New International Guideline Library

The new International Guideline Library, powered by EBSCO, contains around 3000 guidelines, which have mostly been developed or endorsed by organisational members of GIN. It was agreed by the board in September 2015 to additionally allow non-member organisations the opportunity to have their guidelines included, for a fee.

Welcome to the new GIN library and registry of guidelines in development, powered by EBSCO. This contains around 3000 guidelines from across the globe, both published and in development. We aim, with your help to keep this information as up to date as possible.

The library is free to access and can be used immediately here.

We are particularly keen to expand the registry of guidelines in development. Member organisations are able to upload these at any time, but non-member organisations are also very much encouraged to register their guidelines in development. Please email library@g-i-n.net for further details.

What the library includes

We have streamlined the fields included in the library, following feedback from our members. From the previous library we have retained the following fields:

Authors
Guideline Title
Guideline URL
GIN standards form URL
Guideline Contact
English Title Translation
Countries of application
Languages
Guideline Publication Status
Publication Scope
MeSH Terms
Original Publication Date
Expected Publication Date
Date for Review

New fields have been added, also at the request of our members:

Keywords – up to 5 keywords can be included in this field
Methods applied – up to 5 descriptors of methods used can be included
Date of latest evidence search
Name of endorsing organisation – this field can be used by GIN members who formally endorse guidelines developed by other organisations

In addition, to specifically address GIN’s aim of supporting collaboration, we have included a field indicating interest in collaboration in developing a guideline:

Willingness to collaborate

Editing and uploading information

All organisational members will be issued with a moderator login. This allows them to edit their existing entries and add new guidelines, either individually or in a batch, using a .csv file. How to instruction sheets are available:

A template for batch uploading can be found here and a sample completed template is available here.

Non-members can request that their guidelines are included in the library for a fee. Details of fees are detailed below. Fees do not apply to the registry.

The strategy for the GIN library is to be the widest and most inclusive guideline library. Access to the library is a membership benefit, available to all categories of member. Organisational members may include all of their guidelines in the library, free of charge. The GIN Board took the decision in 2015 to allow inclusion of non-members’ guidelines in the library for a fee.

Individual members, who have worked on guidelines for organisations may not include these guidelines in the library automatically, however, the organisation which holds the copyright may apply to have the guidelines included. Individual members may facilitate this process by putting the organisation in touch with the Secretariat. There is no approval or vetting process and G-I-N accepts no responsibility for the standard of the guidelines in the library. Guidelines, which are over 5 years old are labelled as such, in order to flag that some of the evidence used may have been updated since publication.

Standards Reporting Form

Completion of the Standards Reporting form is strongly encouraged for our members in order to demonstrate the rigour and integrity of the guideline development see Voluntary Reporting on GIN Standards below. For all non-members, completion of this form is mandatory prior to the guideline being included in the library.

Process

Non-members must complete a form (Request Form) to request publication of their guidelines, providing the links to their guidelines, along with the completed standards reporting form for each guideline. They will then be invoiced and GIN staff will set up their guideline in the library.

Fees

The fees for this service are set at:

£200/€250 per guideline, up to 9

If an organisation has 6 or more guidelines, a representative of the membership committee will contact the organisation with a view to discussing organisational membership.

After the first year, the subscription will be set at £50 per guideline for those already published and any new guidelines will be charged the full rate.

Issues with the library

Please bear with us if there are initial glitches. We are already working on enhancements to make the process of searching and uploading information even easier.

If there are problems or feedback you wish to share with us, please email library@g-i-n.net.

Acknowledgments

GIN is grateful to EBSCO for providing the platform and technical support for the new GIN library. We are also grateful to the members of GIN for their feedback and suggestions regarding the library.

Voluntary Reporting on GIN Standards

Since August 2013, GIN has requested that members who add guidelines to the library complete a standards reporting form to indicate whether specific standards have been met in the guideline development process. Completion of this form is voluntary, however, we hope that through collaboration we can facilitate continuous quality improvement.

Form: "Guidelines International Network - Standards for Clinical Practice Guidelines"

Library Downloads

GIN Collections Template - Sample - Sep 20 Download
GIN Collections Template - Sep 20 Download
How to edit items in the library - Sep 20 Download
How to add single items to the new library - Sep 20 Download
How to add a batch of guidelines to the new library - Sep 20 Download
Data fields for new library and registry - Sep 20 Download