DOI: 10.5061/dryad.vmcvdnd17
title: Health sciences librarians’ awareness and incorporation of informed consent standards for medical image publication: A preliminary study

description: Objective: The objective of this study was to determine if health sciences
 library workers were aware of informed consent best practices and
 standards for the publication of medical images and if they incorporated
 the recommendations into their professional work. Methods: A survey was
 developed by the authors to determine awareness and incorporation of
 informed consent best practices and standards for the publication of
 medical images. The survey was distributed via listservs of professional
 librarian associations in the United States. The results of the survey
 were tabulated in RStudio. Fisher’s Exact Test was carried out to
 determine if awareness of informed consent influenced job
 responsibilities. Results: A total of 91 respondents were included in the
 data analysis with all respondents reporting multiple
 responsibilities (instructional, collections, and/or digital initiatives).
 While the majority of library workers (59%) were aware of the best
 practices and standards, few incorporated the recommendations into their
 professional work. Over 50% of librarians with instructional
 responsibilities, over 70% of librarians with collections
 responsibilities, and over 60% of librarians with digital initiative
 responsibilities were aware of the recommendations, but did not
 incorporate the recommendations into their job duties. Conclusions: The
 professional work of health sciences library workers does not appear to
 include a significant incorporation of informed consent best practices and
 standards for the publication of medical images. There is a need for
 future research to better understand how library workers can better
 incorporate their knowledge of informed consent recommendations into their
 work.
description: # Health sciences librarians’ awareness and incorporation of informed
 consent standards for medical image publication: A preliminary study
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.vmcvdnd17](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.vmcvdnd17) The cleaned survey results as well as the R code used to analyze the data is made available here. ## Description of the data and file structure Cleaned data.xlsx: This excel sheet contains the results of the survey conducted for our manuscript titled The Role of Health Sciences Libraries in Supporting Medical Image Consent Standards Survey. The research study was about informed consent standards for the publication of medical images. The survey participants were health sciences library workers. The survey participants were given the option to skip questions as well as stop the survey at any time. Based on their specific role in the library, questions were grouped into different sections. So, there will be missing values in the excel sheet either due to the role of the librarian or their decision to skip questions. The missing values have been taken into account in the analysis by considering each role separately. ## Sharing/Access information To be updated when article is published. Data did not come from any other source. ## Code/Software informed_consent_medicalimages_project.R: The code is written in R language and can be run using either the R command line or RStudio. The code reads in the data sheet of Cleaned data.xlsx and tabulates counts for the demographic information of the librarians. It also gives counts of whether each librarian in their respective roles (three different types were considered) would incorporate consent standards in their work. Based on the numbers, either a chi-square or Fisher’s exact test was run to see if the decision to implement depended on the librarian’s role.