This Summary Was Delayed

Zhelnov P. This summary was delayed. Zheln. 2020 Sep 25;39(1):s1e2. URI: https://zheln.com/summary/2020/09/25/1/.

Highlights

• This summary was delayed, but now I have a prevention system in place
• From a technical standpoint, Zheln is fully armed and operational
• Full-scale record appraisals are ready to deploy at long last
• A protocol to register Zheln with PROSPERO is in the works
• Help crowdfund an Open Access feature article in BMC Syst Rev!

Oh, I Am Sorry, Frodo

• In the previous summary, I announced this summary to come out on Sep 23.
• However, it’s Sep 25 now that it’s actually coming out.
• Personally, I find it a zero-tolerance event and apologize to you for it; here’s what I’m going to do to prevent summary delays in future.
• I made a separate In progress – High priority column in the GitHub kanban of the Streamline Zheln project. From now on, all summary publication issues will go there.
• Essentially, that means I work on the summaries first thing, writing about what’s done to this point and resisting the temptation to outperform myself at the last moment.
• It is worth noting the next summary publication milestone was set on Sep 27; that is, I will publish the next summary tomorrow by the end of the day (EDT).
• I have great plans for today and tomorrow (see below), so the tomorrow’s summary should not feel worn.
• So anyway, please get back for updates this Sunday! 😃

General Status

• I spent most of the last five days since the previous summary getting the website and appraisal tools ready for work (see the full diff for more info).
• And effectively, I’ve succeeded in it.
• As of now, Zheln is a fully armed and operational battle station with the website working correctly and General Makeposti, a tailored tool to appraise records, at hand.
• Overall, this means I can, at long last, go on with the very record appraisals.

Started Appraisals

• As to how many records are stuck awaiting appraisal, this is a tough problem.
• In fact, I have appraised just 2 out of 5,609 records by now.
• Moreover, there is about the same number of records awaiting download from PubMed (estimated [ 5,609 ÷ 12 ] × 11 ≈ 5,148 records); these are the records that appeared in the Replicated Systematic Review Subset Sep 14 thru Sep 24.
• Therefore, I need to start appraising these records ASAP, while also doing concurrent up-to-date appraisals.
• For this purpose, I devised a plan to keep up with appraisals.
• It would allow me to close the 10k-record debt in two months while appraising 22% more records daily.
• See how it all works out in the next summary post this Sunday!

Completed Appraisals

• No appraisals have been fully completed by now.
• This is a problem I’m going to solve after I’ve established a stable flow of started appraisals.
• Effectively, by the moment a record is moved at least one status level up from awaiting appraisal, it has likely also been specialty tagged, which already means its successful exposition at the target specialty pages.
• Therefore, expediting completed appraisals is currently a natural lower priority than streamlining started appraisals.
• Also, withholding processing of full texts (i.e. stopping appraisal at the Zheln Step 3) is preferable while registration of Zheln as a research project is pending (see below).

Academic Status

• One last thing I did since the previous summary was elaborating on the Zheln methods.
• This is a very preliminary account; however, a more detailed account is also in the plans as I’ve decided to register Zheln with PROSPERO, a prospective registry of systematic reviews! Zheln’s designed as a living systematic review; thus, it requires prospective registration.
• After inspecting the PROSPERO registration guidance, I did not find any issues that would preclude registration of Zheln, albeit a great protocol would be required.
• I also considered publishing the protocol in a peer-reviewed journal when ready.
• However, as I want it to be an Open Access publication, preferably in BMC Syst Rev, who charge $2,170 per article, I’d better wait until this is fully crowdfunded and then publish a feature article. Please help me crowdfund it!
• In the meantime, I’m going with free-of-charge options such as writing and submitting the protocol to PROSPERO and publishing Zheln on OSF (already done).
• I have not set any milestones here yet but will do that as soon as I’ve got records processed at a steady pace; this is clearly a lower-priority endeavor.

Zheln Is Supported by Crowdfunding Only

 Subscribe on Patreon for $1–10/mo!

 Subscription Levels Based on Star Wars

 Customizable Appraisal Icons

 PayPal Donations Also Accepted

See You Around, Peer

Get in Touch Now or Get Back on Sun, Sep 27

Email, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or Telegram

 Search for Appraisals,  Browse by AMA Specialty, or  Read Biweekly Appraisal Summaries