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Éidín Ní Shé, a Research Fellow at University College Dublin (UCD), is a co-author on three articles published on HRB Open Research. She is in the lead author of the first article to pass peer review on HRB Open Research. In this guest blog, Éidín tells us how she found the publication process and why it is relevant to her work in public patient involvement in health research.

A key frustration that researchers often experience with the peer review process is the significant delay that can occur between submission and outcome. We decided to publish on the HRB Open Research platform as it provided immediate publication and, significantly, transparency in the peer review process. Overall our article was published and peer reviewed in less than two weeks. Another benefit is that our article is open access. This gives us the perfect opportunity to showcase our program of work which centres around engaging ‘seldom heard groups’ in health and social care research to a wider audience. As soon as our protocol paper was published, we were able to cite and share the paper both internally in UCD and with our external partners.

Involving patients and the public

The launch of the HRB Public and Patient Involvement (PPI) Ignite Awards clearly demonstrates the HRB’s commitment to act on their current strategy to in relation to strengthening PPI. The PPI Ignite program achieves this by supporting programs and projects that enable institution wide responses. Currently, five Irish universities have received funding under this scheme.

We embrace the PPI principal of our research being carried out with or by members of the public rather than to them or about them. I am a member of the UCD PPI Ignite Connect team, led by Professor Thilo Kroll, which represents the diversity of PPI activity that currently exists across the university and affiliated Ireland East Hospital group  partners. The UCD PPI Ignite Connect program of work includes focusing on building capacity and capability, embedding PPI within research and teaching, supporting knowledge mobilisation and network formations and developing PPI governance structures.

During the development of the UCD proposal one significant question was posed: “how could we overcome the often-identified challenges of engaging ‘seldom heard groups’ in health and social care research?”  It is within this context that we developed and submitted our protocol to HRB Open Research.

Rapid Realist Review 

Our focus is on undertaking a rapid realist review to understand what are the mechanisms and resources that need to be included to enable the reciprocal involvement of seldom heard groups in health and social care research. As noted in our protocol paper a realist question is to focused on: ”what is it about this intervention that works in this context and why?” This is done by continuously building on the empirical and theoretical literature by accommodating and summarizing a diversity of evidence types.

The benefit of the rapid realist approach and key to the success of the review is the active involvement of an expert panel who are content experts and ensure the review reflects current thinking.  They also assist by providing relevant documentation to be included in the review. The first program of work undertaken was convening our expert panel. Membership includes representation from:

1. Disability Federation of Ireland
2. National Women’s Council of Ireland
3. Dublin Simon Community
4. Transgender Equality Network of Ireland
5. A medical doctor working in Inclusion Health within an acute hospital;
6. Academics with experience in PPI, co-design, emancipatory research working from three Irish universities

Our inception meeting clarified our scope of work, agreed on search terms and databases to be included. Significantly, the methods of undertaking the reference panel process was clarified a key process to ensure the review is sensitive to local insights.

Our realist review work is ongoing and will be disseminated via a number of outputs, such as a conference, summary report and academic paper. The outcome of the review will be translated and embedded into the UCD PPI Ignite Connect program.

HRB Open Research provides all Health Research Board-funded researchers with a place to rapidly publish any results they think are worth sharing. All articles benefit from immediate publication, transparent refereeing and the inclusion of all source data. If you are a grantee of the Health Research Board you can find more information about how to publish on HRB Open Research here.