Search

While perinatal mental health concerns are common, little attention is paid to noticing or addressing these concerns. Midwives and obstetricians are uniquely positioned to universally screen their patients for mental health conditions during the perinatal period, and provide referrals for additional mental health supports if relevant. Previous studies on perinatal mental health care have focused primarily on midwifery care, excluding perinatal healthcare providers such as obstetricians. This rapid review aims to examine the barriers to accessing mental health care during the perinatal period as experienced by obstetricians, midwives, and their patients.A rapid review of literature was conducted on barriers to perinatal mental health care as experienced by patients, midwives, and obstetricians. The search strategy included published literature from PubMed, CINAHL, PsycINFO, and Web of Science published between 2000 and 2020. All documents were screened by two researchers and disagreements were resolved through consensus with a third reviewer. After data from all included articles were extracted, thematic analysis was conducted, and findings were compared with related reviews that focused on mental health access for individuals who accessed midwifery care.Of the 539 references and documents that were screened, 31 articles met the inclusion criteria. In the extraction phase, country, study objective(s), study design, perspective(s), barriers, and the dimension(s) impacted along the pathway to accessing care were retrieved from the 31 included articles. After all barriers were classified using the Supply-Side Dimensions of Access, we developed a classification framework to further examine stigma at the societal, institutional, and individual levels.While midwives utilize a more holistic approach to care as compared with obstetricians, the barriers identified through this rapid review indicate that obstetricians and their patients face similar struggles to accessing and providing mental health care. Moreover, stigma plays a large role in the barriers experienced by patients, midwives, and obstetricians - at individual and institutional levels.Obstetricians encounter similar stigma-related barriers as midwives in detecting mental health concerns, as well as connecting clients to available mental health resources and supports. Therefore, to effectively eliminate barriers to accessing perinatal mental health care, a systemic change must be enacted throughout all three layers to address the deep-rooted stigma associated with accessing mental health care during the perinatal period.

Physicists in academic institutions utilize a variety of resources and strategies to seek, find, and use scholarly information and news. Using a sample of physicists, researchers surveyed 182 students and faculty at seven Canadian university institutions to explore self-perceived success rates, resources consulted, databases used, and use of social media and citation management systems. To complement the survey, 11 follow up interviews/focus groups were completed with participants to further uncover information-seeking behaviors, choices, strategies, and feelings around keeping up to date with information needs. According to survey results, a minority of physicists (15.4%) acknowledged that they were successfully keeping up to date. However, a significant number of physicists (28.6%) indicated that they were unsuccessful and could do better in remaining current with information needs. Co-investigators, using qualitative analyses, identified four emergent themes: (1) There are “too many papers – and not enough time” to effectively search, evaluate and read scholarly papers of interest; (2) Staying up to date is important especially in competitive research areas; (3) Graduate students seek information differently than faculty and experienced researchers; and (4) The arXiv database is important to many physicists. Additional minor themes included physics-related publishing is constantly evolving; physicists use a variety of information-seeking behaviors; and, information-seeking methods can differ between physics subdisciplines. This study aims to shed light on opportunities for academic librarians to identify and meet physicists’ evolving information behaviors, attitudes, choices, and needs.

Mathematicians in academic institutions utilize a variety of resources and strategies to seek, find, and use scholarly information and news. Using a sample of mathematicians, researchers surveyed 112 students and faculty at four Canadian university institutions to explore self-perceived success rates, resources consulted, databases used, use of social media, and citation management systems. Further, 12 follow-up interviews were completed with mathematicians to better interpret survey results, resulting information-seeking behaviors, choices, strategies, and feelings on keeping up to date with information needs. According to survey results, a minority of mathematicians (12.5 percent) acknowledged that they were successfully keeping up to date. However, a significant number of mathematicians (28.6 percent) indicated that they were unsuccessful and could do better in remaining current with information needs. Co-investigators, using qualitative analyses, identified four emergent themes related to remaining current: (1) The “slower pace of math” pervades all aspects of this discipline;” (2) There are “too many papers – and not enough time” to effectively search, evaluate, and read scholarly papers of interest; (3) Mathematicians collectively acknowledge that they are open to strategies and technologies where they “could do better” keeping up to date; and (4) Mathematicians have divided loyalties using databases when searching for information by means of “MathSciNet in a Google world.” Additional insights document how mathematicians are guided by mathematical peculiarities and discipline-specific practices. This study helps to shed light on opportunities for academic librarians to identify and meet mathematicians’ evolving information needs. Keywords: Mathematicians, information-seeking behaviors, information needs, information sources, graduate students, faculty, academic (university) libraries, knowledge management

Background: Multiple sclerosis (MS), a progressive demyelinating disease of the brain and spinal cord, is the leading cause of nontraumatic neurological damage in young adults. Canada has one of the highest reported incidents of MS, with estimates between 55 and 240 per 100,000 individuals. Between 2009 and 2014, the MS Society of Canada provided over Can $90 million to researchers and, since 2013, has encouraged researchers to make both current and previous research products openly available. Objective: The goal of the study was to determine the open access (OA) cost implications and repository policies of journals frequently used by a sample of MS researchers. This study benchmarked current publishing preferences by MS Society of Canada researchers by examining the OA full-text availability of journal articles written by researchers funded between 2009 and 2014. Methods: Researchers were identified from the 2009 to 2014 annual MS Society of Canada Research Summaries. Articles were identified through searches in Web of Science, Scopus, Medline and Embase (both via OVID). Journal level analysis included comparison of OA policies, including article processing charges (APCs) and repository policies. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Results: There were 758 articles analyzed in this study, of which 288 (38.0%) were OA articles. The majority of authors were still relying on journal policies for deposit in PubMed Central or availability on publisher websites for OA. Gold OA journals accounted for 10.2% of the journals in this study and were associated with significantly lower APCs (US $1900) than in hybrid journals (US $3000). Review of the journal self-archiving options highlighted the complexity of stipulations that authors would have to navigate to legally deposit a version of their article. Conclusions: This study found that there are currently researcher- and publisher-imposed barriers to both the gold and green roads to OA. These results provide a current benchmark against which efforts to enhance openness can be measured and can serve as a reference point in future assessments of the impact of OA policies within this field. With funding agencies worldwide releasing OA mandates, future success in compliance will require changes to how researchers and publishers approach production and dissemination of research. [J Med Internet Res 2017;19(2):e52]

Proceedings of the CAIS/ACSI 2012 conference.