the problem and offering the appropriate infrastructure so that the barrier to implementation can be kept as low as possible. For example, we enter at the institutional level, asking where or when we can best incorporate our training offerings into structural operations. Effective communication of the benefits, but also the limitations, of our methods will play an important role in overcoming resistance.
What do you think are the chances for successful implementation?
Scientists want their research to be meaningful and effective, and we must communicate how our initiative can help
We have put a lot of work into planning the implementation and feel the time is right for COReS. Scientists want their research to be meaningful and effective, and we must communicate how our initiative can help. The infrastructure we are developing will be free and open-access to users. Anyone who wants to create a review will eventually be able to do so. We believe we have all the ingredients for success and can create lasting change with the help of the project. I am optimistic.