Creating Collaborative Space: The PAHO Paper Clinic

The enthusiasm over social media often overlooks the important professional side of the street. Social marketers and health communicators are quick to explore social media for 'the audience,' but my impression is they are less inclined to adopt it for themselves. I have noted before how US intelligence agencies have rapidly shifted to blogs and wikis for information gathering and sharing; there are also open source epidemiology sites available; and the CDC has been actively been engaging with social media and blogging in particular. I just received this announcement that the Pan American Health Organization has designed and launched a virtual collaborative space to provide review and guidance for people and organizations in that region who want to submit abstracts to the XVII International AIDS Conference. The space features are described as including:

• Toolkit: links that would enable users to learn about the techniques and art of writing scientific proposals and papers.
• Tutorship: will be provided – at a limited scale initially - to improve the quality of some promising papers and to sharpen the capacities of investigators and writers.
• Virtual tools for exchange of information and experiences – forum, blog, wikis.

The site states that PAHO cannot assure that abstracts reviewed in this space will be accepted to the conference. It may go a long way, though, in providing access to tools and expertise for people and organizations whose experiences deserve to be shared with a broader audience, but whose limited knowledge and capabilities place them at a disadvantage for submitting abstracts for peer review at a scientific meeting. Excellent idea!

My blog doesn't see many visitors from the Latin America, so if you know people in that region who may be interested in the resource, pass the word. And be sure to check the Director's blog.