04501nas a2200445   4500000000100000000000100001008004100002260001200043653002000055653004300075653001900118653002300137653003000160653002000190653001700210653001700227653001900244653002600263653003800289653002400327653002200351653002000373653003000393653002200423100002100445700001600466700002100482700002000503700001800523700002200541700002200563700002900585700002100614700002300635245015100658300001100809490000600820520321500826022001404041       2022                            d  c2022-0310aAuthor feedback10aAuthor journal submission requirements10aAuthor opinion10aAuthor willingness10aAutomated data extraction10aData extraction10aData sharing10aData summary10aData templates10aManuscript submission10aNatural language Processing (NLP)10aScience translation10aStandardized data10aStructured data10aStudy evaluation template10aSystematic review1 aA. Amina Wilkins1 aPaul Whaley1 aAmanda S. Persad1 aIngrid L. Druwe1 aJanice S. Lee1 aMichele M. Taylor1 aAndrew J. Shapiro1 aNatalie Blanton Southard1 aCourtney Lemeris1 aKristina A. Thayer00aAssessing author willingness to enter study information into structured data templates as part of the manuscript submission process: A pilot study  ae090950 v83 aBACKGROUND: Environmental health and other researchers can benefit from automated or semi-automated summaries of data within published studies as summarizing study methods and results is time and resource intensive. Automated summaries can be designed to identify and extract details of interest pertaining to the study design, population, testing agent/intervention, or outcome (etc.). Much of the data reported across existing publications lack unified structure, standardization and machine-readable formats or may be presented in complex tables which serve as barriers that impede the development of automated data extraction methodologies.As full automation of data extraction seems unlikely soon, encouraging investigators to submit structured summaries of methods and results in standardized formats with meta-data tagging of content may be of value during the publication process. This would produce machine-readable content to facilitate automated data extraction, establish sharable data repositories, help make research data FAIR, and could improve reporting quality.
OBJECTIVES: A pilot study was conducted to assess the feasibility of asking participants to summarize study methods and results using a structured, web-based data extraction model as a potential workflow that could be implemented during the manuscript submission process.
METHODS: Eight participants entered study details and data into the Health Assessment Workplace Collaborative (HAWC). Participants were surveyed after the extraction exercise to ascertain 1) whether this extraction exercise will impact their conducting and reporting of future research, 2) the ease of data extraction, including which fields were easiest and relatively more problematic to extract and 3) the amount of time taken to perform data extractions and other related tasks. Investigators then presented participants the potential benefits of providing structured data in the format they were extracting. After this, participants were surveyed about 1) their willingness to provide structured data during the publication process and 2) whether they felt the potential application of structured data entry approaches and their implementation during the journal submission process should continue to be further explored.
CONCLUSIONS: Routine provision of structured data that summarizes key information from research studies could reduce the amount of effort required for reusing that data in the future, such as in systematic reviews or agency scientific assessments. Our pilot study suggests that directly asking authors to provide that data, via structured templates, may be a viable approach to achieving this: participants were willing to do so, and the overall process was not prohibitively arduous. We also found some support for the hypothesis that use of study templates may have halo benefits in improving the conduct and completeness of reporting of future research. While limitations in the generalizability of our findings mean that the conditions of success of templates cannot be assumed, further research into how such templates might be designed and implemented does seem to have enough chance of success that it ought to be undertaken.  a2405-8440