Contacting the EpiCentre

EpiCentre support to NVH students, researchers and research groups

Please read the text below before you press this link to the EpiCentre contact sheet

The EpiCentre has contact with a major part of last year vet students, PhD studenst, researchers and research groups at NVH.  This activity is time- and energy-consuming for the staff, but is an integral part of the function of the EpiCentre at NVH. This collaboartion includes input into research plans and protocols, design, advice on sample size calculations, database design and establishment and finallly analyses of research data. The EpiCentre staff has a broad competence and experience and will be able to assist you in most areas including any statistical/ epidemiological topics - and will of course advice you to other competent scientists if necessary.

Contact between the EpiCentre and students/ staff seeking advice have been through course contacts, phones or mail. With this great number of different small and large projects (>100), we need a professional approach to establishing collaboration and to bring this to completion.

One of the main problems of EpiCentre assistance has been a lack of competence in research groups in establishing a proper database for analyses. Further, basic skills in sample size calculations and design should be present within research groups. When contacting the EpiCentre you also need to explain a bit why you need input - and discuss this within your research group.

Establishing and maintaining collaboration with the EpiCentre

The EpiCentre will continuously try to improve the support to NVH students, researchers and research groups, and will from 2011 use the following system:

1. All primary contact has to be through the EpiCentre contact sheet. This means if we get requests directly via phone or mail only, we will ask you to first fill out this contact sheet anyway….
2. Via this contact sheet we get essential information about your needs
3. The EpiCentre staff is committed to give you a primary feed-back within 2 working days based upon an assessment of what kind of collaboration is needed. Then you will either:

• Get the input needed through phone or mail from an assigned EpiCentre staff, or
• Get help to establish a project on the platform It’s Learning where you and responsible person(s) in the EpiCentre have access. Databases etc. are uploaded here and we use this throughout the duration of the project.

Research support and co-authorship

Research collaboration may lead to different contribution from the EpiCentre, from a simple technical advice through acknowledgement in papers or thesis to co-authorship. If co-authorship is relevant, this will be regulated by the  Vancouver system and has nothing to do with economic support or not. Please remember that the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals: Writing and Editing for Biomedical Publication requires that authorship credit should be based on all authors meeting conditions 1, 2, and 3:

Experience shows that we are (too) often involved in 1c, where problems of design and data acquisition already has created trouble.  Please contact us early enough during the design stage if you do not have enough support around you… Most studies where we assist in statistical analysis and interpretation of data also requires input from us at 2 and 3. Please discuss this with co-authors as early as possible.