Background
At an international self-care summit arranged by Imperial College London in 2023, it was noted by all that there was no single repository of evidence supporting the study of self-care. It was agreed that a core group of attendees, including some with previous experience of similar initiatives, would explore the concept of such a repository. Taking a pragmatic approach, a website was then developed by a core group of summit attendees with funding from the UK Self-Care Forum. We are soft launching the SCO now.
The summit was designed and supported through a collaboration between the Self-Care Academic Research Unit (SCARU) Imperial College London, the Worldwide Universities Network and the School of Public Health, University of Technology Sydney. The summit brought together a range of international partners with expertise and an interest in advancing the self-care research field.
Structure of the SCO
Each Self-Care Subject is curated by an international expert in the field. Papers can include authoritative sources (including grey literature) even though they do not currently appear in PubMed or other databases. Examples are papers that appear in the journal Self-Care and UK NHS research. As far as possible we have attempted to include papers that are open access.
Only a limited number of papers is currently included under each heading to ‘start somewhere’. At this stage, a maximum of ’10 of the best’ papers on each subject is visible. To quote from Junaid Bajwa, Chief Medical Scientist, Microsoft Research at the above seminar: “Medical knowledge doubles every 73 days. A medical article published every 30s. 4000 new papers appear on PubMed every day- experts can curate around 10.”
For each paper there is a very short summary, a picture of the original where available and a link to it. In future, as the number of papers increase, all will remain searchable on the site, though only the ‘top ten’ will be visible.
Post-launch
Those involved in the Observatory, which was developed and curated overall by the Self-Care Forum’s President, Dr Pete Smith, look forward to organic growth and invite constructive suggestions on how it might be improved, advice on further papers to consider for inclusion and suggestions for further subject areas.
If you have expertise in the area and would like to consider leading on one of the currently uncurated subjects or would like to suggest papers for inclusion, please contact the overall developer, Dr Peter Smith, at: p.smith@imperial.ac.uk.
General comments and questions can be sent to Peter.
