Updating Your Information Monitoring System When Sources Change Continuously
Information monitoring primarily aims to help stakeholders stay informed of recent and relevant knowledge to support decision-making. To achieve this goal, key content must be collected from quality sources that are up-to-date and well managed. How can one be proactive and keep collecting online content from the best channels (ex: websites, databases, journals, social media, etc.)?
Document Databases that Constantly Evolve
Information monitoring relies on different strategies to curate specific content, including complex search strategies formulated within online databases.
In the health sector, notable databases include PubMed, Medline, CINAHL, and Embase. However, the producers change these databases continuously, for example: changing search engine functionality, adding or removing keywords in the thesaurus, etc. This implies that the information specialist will need to adapt the search strategy and syntax but also have a good process to document the changes.
In a methodological article published in 2018, the authors propose a systematic approach to perform optimal searches in databases. They recommend designing search strategies in a saved document rather than directly in the database, to always have the latest version of the strategy that can simply be copied and pasted [1].
Documents and Web Pages That Disappear …
The long-term preservation of digital information represents a significant challenge. In 2024, Martin-Paul Eve from University College London conducted an experiment creating a database of over 7 million scholarly articles with a DOI (Digital Object Identifier), the equivalent of an ISBN for books. From this randomly sampled set, he found that 27% of these documents were not preserved in permanent archives, which is both surprising and alarming [2].
Also in 2024, the Pew Research Center found that 25% of web pages published online in 2013 had disappeared ten years later. Additionally, 23% of new web pages contained at least one broken hyperlink, which was the case for 21% of government web pages [3].
The notions of content dating and updating are both part of the criteria for evaluating the quality of online information [4]. This is very important when analysing content that should be included in the final information monitoring deliverable. Thus, when examining the content on a web page, one should consider the following questions:
- “Is the creation date indicated on the page?
- Is the date of the last update and frequency of updates indicated?
- Is the date specified on different sections of the site?
- Are the proposed hyperlinks still active?”
Periodicals That Die (or Are Born)
In 2021, a study found that 176 open-access periodicals, in the fields of science or human and social sciences, vanished between 2000 and 2019 [5]. ScienceInsider indicated that an additional 900 periodicals were at risk of disappearing. This raises two fundamental questions: the preservation of digital archives and access to the results of publicly funded scientific research.
At the same time, in the fields of science, as new disciplines or specialties emerge, new periodical publications are published.
From an information monitoring perspective, this requires implementing a continuous improvement process to review the sources that should be watched.
Source Dashboard: A Key Management Tool
Information specialists design tools and strategies to overcome the various challenges related to the process of information monitoring, including source management.
For instance, Cogniges offers a business intelligence service. The objective is to support clients that want to implement an information monitoring project based on their specific needs or to update their existing system to improve results.
Among these customized management tools is the source dashboard. According to Xavier Delengaigne, an information monitoring expert, this type of dashboard offers the following advantages: “sharing and transmitting sources; obtaining a snapshot of sources at a given moment; updating your information watch; preserving the origin of your sources and improve and update your sources”[6].
Updating the list of sources, from which relevant content is collected, is part of the continuous improvement of an information monitoring process. The elements related to this dynamic process range from listening proactively to client needs to optimizing sources and
- utilizing advanced search engine functions to find relevant information;
- integrating different types of high-quality sources;
- ongoing training on best practices;
- sharing experiences and leading practices with peers; and
- regularly evaluating the relevancy and quality of sources [7].
The fields of publishing, source and knowledge management are in constant evolution. The expertise and agility of information specialists combined with the implementation of well-designed and customized information monitoring systems, by Cogniges, will help you stay informed based on your needs and aligned with the latest trends!
References
[1] Bramer, W. M., de Jonge, G. B., Rethlefsen, M. L., Mast, F., and Kleijnen, J. (2018). A systematic approach to searching: an efficient and complete method to develop literature searches. Journal of Medical Libraries Association, 106(4), 531-541. https://doi.org/10.5195/jmla.2018.283
[2] Eve, M. P. (2024). Digital scholarly journals are poorly preserved: a study of 7 million articles. Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication, 12(1). https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.16288
[3] Pew Research Center, Chapekis, A., Bestvater, S., Remy, E., and Rivero, G. (2024). When online content disappears. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/data-labs/2024/05/17/when-online-content-disappears/
[4] Université de Montréal. Service des bibliothèques. (2019). Fiabilité de l’information: évaluer le contenu en ligne. https://bib.umontreal.ca/evaluer-analyser-rediger/fiabilite-information
[5] Laakso, M., Matthias, L., and Jahn, N. (2021). Open is not forever: A study of vanished open access journals. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 72(9), 1099-1112. https://asistdl.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1002/asi.24460
[6] Delengaigne, X. (2019). 100 fiches pour organiser sa veille sur Internet (3rd ed.). Eyrolles.
[7] Dupin, C. (2022). Comment dynamiser son dispositif de veille? Archimag Guide pratique « Réussir ses projets de veille », 8-10.