Forty-Five Days Online

Zhelnov P. Forty-five days online. Zheln. 2020 Oct 17;42(2):s2e1. URI: https://zheln.com/summary/2020/10/17/2/.

Highlights

• New record uploads have been restored
• I have found a way to stay on budget & on schedule: focus on 10% of appraisals
• Full appraisals will start soon as a piloting exercise
• Documentation is still being written

New Appraisals in Progress

• How important is postural control in Down syndrome?
• What works for at-risk mental states?
• What is the effect of ticagrelor monotherapy after PCI?
• How good is social accountability for reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health?
• What is on the American Psychiatric Association guideline on schizophrenia?
• Crowdfunded How effective are tooth decay prevention measures in children six years old or younger?

Full Text Wanted!

These systematic reviews had been selected for full appraisal, but their full texts were unavailable to me. Please contact me if you wish to help procuring them.

• How effective are anti-amyloid-β drugs for Alzheimer’s disease?
• How is homelessness experienced by transgender people?
• How useful is physical exercise for people living with breast cancer?

Zheln is Forty-Five. In Days!

• Zheln was conceived on Sep 2, 2020, taking over from a 2019 project that aimed to discover all orthopedic systematic reviews on PubMed.
• Eventually, this affiliation-free, crowdfunded, open-science initiative that aims to monitor, critically appraise, and tag with AMA specialties all new systematic reviews that are indexed on PubMed was first widely published.
• I produced this website and established biweekly status reports, but the appraisal count remained low because of the overwhelming number of records to appraise.
• Then I started introducing control measures, that did prove effective. However, the workload was still too high, so that, at times, distress prevailed.
• I did invite collaborators and even took part in a hackathon; however, no one’s showed up yet. Crowdfunding, too, is lacking.
• Eventually, I realized I needed to write up a thorough nonprofit plan in addition to an academic paper. Both of these are currently in development.

There Has Been an Awakening

• As I wrote previously, the estimated crowdfunding amount required to accomplish the Zheln’s mission is way too high for the start.
• But since then, I’ve found a way to stay on budget.
• To do that, I reduced the workload to 10% while, at the same time, following a tight schedule and dropping older unappraised records.
• This movement has already proved highly effective.
• Indeed, it would allow to appraise not all records but just one tenth of them; however, this is for starters, and this solution seems highly scalable when Zheln becomes adequately crowdfunded.
• Overall, it would take me around five hours daily (except on a Saturday, a day off) to be on schedule.
• And that’s great because I still have one hour to spend on the website maintenance incl. summary posts (estimated 30 hours a month in total) and two more hours a day to conduct full appraisals.

What’s the Next Move?

• New record uploads have been restarted and the appraisal process has been put on schedule.
• As previously mentioned, I’m not doing full appraisals until I’ve established stable record triage (which, as it appears, I did).
• Also, I need to write and register the protocol for Zheln before I can embark on full appraisals.
• However, as I see it now, several full appraisals still need to be conducted now as a piloting exercise exactly because I need to carefully design the whole Zheln process to write the protocol and the Zheln Manual.
• Therefore, I will now move to full appraisals, which, of note, consist of 18 records awaiting and are expected to grow, as the estimated number needed to appraise before one record is selected for full appraisal features roughly every eighth record.
• Expect a report on how full appraisals are going in the next summary post on Wed, Oct 21!

See You Around, Peer

Get in Touch Now or Get Back on Wed, Oct 21

Email, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Telegram

Help Crowdfund Zheln

Zheln Is Supported by Crowdfunding Only

Running Zheln takes most of my work capacity. I’ve managed to stay off other jobs for now but will be forced to find another job unless crowdfunded by the end of this year.

In other words, you can’t be sure Zheln isn’t suspended in 2021 if you avoid funding it. But if you donate, I pledge to keep running Zheln in recognition of your support.

If you want Zheln to live on, please use one of these options:

 Subscribe on Patreon for $1/mo to $600/mo

 Send $1 via PayPal

Email Me About Anything

You can also easily contact me on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or Telegram.

 Bonus for Star Wars Fans!

Subscribing on Patreon enables you to change the icon of a given Zheln record to a Star Wars symbol of your choice! Learn more on Patreon.

All Other Zheln Features Are Free for Everyone

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