Reseach but Make it Accessible

Emily Brady (0:16): Hi, everyone. I'm Emily.

Unknown Speaker (0:18): And this is Eva.

Unknown Speaker (0:20): And you're listening to speech talk.

Unknown Speaker (0:22): We're your research book club so

Emily Brady (0:24): you can do evidence based practice and practice. So let's start talking. You have to tell me about your fun week.

Unknown Speaker (0:31): Oh, right. Fun weeks. Oh my gosh. I have been using chat in my sessions a lot. It's just because we were just talking about

Emily Brady (0:48): The evil water sucking chat GPT. But

Eva Johnson (0:54): it's, like, so incredible as my, like, sidekick buddy clinician. And I've been trying to do a lot more kind of vocational based stuff in my sessions. But the thing is I don't know a lot about what my patient's work is like. Like, I got a patient who's a CPA. I'm scared of doing my own taxes, much less knowing how to do somebody else's.

Eva Johnson (1:17): So, I've been, you know, using chat to ask higher level cognitive questions and activity creation, and it just spits me out stuff. And I try it out with my patients, and they've been super into it. And that's been really cool that I can kind of jump into this aspect of providing a structured way to for them to reengage with their work while also targeting their goals. I think for them, it feels so applicable, and that's awesome. But I literally couldn't do without chat.

Unknown Speaker (1:54): I went to my patient. I was like, I'm gonna ask you some questions that a CPA would know. You have to tell me if they make sense because I don't even understand these questions.

Emily Brady (2:06): That's funny. And that also, like, probably saves you so much time so you're not, like, researching.

Unknown Speaker (2:11): Yes. It really, really, really, really, really, really does.

Emily Brady (2:15): That's funny too because I found something similar to that on Teachers Pay Teachers where it was, like, forms to practice filling out your taxes, and all of my clients don't pay taxes because they're so old. Like, they just don't like, they have no they're like, why would I pay taxes? I was like, that's fair. I'll just file this away. Maybe one day.

Unknown Speaker (2:40): Like

Eva Johnson (2:42): I do love those premade forms, though. So good. You're like, I really needed an applicable worksheet. Thank you, whoever you are.

Emily Brady (2:50): Yeah. Yeah. Whoever whoever spends their time making stuff on Teachers Pay Teachers, I see you, and I appreciate your work.

Unknown Speaker (2:59): How about you, Em? So what you've been doing?

Emily Brady (3:02): So this week, my student has started. Oh, yeah. And so nice. She is so nice. So I'm kinda, like, setting up a session and, like, giving it to my student and, like, trying to walk away while also, like, putting both hands over my mouth and trying not to overstep on her because they're, like, my clients still, and I wanna be helpful, but I wanna give her, like, space to do and grow.

Emily Brady (3:28): And so it's like, I had to, like, sit on my hands. It's like

Unknown Speaker (3:33): Aw. You're you're like a mama hen. I love that.

Unknown Speaker (3:36): I'm like over I'm a little over controlling, but I'm like always checking. I'm like, how was that? How do you feel okay? Do you need me? I'm over here.

Unknown Speaker (3:48): Oh, that's the sweetest dang thing.

Emily Brady (3:51): So but unfortunately, she got the flu. So she had to take a week. It's like week one, and she left after three days, got the flu, and had to be out for a week. So she'll come back tomorrow. It's all a part of

Unknown Speaker (4:04): the sniff learning curve. Like, your immune system will adapt.

Emily Brady (4:09): And it was funny too because one of my coworkers was like, well, it's good she got it out of her way now because she'll never have a day off again. You have to make that shit up on Saturday.

Unknown Speaker (4:24): For reals. For reals. Let's pause here for a second. We'll come back right after the break. Good.

Unknown Speaker (4:34): So good. So good.

Unknown (4:35): Spring styles are at Nordstrom Rack stores now, and they're up to 60% off. Stock up and save on Rag and Bone, Maywell, Vince, All Saints, and more of your favorites.

Unknown Speaker (4:45): How did I not know Rack has Adidas?

Unknown Speaker (4:47): Why do we rack? For the hottest deals.

Unknown Speaker (4:49): Just so many good brands.

Unknown (4:50): Join the Naughty Club to unlock exclusive discounts. Shop new arrivals first and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite Rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you Rack.

Unknown (5:03): Pepsi Prebiotic Cola in original and cherry vanilla. That Pepsi taste you love with just 30 calories and no artificial sweeteners. Pepsi Prebiotic Cola. Unbelievably Pepsi.

Unknown Speaker (5:21): To the article, what are we talking about this week?

Unknown Speaker (5:23): We're talking about research and access to research, paying for research and not paying for research. Is that a good summary? Did I Yes. Nail

Emily Brady (5:34): Yeah. And I I really think that the article we chose this week nicely sums up one big reason we started this podcast was that research just feels very inaccessible because it is. Quite literally, so much resource is hidden behind a paywall, and we're missing out information because we're being asked to pay for things we need to be able to know to do our practice. So I don't know. It's not

Eva Johnson (6:04): just paying. Like, honestly, I'd pay a buck or 2 to read a research article. I'm like, you did the research, like that's your job, like I'll pay. But it's like, would you like to pay $24 for twenty four hours? And I'm like, I sleep for eight of those hours and work eight of those hours.

Unknown Speaker (6:26): So really, I have access to it for eight hours during which I'm also doing other stuff. So like, no. I'm not paying a dollar an hour for research. Hell to the no. So not to just break into event.

Unknown Speaker (6:43): But

Emily Brady (6:43): No. And I like, that money doesn't even go to the researchers. Like, I I would prefer to pay the researcher for their time and energy, but no. We pay publishers for hosting the article, and then the author pays the publisher for posting their articles. So the publisher gets That

Unknown Speaker (7:07): really got me.

Emily Brady (7:07): Money from all of us just to exist.

Unknown Speaker (7:13): We will get into that in just a minute. But, yeah, bookmark that. That's hilarious.

Emily Brady (7:18): So according to the American Speech Language Hearing Association, evidence based practice includes the integration of clinical expertise, clinical perspectives, and evidence that includes research. Clinicians are expected to stay up to date with evidence from the research literature, but in a recent survey found that the second most reported barrier by speech language pathologists to engaging in evidence based practice is the lack of access to information. That's a huge problem. Just really expected. You're

Unknown Speaker (7:58): I love that you're, like, putting words in bold and underlining them, although they are not bold or underlined in this text.

Unknown Speaker (8:06): It's all

Unknown Speaker (8:07): in the voice.

Emily Brady (8:08): All in the voice. We but we are expected to stay up to date with these, but we can't have them. We're made to use them, but, like, nope. Can't read it unless you pay me. I don't know.

Emily Brady (8:23): It's this whole article is a is event session for me, clearly, Eva.

Eva Johnson (8:28): Emily's like, I am in a tough Yeah. So our article is titled The Effect of Open Access on Scholarly and Societal Metrics of Impact in the ASHA Journals by Helen Long, Lee Drowne, and Miriam El Amin.

Emily Brady (8:48): So this article looked at the different levels of access for research. We're talking about open access, where the article calls that OA, where we're talking about articles that are freely available without a subscription.

Eva Johnson (9:02): Yeah. So I think, like, part of the goal of open access is kind of hypothesized to increase readership, citations, and public attention. The article is the first to examine that within the communication sciences field.

Emily Brady (9:17): This article looked at open access and how different types of open access articles are viewed, downloaded, cited, and if their availability impacts the amount of article that was used.

Eva Johnson (9:28): So how are we looking at impact? We're looking at scholarly impact, so that's measured by citation count and societal impact. That's measured by something called altmetrics, which is we'll get into the definitions in just a second. They looked at these metrics for articles published in ASHA journals. Turns out there's more than one ASHA journal, and I didn't know that.

Eva Johnson (9:53): Anyways, here are the different open access levels. Emily, get us started.

Emily Brady (9:58): So first, we have gold, meaning the article is fully open to the public, on the publisher's site, often with the article processing fee paid by authors.

Eva Johnson (10:08): That's the funny part. They pay for the privilege to have it published.

Emily Brady (10:13): Yeah. It is the crazy part. I looked it up too. It costs $2,000 to put a paper on ASHA for open access. Oh, wow.

Emily Brady (10:22): So, yeah, if you have an article and you're reading it and it's beautiful in Asha, send that extra thank you to those authors for $2,000 to put that on there.

Eva Johnson (10:33): So the next one is green is the level green, green open access. It's defined as the open access route in which authors share an accepted version of the peer reviewed manuscript online in an open repository. So think about websites like PubMed. The copyright is retained by the publisher.

Emily Brady (10:53): And then finally, we have closed access. This is the one that is the most bothersome. This is the article is behind a subscription or a paywall. So example, closed access manuscripts published in the ASHA journals are openly accessible to ASHA members, but require a pay per view charge for nonmembers to access or if it's in a special interest group, and those specific restrictions apply.

Eva Johnson (11:24): Yeah, man. I get so mad whenever I'm, like, trying to read stuff on ASHA, and I click the get access button for my membership, and it's like, nope. Special interest group. I'm like, boo. So that kinda wraps up all the different levels of access.

Emily Brady (11:41): The researchers then tally all the articles in the four CSD journals. And I really want you guys to look at this chart, and not just because I'm such a sucker for a good chart.

Unknown Speaker (11:52): You are every time. You're like, this article's chart. My god. Girl can't get off of a chart.

Emily Brady (12:00): I know it really is. It's a problem. But this chart, it it's laughable how many articles are posted by ASHA for the purposes of people in the CSD world, and we can't get them without the paywall. So within the four groups, there was a total of 3,419 articles, and 1,900 of them were closed access. So

Eva Johnson (12:22): But roughly half. So the article starts out with listing these three different publishing access methods. There's gold access, green access, and closed access. But what is the effect of those different types of access? Well, this is where we get into how they are looking at citation count and altmetrics.

Eva Johnson (12:44): So the citation count is, again, that scholarly aspect. This is how we're seeing research influencing other research. When an article is cited in more research, it gets tallied as a citation. Just like how many likes essentially does an article have by other researchers?

Emily Brady (13:02): Yeah. And for the green open access, it receives 69% more citations than fully paid well manuscripts and 49% more citations than papers archived in other repositories.

Eva Johnson (13:15): Yeah. So basically, it turns out if your stuff is free, more people will read it.

Emily Brady (13:21): They did say with a caveat that most colleges or academia tend to have access to these anyways, which I don't know if you remember Gina from school, but she worked at one of the research centers at NYU. And anytime we needed a research article, she'd be like, here you go. Like, do you have that? It was just a perk of my job.

Eva Johnson (13:49): Gotta be institution affiliated. Yeah.

Emily Brady (13:53): This article also shows almost like a stair stepper of increased access across each open access with clothes being the lowest, green a little more, and gold a little more than that. So the more access people can have to it, the more it's used, which makes sense.

Eva Johnson (14:08): Yeah. And, honestly, that goes the same for the altmetrics. So altmetrics are how they're looking at social impact. It's uses on Wikipedia, social media. How much are people talking about it in a visible way basically online?

Eva Johnson (14:25): The research mentions that this is an increasingly popular way to look at social impact of information, like, essentially, how much is information trending. And this is where the gold open access just, like soared because if it's free, then everyone is looking at it.

Emily Brady (14:42): And I think that's important. Right? Like, while our field is, you know, very structured in that, you know, you need our clinical brains just to have more people able to look something up and confer and ask their own questions about it. Like, it it helps people come into your sessions with more knowledge base. Everybody I love everybody loves knowledge.

Emily Brady (15:07): Right?

Eva Johnson (15:09): Yeah. And I mean, I like the premise of this that if everybody can get access to information, that we all have more information, equal access to information, la la la la. But I think there's, like, a little bit of a con here that we need to address, which is that just because something's popular doesn't mean it's quality. Emily and I have read a lot of research together over the last year, and not all of it feels like good research. There's plenty of articles we've looked at and then decided not to review because we're like, I don't know.

Eva Johnson (15:46): That seemed really shaky or the method section is trash or the outcomes don't seem well reflected. You know, there's a lot of reasons why research isn't necessarily good quality research, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's not gonna be popular. You can produce something that people are like, oh my god, super resonate with this. Oh my god, look at the stats that they're showing. This is so impactful.

Eva Johnson (16:12): And then you look at what is being shared and you're like, oh, yeah, but that's really bad research. So while I think the altmetrics are important because it's showing social impact of research, you know, beyond just the kind of academic sphere, which people can get really jargony and technical about and can be such an isolated world. But we also gotta keep an eye out just because something is popular don't mean it's good.

Emily Brady (16:40): That is true. A lot of people, myself included, can get very swayed with some convincing words. Eva, that's why I need you to be my my partner in this because you go back through, and you're like, wait a second, Emily. This this sucks. And I'm

Eva Johnson (16:56): like, oh, yeah? Okay. I'm leaving. Just think about, like, the rhetoric around, one of our more recent episodes on thickened liquids. Like, the Internet, the CSD Internet was on fire with whether or not thickened liquids should be as widely prescribed as they are and if they're harmful, are they beneficial?

Eva Johnson (17:18): And everyone has research to to cite in their favor. You know? So just getting into really good quality research is also important, and that's not always easily digestible over TikTok. Sorry to throw you under the bus TikTok.

Emily Brady (17:35): So public impact is especially important for health related research areas and disciplines that directly aim to support the well-being of the community.

Eva Johnson (17:44): Yeah. I think that that's such an important grounding quote. The whole goal is to benefit the well-being of the community. Right? Why are we producing research?

Eva Johnson (17:56): To better understand problems. Why are we reading research? So that we can apply it in the clinical space. So understanding this relationship between producing research and reading it is important because ultimately that's the dynamic between creating information and applying it. Mhmm.

Unknown Speaker (18:12): Pause.

Emily Brady (18:13): And Eva, you make such good points that I'm just like, yeah. That's that's a well rounded thing to say. I have nothing I I have nothing to add. This is your podcast now.

Unknown Speaker (18:24): This is your podcast now. Look at me. I am the captain now.

Unknown Speaker (18:30): Wait a second. Is that another social reference? Is that another pop culture reference? We can't get too many on these. People might think that you're cool, Eva.

Eva Johnson (18:41): How wrong they'd be. I do have some just kind of topic prompts for us to discuss because this article, I think, in some ways is like a little bit dry or, like, reviewing levels of research access by tier and, you know, how much they're being tracked online. But I want to go back kinda through and emphasize how is this affecting us. So here are just some fun conversational prompts that I pulled up on the side for you, Emily.

Unknown Speaker (19:13): Okay. Go.

Eva Johnson (19:15): One of the concerns when we have when we're accessing information is when is it written? Is it still relevant? So research behind paywalls might mean that people have access to older information if what they're reading is free stuff. Right? So do we think that that is kind of keeping the clinical world a few steps behind if we're not looking at what is potentially the most groundbreaking, most new research.

Emily Brady (19:46): Oh, a 100 a 100%. I feel like that is the bit like, the biggest problem. Like, if we you even in school. Right? We can't use an article or cite an article if it was older than ten years.

Emily Brady (20:00): But, like, those are the majority of the free articles that are available as things that are older. But the field changes so quickly. So why are we only providing access to these older articles? It's just a 100%. So then we go into the field, or we're talking to our instructors about what they do, and they're like, oh, we might not actually do this anymore.

Emily Brady (20:25): Like because they they have access to articles. But a 100%, without a doubt. Yeah. We are we are being hindered.

Eva Johnson (20:36): And I think you and I have definitely found some great research that was written, like, twenty years ago. And some of the stuff about dementia that is coming out now still backs up stuff that was written ten, fifteen years ago. But I think overall, you're right. The field is shifting so much. We're finally gathering a lot of data.

Eva Johnson (21:01): Just the tech boom that we're seeing right now is also generating a lot more opportunities for data collection. And if we can't get access to that, then we really are just keeping it in the nineties, bro, which, you know, year two thousands was great. Y two k playlists are awesome, but that's not where we want our research to be.

Emily Brady (21:21): Yeah. And if we are like, we're providing recommendations to our clients, we wanna make sure that we are we are doing it with the most sound ear in mind. Like, we wanna make sure that we are giving them the most updated information. And if that is, like, our expected obligation via our state licensing board, but then we have to pay out of pocket to make sure that we are living up to those expectations, but being paid pennies and being expected to be so productive. So now we're taking time out of our personal day to stay up to date on this research.

Emily Brady (22:01): And if the research isn't open, then we're looking for CEUs from the people who do have access to it. It's just so many hoops. So many hoops.

Eva Johnson (22:13): I think also one of the issues with paywall research, not again that I inherently have a problem with paying for research, It's just that it kind of keeps information concentrated. And so when the information is kind of living in research institutions, we don't want it to live there. We it needs to be permeable. It needs to be making its way into the clinical space. It needs to be making its way into the CSD community or really whatever field you're in.

Eva Johnson (22:39): If you can't get access to the research you need, then what good is the research doing? And I think that kinda gets at that distinction between, like, the citation metric versus the altmetrics. The citation metric is that kind of in group, in community in research community popularity versus is the world reading it? And if the world isn't reading it, then, like, what impact is your research having? I think that's ultimately what researchers want too, right, is to have their stuff be ingested and applied.

Eva Johnson (23:17): Alright, Eva. What's your next question? Who has information often determines who has influence. It's like, yeah. Right.

Emily Brady (23:24): I mean, that one that one is vague, but that I feel like that is so true. Like, that

Unknown Speaker (23:28): is true. Still like it.

Emily Brady (23:29): I still like it because the people who have the information do have influence. Like, the fact that Asha holds some of these things behind a paywall, the fact that we are then paying Asha extra dollars for extra things, like, are contributing to the bigness that is Asha. So just contributing to their

Unknown Speaker (23:52): The bigness that is Asha.

Emily Brady (23:54): They're just like oh, like, the overwhelmingness that is ASHA.

Eva Johnson (23:59): Yeah. Here's another kind of prompt. Do we think that the research we have access to shapes the kind of care patients receive?

Emily Brady (24:11): I don't know. That one's kinda mixed for me because I for me, and you might have a different answer for this, Eva, I think the kind of care and intervention my clients receive is really based on my conversation with the client. Like, what kind of things that client responds to, ideologies behind what's actually going on with them, like, what are their goals, like, how well do they respond to certain prompts, whether it's like an intentional response or an innate response, if they just have a better learning with a certain motor principle, then that's kinda what we go with. So I think it's for me, it's good to have a decent understanding of multiple different methods or information about a wide range of different topics so I can use my clinical brain to pick and choose apart what I like or what I don't or what'll be good and what isn't. But that but what do you think, Eva?

Eva Johnson (25:18): Well, just gonna reflect back what you're saying. It sounds like for you, lot of what type of care patients receive has to do with the clinician themselves. Mhmm. With how they're interacting with patients, how they're engaging with their clinical knowledge and what they're seeing in the patient presentation. And, you know, there's also structural things to that point, like what a facility can offer.

Eva Johnson (25:42): How many hours of therapy can they get access to? You know? So there I think it's a good point that there are just other features that shape patient care. But bringing it back to research, I mean, I think about the Fraser free water protocol and how variedly I see it implemented. Like, working at the hospital, people are like, oh, yeah.

Eva Johnson (26:04): Fraser free. Go for it. Get that get that guy a cup of water. You know? And then in the sniff world, it's like, oh my god.

Unknown Speaker (26:13): But that guy one time coughed. We can't give him water. And I'm like, actually, you can. Mhmm. That's not inherently an issue.

Eva Johnson (26:22): Dude could choke on his own saliva. So I I don't know why we're worried about water. And it just seems like SNFs, lot of times, are operating on recommendations for, in particular, dysphasia recommendations that are are no longer considered updated in the field. But the facility itself is like, no. No.

Eva Johnson (26:47): No. No. If we see a problem, we're we really don't want you to put them on regular food again. And I'm like, it's also a quality of life thing. They're gonna keep trying to steal graham crackers if we don't let them have regular food sometimes.

Eva Johnson (27:02): You know? And what people think is best practice seems to vary widely Somewhere that is backed up by research. Somewhere in how people came to decide policies for buildings and so on and so forth is based on research. But I don't think they know what research they believe they're talking about. Okay.

Unknown Speaker (27:26): Did we say everything we wanted to say?

Emily Brady (27:28): I know. This this article I thought would go would take up a lot more time because this is really I mean, truthfully, this is one of the reasons I wanted to do this podcast because it really is like a like a thing that has, like, bugged me for so long that that, like, I'll go to look up a research article, and it'll sound really good, and there's just the ass abstract. I'm like, what am I what am I supposed to do with this? This is no information. But that's all I give you, and it stinks.

Unknown Speaker (28:00): That's it. Yeah. That's the thought. It just We're ending from

Unknown Speaker (28:03): an old shucks feeling.

Emily Brady (28:05): I know. Or that you're, like, looking for research, and then you spend three hours looking for different rationale for the thing that you're trying to do or something you're trying to target only to keep running into abstracts. And you're like, I I can't base a treatment on an abstract. I need more.

Eva Johnson (28:26): You're like, if I it's kinda like when instead of watching a movie on Netflix, you just watch a bunch of trailers and you're like, I guess I kind of watched a movie. You're like, I read a bunch of abstracts. I guess I read some research in aggregate. Eva, you're

Emily Brady (28:44): so smart. I've never heard anyone say the word aggregate in, like, like, like, pure I'm

Unknown Speaker (28:52): studying for the SAT on air. It's disgusting.

Emily Brady (28:56): Eva, you didn't say any, like, funny stories that have to do with, like, looking up research or being caught on research.

Eva Johnson (29:03): Do you have any before we wrap it? I think most of my I'm really trying to get access to research stories are more sad because I feel like I really let someone down and that I needed to go do research. That's what I would say. It's like, when Eva's trying to get research, usually guilt driven, anxiety driven, boredom driven. And then my ADD goes into full explosion mode, clicking links within research articles.

Eva Johnson (29:37): And then I've got 10 research articles up, and I read none of them.

Emily Brady (29:45): And then your kid comes over and says, mommy, why do you have 80,000,000 tabs open? Close that.

Eva Johnson (29:51): I don't know what tabs are yet. She just thinks the computer is a vehicle for Bluey. Shout out to Bluey best written show.

Unknown Speaker (29:59): She's right. And my kids will come up to my computer like, my mommy, and just start pushing on the buttons.

Eva Johnson (30:07): Oh, yeah. Josie likes to go press button. I type your name, and then she just presses random letters and goes, that spells Amami Johnson.

Unknown Speaker (30:17): That's cute. Pretty cute. Alright. Alright. Alright.

Emily Brady (30:22): So to wrap this up, three types of research, gold, green, enclosed. Research is more likely to be used if it's open, so let's open those floodgates. Let the people let the people read.

Unknown Speaker (30:39): Let the people read.

Emily Brady (30:41): And, you know, maybe we can collectively ask Asha very nicely.

Unknown Speaker (30:50): To reduce administrative fuck costs and provide more access to research.

Unknown Speaker (30:56): Yes. I mean, we do pay $250 in dues. This discussion might be archived, but the research continues. See you soon. You've been listening to speech talk.

Unknown Speaker (31:09): Thank you everyone for coming to listen to our research book club. Until next time, keep learning and leading with research.

Emily Brady (31:16): If you like this episode and you wanna give us some love, please rate us on your favorite podcasting app. Leave a review and tell the world because as podcasters, our love language is in positive affirmations. If you have

Unknown Speaker (31:28): a research topic you want us to cover or you have episode comments, clinical experience you want to share, or just want to send us some love letters, send us an email at hellospeechtalkpod dot com.

Emily Brady (31:41): If you want even more speech talk content, check out our website at speechtalkpod.com, where you can find all of our resources we made for you, copies of articles covered, and Eva's blog following these topics and more. We're your

Unknown Speaker (31:54): hosts, Eva Johnson and Emily Brady. Our editor and engineer is Andrew Sims. Our music is by Omar Benzvi.

Emily Brady (32:01): Our executive producers are Erin Corney, Rob Goldman, and Shanti Brooke.

Unknown Speaker (32:06): To learn about Speech Talk's program disclaimer and ethics policy, verification and licensing terms, and HIPAA release terms, you can go to speechtalkpod.com/disclaimers. Speech Talk is a proud member of the Human Content Podcast Network.