Open Access to the Evidence – We’re onto a Winner.

At Physiopedia we are passionate about open access Physiotherapy Education and EBP. You just have to look at the mission statement to see that.

Improving global health through universal access to physiotherapy knowledge.

This is why it is encouraging to see Linda McLean and Paola Durando writing a guest editorial in the Journal ‘Physiotherapy Canada’ this month. They have written a piece entitled Open Access to the Evidence: Helpful Hints to Save Valuable Time and Resources in the Quest to Provide Evidence-Informed Physiotherapy Interventions.

Linda & Paola provide readers with three tips for saving time, effort and money when it comes to searching for, finding and gaining access to physiotherapy research. I’ve written about a few of the nuggests they talk about before.

65-85% of Articles for Free?

Physiospot is Going Open-Access

Although I sound a little smug as I wrote that, it is nice to know that we are on top of trends and provide our readers with useful content.  Aside from this, reading this editorial has come at a good time for me as it casts aside my doubts about one of the jobs I have within Team PP – The Latest Specialities.

In recent weeks the team at PP have been discussing the efficiencies of some of our work. We have spent a good chunk of time discussing the Latest MSK and Latest Specialities. If you are unfamiliar with what they are, they are monthly newsletters Lucy Aird and myself curate.  They contain all of the latest and greatest physiotherapy-related research from the past month, essentially like a monthly digest,  only available to PP+ members.

We search the databases for you, we synthesise this into a easy to read form and, to make it even better, we seek the full text alternatives for you. Once a month it lands in your inbox and you can stay up-to-date with your chosen area of physiotherapy practice. Easy! 

McLean and Durando talk about 3 pieces of advice for therapists seeking the latest research. They are:

  1. Receive regular updates from the best peer-reviewed journals without having to search for them – through RSS feeds and alike.
  2. Find trustworthy sources of synthesized knowledge – like Physiospot.
  3. Access full-text versions of relevant articles – through archives, repositories or open access content.

The Latest MSK & Specialities does all of this. It hits all 3 in 1 and even better we do it for you.

I get a lot of benefit from creating the newsletter, it allows me to read a lot of research and gives me time to reflect upon what I’ve read. I hope the readers do. For a long time now I’ve had a feeling we were onto something good with these newsletters, I just haven’t been able to cement this belief. McLean and Durando seem to think we are onto something good too.

Wait Don’t Go Yet!

What you don’t see is what goes on behind the scenes. We have a really committed team, a team I’ve been part of the team for the entirety of my professional career and I am always amazed at how well we work together and create brilliant content. We are able to achieve great things because we collectively own a central belief, none of us have to buy in to the idea of sharing physiotherapy knowledge with the world, we all own it.

If you’re interested in becoming a part of the team then check out this tweet by Rachael Lowe.