Addressing health inequalities in Europe: key messages from the Joint Action Health Equity Europe (JAHEE).

Health inequalities within and between Member States of the European Union are widely recognized as a public health problem as they determine a significant share of potentially avoidable mortality and morbidity. After years of growing awareness and increasing action taken, a large gap still exists across Europe in terms of policy responses and governance. With the aim to contribute to achieve greater equity in health outcomes, in 2018 a new Joint Action, JAHEE, (Joint Action Health Equity Europe) was funded by the third EU Health Programme, with the main goal of strengthening cooperation between participating countries and of implementing concrete actions to reduce health inequalities.

Ethics of reviewing scientific publications.

Introduction: The approval or rejection of scientific publications can have important consequences for scientific knowledge, so considerable responsibility lies on those who have to assess or review them. Today it seems that the peer review process, far from being considered an outdated system to be abandoned, is experiencing a new upturn.

Aim And Methods: This article proposes criteria for the conduct of reviewers and of those who select them.

[Scientific editors in Italy: identity, certification and roles.].

This study is developed as part of the activities of the Italian Chapter of the European Association of Science Editors (EASE) with the aim to provide an overview of the Italian scientific publishing in biomedicine and highlight the need for professional training and certification. Even at European and international level, in fact, there is a general lack of training and accreditation programs for the certification of professional editors. After defining the editor's role (term that in the Italian language has a certain degree of ambiguity) and the different professionals involved in the publication process, the paper analyzes the biomedical production in Italy, reporting the results of a survey on professional associations, institutions, scientific societies, and others.

Biobankers: Treat the Poison of Invisibility with CoBRA, a Systematic Way of Citing Bioresources in Journal Articles.

Even though an increasing portion of biomedical research today relies on the use of bioresources, at present biobankers are not able to trace this use in scientific literature and measure its impact with a variety of citation metrics. The "BRIF (Bioresource Research Impact Factor) and journal editors" subgroup was created precisely with the aim to study this issue and to build a standardized system to cite bioresources in journal articles. This report aims at presenting a guideline for Citation of BioResources in journal Articles (CoBRA).

Developing a guideline to standardize the citation of bioresources in journal articles (CoBRA).

Background: Many biomedical publications refer to data obtained from collections of biosamples. Sharing such bioresources (biological samples, data, and databases) is paramount for the present governance of research. Recognition of the effort involved in generating, maintaining, and sharing high quality bioresources is poorly organized, which does not encourage sharing.

Open data sharing in the context of bioresources.

Recently many international initiatives have been developed to improve access to scientific information and to promote open data sharing. In the complex field of bioresources, the BRIF (Bioresource Research Impact Factor) project aims to create suitable methods to recognise and measure the use and impact of biological resources in scientific/academic work, in order to maximize access by researchers to collections of biological materials and attached databases, and to recognize efforts involved in their maintenance. The lack of a proper recognition of scientific contribution is in fact a major obstacle which impedes bioresource sharing.

[Mobile applications for the health sector: apps to support scientific information and medical practice].

The market of mobile applications (apps) and wireless technology infrastructures is rapidly widening and diversifying to better meet users' needs. Over the last few years, the use of mobile technologies and applications has been increasingly expanding in many professional fields. Research and academic institutions, hospitals, and drug companies are heavily investing in this sector, also in Italy, even though the offer seems to be still limited at the moment.