ID-EN Network Guidelines

The ID Educator Network (ID-EN) is a project of the Antimicrobial Stewardship Training, Education, and Research (ASTER) Network.  The purpose of the ID-EN is to 1) serve as a communication tool for sharing information among educators in ID pharmacotherapy and antimicrobial stewardship 2) share best practices and resources, and 3) stimulate collaboration on educational and research projects in ID education.

The tools of the ID-EN are the network listserv and the Shared Resource Repository.  These tools are available for ID-EN members.   Please review the Rules and Procedures & Etiquette for using these tools below:

Membership (how do I sign up?)

  1. Membership in the ID-EN is open to clinicians, educators and researchers interested in research and quality improvement in education in ID pharmacotherapy and antimicrobial stewardship.  
  2. To keep bots, scammers, etc out of the list and to maintain an ongoing roster of participants, individuals interested in joining the listserv are required to fill out a brief demographic form and then enrolled in the listserv and provided access to the Shared Resource Repository by the moderators.  Members are invited and encouraged to direct appropriate colleagues to the membership form, located on the Join ID-EN webpage or at: http://tiny.ucsf.edu/idedsignup
  3. Being a jerk on the listserv, improper use of the Shared Resource Repository, etc are grounds for removal from membership upon review by the steering committee (usually with a prior warning).

Governance (who’s “in charge”?)

  1. Questions, proposals for use of the listserv for research (see below), or issues with the listserv or Shared Resource Repository should be directed to the moderators at [email protected]
  2. The inaugural moderators are Meghan Jeffres (primary responsibility for listserv) and Conan MacDougall (primary responsibility for Shared Resource Repository)
  3. Overall governance of the ID-EN is the responsibility of the Steering Committee.  Initial members of the Steering Committee are listed at the end of the document.  Steering Committee members should probably rotate off of the Steering Committee to make room for interested new members to participate; but we haven’t quite got that figured out yet.

Rules (like, legal stuff: make sure to follow these!)

1. Copyrighted Content: Listserv and repository users are not permitted to use the listserv to distribute copyrighted material. Doing so is a violation of copyright law and exposes the sender, and list owner, to the risk of a copyright infringement lawsuit with all of the attendant costs associated with such a lawsuit. It is permissible to provide a link to the copyrighted content (ex: link to a journal website, PubMed link). 

  • Some learning objects that users share (e.g. PowerPoint slide decks) may contain excerpts from copyrighted material (e.g. figures from a journal article).  These uses may fall under “fair use” educational exemptions, but any persons adapting these materials for their own use need to ensure that they are following their OWN LOCAL GUIDANCE with regards to “fair use” exemptions.  

2. Prohibited Communications

  • Any Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) protected information. FERPA is the HIPAA for students and protects the privacy of student education records. All identifying information about a student or students must be removed from any listserv communications.
  • Comments, recommendations, questions, or answers concerning the establishment or amounts of specific prices, charges, or costs for products and/or services, sharing of fee structures, or financial information that could suggest possible price collusion between competitors.
  • Recommendations that favor or disfavor a particular vendor or service provider based on the price of those services.
  • Opinions that stray toward or may suggest prohibited activities cited above. 

3. Recognize and be sensitive to the fact that use of the listserv is a “public” activity that is subject to the subpoena power of law enforcement authorities like most other forms of communication. There should be no expectation of privacy.

4. Clearly articulate whether the information being provided represents factual information/data or is a professional or personal opinion. 

Procedures & Etiquette (to make everyone’s’ experience better)

1. Include your name and affiliation in all messages.

2. When you receive a message directed to the list, selecting the “Reply” button in your email program will send the response to the author of the message. Selecting the “Reply All” button in your e-mail program will send your response to the original author as well as the entire list. Always double-check the name or address you are replying to when responding to a message transmitted by an e-mail list. 

3. Surveys:

  • Feel free to post general informal queries to the listserv (e.g. “What textbooks do people use for their ID course?”)
  • For formal, representative surveys of the network, including any surveys where the results may be published or presented, see the “Research Projects” section below.
  • When a quantitative tally of responses is desired for an informal survey, consider working with the moderators to create a brief online survey (e.g. using Qualtrics, SurveyMonkey, or other tools) and distribute an anonymous link on the listserv, which will streamline the process for responding and

4. Resource requests:

  • Please review the Shared Resource Repository (http://tiny.ucsf.edu/ided) to see whether relevant materials have already been uploaded before posting a request for resources to the listserv.
  • Implicit in any request for materials to view or adapt is an obligation to provide attribution to those who may be sharing the materials.  The method of attribution should be suited to the material, whether on a slide (“Slide courtesy of Jane Pharmacy”, “Adapted from Joe Pharmacy”), in a document (“Acknowledgements: Jerome Pharmacy for sharing his version”), etc.

5. Resource sharing:

  • In most cases, faculty hold the copyright to materials that they create that represent original, creative work.  If your institution has policies against sharing faculty-created documents or if you have reason to believe someone else would hold copyright, do not share the materials.
  • Consider explicitly setting the terms for sharing of your resources by applying a Creative Commons license to your work: https://creativecommons.org
  • To share a resource, best practice is to upload the resource to an appropriate folder in the Shared Resource Repository by going to http://tiny.ucsf.edu/ided, opening the appropriate folder, and uploading by dragging the document onto the screen or using the Upload button.  If there doesn’t seem to be a great folder “match”, upload the file to the closest “match” and include a comment with what you think an appropriate folder will be, and the moderators can create that folder. Consider adding one or more tags to your document using the Add Tags function and including your name and contact information in the Comments function if it is not included in the document itself.  You can then share a link to the document either directly with the requestor or the ID-EN listserv using the Send Items function and the recipient’s email.
  • Alternatively, you may attach the resource to an email to the ID EN listserv.  To maximize the value of the Shared Resource Repository, the moderators may archive resources posted to the listserv to the Shared Resource Repository.

6. Research projects:

  • A goal of the listserv is to stimulate and facilitate research in ID and stewardship education.  Oversight of the use of the listserv for research purposes is intended to avoid duplication in projects and ensure protection of members’ data.  We encourage members to propose research ideas and to recruit members into research collaborations.
  • For formal research projects intended for publication where surveying the membership is the primary data source,
  1. Before posting links to anonymous surveys (where respondent name/identifiers is not collected) of the membership on the listserv, please send a brief email to the moderators with the purpose of the study and evidence of local IRB approval or exemption.  The moderators will review and if necessary share with the steering committee. In most cases, a response within 1-2 business days with authorization to post will follow.
  2. If access to the membership list in order to send individually linked email surveys or to select respondents is desired, an emailed descriptive proposal including what data elements are required, along with local IRB approval or exemption, should be sent to the moderators. The steering committee will review and respond within 2-5 days.
  • Reference to the ID Educators Network in posters or manuscripts would be expected when surveys of the participants is a primary component of the study.
  • Research collaborations resulting from listserv discussions but without surveying the participants as a primary aim does not require review by the steering committee. Reference to the ID Educators Network is encouraged if appropriate.
  • In all cases, authorship on research projects is at the discretion of the collaborating team based on contributions (we encourage review of ICJME authorship criteria: http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html ) and is never automatically granted or expected simply as a result of membership in the network.

7. If you receive an unwanted message from a list member who doesn’t observe the rules above, please do not respond to the list. Instead, ignore the message or, if you feel the need to respond to the sender, make certain you reply only to the sender. 

Did you really read all the way down to here?  Good for you!  You are just the kind of dedicated person we want on the ID EN!  Hopefully we can all make it a big success!

For the ID EN Steering Committee July 2018

Brandon Bookstaver, University of South Carolina College of Pharmacy, [email protected]

Elias Chahine, Palm Beach Atlantic School of Pharmacy, [email protected]

Jonathan Cho, University of Texas-Tyler College of Pharmacy, [email protected]

Susan Davis, Wayne State University College of Pharmacy, [email protected]

Lynne Fehrenbacher, Concordia University Wisconsin School of Pharmacy, [email protected]

Jason Gallagher, Temple University School of Pharmacy, [email protected]

Joshua Garcia, Marshall B. Ketchum University College of Pharmacy, [email protected]

Katherine Gruenberg, University of California San Francisco School of Pharmacy, [email protected]

Meghan Jeffres, University of Colorado Skaggs School of Pharmacy, [email protected]

Julie Ann Justo, University of South Carolina College of Pharmacy, [email protected]

Kenneth Klinker, University of Florida College of Pharmacy, [email protected]

Wesley Kufel, Binghamton University School of Pharmacy, [email protected]

Kerry LaPlante, University of Rhode Island College of Pharmacy, [email protected]

Conan MacDougall, University of California San Francisco School of Pharmacy, [email protected]

Navaneeth Narayanan, Rutgers Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy, [email protected]

Katie Suda, University of Illinois – Chicago College of Pharmacy, [email protected]

Marc Scheetz, Midwestern University Chicago College of Pharmacy, [email protected]