Status
This document was drafted prior to the Editorial Advisory Group conference call in December and has been revised based on comments from AG members.
Overall objectives
The main purpose of the SNOMED CT Editorial Advisory Group is to provide IHTSDO with advice and guidance on issues related to the editorial policy underpinning development and maintenance of SNOMED CT content.
Meetings
Teleconferences
Teleconferences will be held every month on the fourth Monday of the month for 90 minutes, depending on current level of required group activity. Due to time conflicts, conference calls will be rescheduled as necessary.
Face-to-Face meetings
The Editorial AG will meet at both IHTSDO Business meetings during the year for at least one full day. Additional time will be requested depending on workload.
April 2016 - London, UK
- Business meeting scheduled April 17th-20th, 2016
- Editorial AG will meet for one and a half days during IHTSDO business meeting
- Updates on prior decisions and review of new topics.
- Review of content tracker items related to foundational content issues.
- Evaluation of review(s) from referred AGs on topics related to editorial policy
- Editorial guide review.
- Effective use of confluence and JIRA for communication and documentation
October 2016 - Wellington, New Zealand
- Business meeting scheduled October 23rd-28th, 2016
- Editorial AG plans to meet for a full day - details to be agreed.
- Initially, plan to follow same agenda as London.
Activities
Members are selected to provide expert review and advice to the Head of Terminology:
- regarding potential solutions to content issues that require change to editorial policy. The topics that are discussed may be existing items in the IHTSDO content tracker or issues that arise during the normal course of quality review.
- where potential resolution of editorial policy may have wide-ranging impact on SNOMED CT content, the AG members will supply technical evaluation of the options and report back to the AG on their findings.
- to assist in the identification of content issues that have dependencies with other identified issues in order to address the editorial needs in a systematic way.
- on changes to the Editorial guide that will clarify or improve the consistency in the way content is developed by the editorial staff.
Communication
The editorial AG will enable two-way communication between the Editorial team and Members on areas relevant to SNOMED CT editorial policy and content development.
The primary routes for communications will be the Editorial AG Confluence Space and AG Meetings.
Communications to the Editorial AG will, by default, be publicly accessible on the AG Confluence Space.
Information that is not for public view may also be shared on pages that are accessible to Editorial AG members only. Requests for closed areas must be sent to jca@ihtsdo.org prior to posting materials.
Criteria for measuring success
The key criteria for success of the Editorial AG in 2016 will be related to the provision of consensus advice to the Head of Terminology on changes to editorial policy. The key measures of success in this area will be:
- The agreement and acceptance by the Members on changes to editorial policy that results in substantial changes to either the scope of content to be added to SNOMED CT or changes in the structure of the terminology hierarchies.
- The resolution of long-standing issues around editorial policy that are of limited scope and impact, but have prevented acceptable content from being added to the terminology.
- An outline of prioritized content issues requiring editorial policy decisions for 2017 and beyond to meet requirements for SNOMED CT content develop editorial policy in ways that support and are supported by Members, Vendors and other stakeholders.
- A close working relationship with the Content Managers AG and the Modeling AG to verify that the decisions originating from the Editorial AG are congruent with both the Content Roadmap and the graceful evolution of the SNOMED CT Concept Model.
11 Comments
Keith Campbell
I propose that we look into how we can use confluence & JIRA to maximize our effectiveness. I also know that I am very guilty of being distracted. I think having concrete actions to take on a regular basis (in a different time/different place paradigm) can help, and having the dashboard help us with these reminders can help.
Unfortunately, JIRA does not allow assignment of multiple people to the same issue that I'm aware (workarounds for not being able to assign multiple users to an issue). You might want to check with Rory if there is some way of assigning an issue to multiple people in parallel, and seeing progress when each individual completes their portion of the task. Can we place questionnaires that require responses in Confluence pages?
For some things such as the laterality issue, one idea would be to have an explanation of the issue as a task, and then have sub tasks that represent the potential solutions. JIRA has a "vote" feature, where we can then vote on the solutions, and change our votes as the issue evolves until we all agree on a way forward.
Keith Campbell
A possible solution is to create a standard workflow for editorial advisory group issues, that creates subtasks for each of our review. The disadvantage is that it goes to us in sequence, not in parallel, so that if one person drops the ball, the issue does not get forwarded... However, that might also give us some pressure not to "drop the ball..."
See here for an example: configuring subtasks
Cathy Richardson
I was looking at this for the Consultant documents and in discussion with Matt Cordell he found this: https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/add-assign-and-view-tasks-590260030.html Looks like a good way not to 'drop the ball' and you can manage within Confluence.
Happy reviewing.
Cathy
Keith Campbell
Is there a way to make this automated, and easy to to use... If it takes an extra 5-15 minutes to set up for every issue, then it may not be realistic. It it can be an automated part of setting up, then I think we should try to go the next steps.
Cathy Richardson
This would be something we'd need to check on with Rory. Would also be of benefit for the consultant reviews- though for your group the pool of reviewers is smaller and consistent in who's reviewing.
Keith Campbell
Also, I think getting the entire editorial guide maintained within confluence should be part of the work plan. This will allow greater searchibility and edibility of the document.
Cathy Richardson
It already is SNOMED CT® Editorial Guide January 2016 International Release (US English)
Keith Campbell
Great
... Now the issue is how do we best evolve it... By using a tracker/jira based workflow, or by using confluence revisions somehow.
Although I can view it, and comment on it, I can't edit it. What is the process for adding/editing/proposing sections?
How can we get Daniel Karlsson to put up an evolving section for the SNOMED/LOINC observable model? And see the history of it as it evolves over time, and maybe make proposed contributions to it?
FCS Team
We are in the process of revising our AG Manual, which is also on Confluence. To do so, Rory Davidson created a copy of it. We can then jointly edit it, and once we are happy with it, we can replace the original with the edited copy. As I understand it, this is how technical documentation (in other companies) in Confluence gets edited. The companies publish a new version periodically after a revision, review and approval process. That said, we have not worked out all the details yet about how to do it - we are still experimenting. It would be great if you could also experiment and let us know what you have learned.
Keith Campbell
For round trip editing, there are some plugins that have proven of value. See for example: https://ffeathers.wordpress.com/2012/02/19/docbook-export-and-import-round-trip-with-confluence-wiki/
Having some type of semantic markup, rather than strictly formatting markup is something that is important I think...
Also, since the focus of the editorial group is not on authoring content, but perhaps more on authoring position summaries, and perhaps integrating those summaries into the editorial guide, I think an emphasis on how we mange that documentation should be part of the work plan. We will need support in that area.
Paul Amos
With regard to the work plan, I believe that it represents our thoughts to date and is sufficiently general to allow us to prioritise according to need as the situation arises.