Our team is primarily based in the Methods Centre of the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute (OHRI). We conduct research and provide outreach and support on topics related to publication science. Our remit is to help enhance the reporting quality of research in order to increase the value of biomedical research.
Dr. Moher is the Director of the Centre for Journalology. He is a Senior Scientist at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute. He is also an Associate Professor at the School of Epidemiology, Public Health, and Preventative Medicine, University of Ottawa, where he also holds a University Research Chair. Dr. Moher has received more than $100 million dollars in peer-reviewed funding and has published more than 400 peer-reviewed articles. His H-index (130, Google Scholar) indicates that his research is highly cited and has been used to inform policy. He has been recognized as one of the most highly influential biomedical researchers several times: Thomson Reuters (The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds, twice); and Boyack and colleagues (A list of highly influential biomedical researchers, 1996-2011. EJCI 2013;43:1339-1365). Dr. Moher is a member of the Advisory Board for the International Congress on Peer Review and Biomedical Publication, a journal editor, as well as a member of editorial boards of several medical journals and other editorial functions, such as membership on PLoS One’s Human Research Advisory Board.
Mohsen is currently a medical student at the University of Ottawa. He holds a BSc (Honours) in Biomedical Science with a minor in Music and has completed one year of law school. He is currently working under the supervision of Dr. Moher and Dr. Cobey focusing primarily on scholarly peer review training and publication bias in Canadian Universities. Mohsen is currently the Ottawa Director for a MP-MD Apprenticeship, a program designed to pair medical students with politicians to close the gap between medicine and policy. Prior to joining the Centre for Journalology, he worked as a research assistant in the Emergency Department at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario. He has also completed a summer internship at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in a Neuro-Oncology laboratory. As an aspiring clinical researcher, Mohsen recognizes the impact and importance of accessible and reproducible clinical publications. In his spare time, Mohsen enjoys hiking, learning about human history and watching astronomy documentaries.
Elham Almoli is a volunteer at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute. She is working under the supervision of Dr. Moher on the study of open science, answering the question, has Open Science Penetrated Academic Hiring Practices? Elham was also awarded the Canadian Standard Association Group Undergraduate Research Scholarship and is currently working on the study of predatory journals under the supervision of Drs. Cobey and Lalu, using thematic content analysis to help develop a digital journal authenticator tool to discern potential predatory journals. In addition to her work with the OHRI, Elham has also been a volunteer research assistant at the Children Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO).
Elham is a current undergraduate student at McMaster University, studying a B.Sc. in Honours Life Sciences, with a specialization in Sensory-Motor Systems. In addition to her research interests in open science practices and predatory journals, Elham is interested in science communication, especially within the medical field involving patient interaction.
Dr. Avey is a senior manager at the Public Health Agency of Canada in the Global Health and Guidelines Division. Marc is part of the science team that supports the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care and he provides expertise in systematic review methods and evidence-based policy development for the agency. Marc is also currently a Fellow at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in the National Toxicology Program, and a part-time Lead Environmental Scientist with ICF. In these capacities his work is focused on the integration of evidence streams (e.g., human/animal; in vivo/in vitro) in systematic reviews of environmental contaminants that impact human health.
Dr. Bryson is an Associate Professor and Vice-Chair Research at the University of Ottawa Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine. He is an Associate Scientist in the Clinical Epidemiology Program at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute where his research focuses on the assessment and modification of risk among patients undergoing surgery. Dr. Bryson joined the Editorial Board of the Canadian Journal of Anesthesia in 2006 and has served as its Deputy Editor-in-Chief since 2014. This editorial work informs his academic interest in peer review and publication models.
Dr. Lisa Caulley is an otolaryngologist-head and neck surgeon with a master’s in public health from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She is a practicing otolaryngologist-head and neck surgeon. She completed an editorial fellowship with the New England Journal of Medicine and a fellowship in advanced sinus and skull base surgery at the Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. She is pursuing a doctoral degree in decision sciences from Erasmus University Medical Center Rotterdam. She holds a Clinician Investigator appointment at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute in Clinical Epidemiology. Her research focuses on the evaluation of management strategies in otolaryngology-head and neck surgery, large database analyses in health outcomes research and the role of journalology and publications sciences to inform health policy.
Dr. Cobey is a Scientist at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute. She actively contributes to research on journalology topics, including projects related to predatory journals and reporting quality. Kelly is a member of EQUATOR Canada, and an Adjunct Professor in the School of Epidemiology, Public Health and Preventative Medicine at the University of Ottawa. She obtained her Ph.D. in Psychology (the University of Groningen, The Netherlands) and has an MRes in Biology (University of Liverpool, England) and a BSc in Psychology and Biology (McMaster University, Canada). Prior to her current post Kelly worked as an Investigator and the OHRI Publications Office within the Centre for Journalology.
Dr. Sanam Ebrahimzadeh is a postdoctoral fellow at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute where her research focuses on systematic reviews and academic promotion and assessment criteria. She is also affiliated with the Scholarly Communication Lab, University of Ottawa, where she works on scholarly metrics. Sanam holds a Master’s degree in information science from Tehran University and a Ph.D. in information science from Alzahra University. She conducted part of her doctoral work on information-seeking behavior as a visiting researcher at McGill University.
Her research interests are centered on social media and scholarly communication using mixed research methods, including meta-analysis, open science, open data and research data sharing, scholarly metrics, and open educational resources.
Marina Christ Franco is a dentistry graduate from the Federal University of Pelotas (Brazil). She is currently a PhD student in Dental Clinic in the field of Dentistry/Cariology at the Federal University of Pelotas spending a 1-year research period at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute. Marina is a member of The BRIGHTER (Bias, Reporting, Implementation, Guidance, ETHics, IntEgrity and Reproducibility in Research) Meta-Research Group Initiative and her research interests are centered on gender bias in research.
Dr. Grudniewicz is an Assistant Professor at the Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa. She holds a Scientist appointment at the Institut du Savoir Montfort and is an Affiliate Investigator at the Bruyère Research Institute. Dr. Grudniewicz is a health services researcher focused on primary and community care for patients with complex health and social needs. Using qualitative and mixed-methods research designs, Dr. Grudniewicz also studies goal-oriented care and coordination and collaboration across settings and care providers. At the Centre for Journalology, she is working to better understand predatory publishing and develop strategies and solutions to address this threat to scholarship.
Dr. Haustein is an Assistant Professor at the University of Ottawa’s School of Information Studies, where she teaches research methods and evaluation, social network analysis and knowledge organization. Her research focuses on scholarly communication, bibliometrics, altmetrics and open science and analyzes the role of social media in academia.
Stefanie co-directs the #ScholCommLab, a research group that analyzes all aspects of scholarly communication in the digital age, together with Juan Pablo Alperin at Simon Frasier University in Vancouver, Canada.
Stefanie is also an associate member of the Centre interuniversitaire de recherche sur la science et la technologie (CIRST) and an affiliated researcher of the Canada Research Chair on the Transformations of Scholarly Communication, Université de Montréal and the Observatoire des sciences et des technologies (OST), Université du Québec à Montréal.
Stefanie holds a master’s degree in history, American linguistics and literature and information science and a Ph.D. in information science from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Germany and completed postdoctoral work at École de bibliométrie et des sciences de l’information (EBSI) at Université de Montréal. Stefanie has worked as a research analyst at Science-Metrix, Canada and Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany.
Dr. Lucas Helal is an Assistant Professor of Universidade do Extremo Sul Catarinense. He has a keen and broad interest in meta-research and in initiatives to measure, monitor and reduce the avoidable waste in research, primarily science methods/results/inferential reproducibility, data and materials sharing, journal editorial policies, predatory journals, reporting guidelines development, reporting biases of pharmacological and non-pharmacological research. As a strong believer of educational initiatives for stakeholders as a core way to solve the reproducibility crisis and to reduce the avoidable waste in research, this is a topic that he really emphasizes. He has a background in clinical epidemiology and knowledge synthesis of interventions and methods and remains involved in Public Health research through randomized clinical trials and systematic reviews with(or without) meta-analysis mainly. The majority of his past research focused on non-pharmacological and pharmacological treatments for cardiovascular diseases, especially in evidence-synthesis methods (pairwise and mixed treatment comparisons systematic reviews and meta-analyses). In meta-research, he is currently involved in projects about reproducibility (the REPLICA Study mainly), gender biases, predatory journals and researchers assessments.
Hassan Khan is a volunteer at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute. He is currently working under the supervision of Dr. Moher on the state of open science in academia. He also holds a research position at the Department of National Defence where he works alongside a team of scientists that develop selection tests and assessment tools for the Canadian Armed Forces.
Before joining the Centre for Journalology, Hassan was part of the Cognitive Remediation and Neuroimaging (CRANI) lab, where he worked on a Virtual Reality study that used Strategy for Semantic Association Memory (SESAME) training to improve verbal memory capacity and motivation in patients with Schizophrenia.
Hassan holds a Bachelor of Honours degree in Psychology from Carleton University and hopes to pursue a career as a scientist-practitioner in the near future. His primary research interests include mental health, meta-research, knowledge synthesis, and health services and policy research.
Outside of research, Hassan spends most of his time reading, watching soccer, and doing wildlife photography.
Dr. Lalu is a practicing Anesthesiologist, and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine at The Ottawa Hospital. He holds an Associate Scientist appointment at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute in Clinical Epidemiology and Regenerative Medicine Programs. His current research is largely preclinical and translational, focusing on novel therapies (e.g., cellular therapies for inflammatory diseases and cancer). Dr. Lalu also investigates the completeness of reporting and the risk of bias in preclinical studies and ways we may overcome barriers to improve this. Finally, through work he has completed with the journalology group, he has helped assess the global burden of illegitimate (i.e., ‘predatory’) journals.
Mouayad Masalkhi is a third-year (pre-clinical) medical student at University College Dublin, Ireland. He is currently working with Drs. Moher and Cobey and colleagues volunteering working on a project examining publication bias in the reporting of clinical trials. He has an interest in cellular and molecular medicine – he has volunteered in a hematology lab and conducted analysis on diverse types of leukemia. He is currently expanding his knowledge on computational medicine such digital diagnosis using markers, enzymes, antibodies, etc.. He also enjoys building image analysis models for diagnostic and predictive tests to aid with precise diagnosis. Finally, he enjoy writing articles and has been involved with the Hands on Health Magazine at the University of Ottawa as Editor-in-Chief and writer for the past year.
Dr. Matthew McInnes completed his radiology training at the University of Toronto. He completed a Ph.D. in Clinical Epidemiology at the University of Amsterdam under the supervision of Dr. Patrick Bossuyt in 2018. He is a Professor at the University of Ottawa in the departments of Radiology and Epidemiology-Public Health. He d is an Associate Scientist in the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute Clinical Epidemiology program.
Dr. McInnes is on the Editorial Boards for the “Journal of Magnetic Resonance Imaging”, “Radiology” and the CARJ. He is a member of the Li-RADS steering group, and the head of the Li-RADS Evidence Working Group.
Dr. McInnes’ research interests are centered on meta-research and imaging test accuracy. He is the lead author of the PRISMA-DTA statement, and is on the advisory board for the STARD group and QUADAS-2 for comparative accuracy.
Dr. Jeremy Y. Ng is a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Journalology at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute. In addition to his interest in journalology, Jeremy has also conducted research in the areas of complementary, alternative, and integrative medicine, and natural health products. Jeremy also holds the following positions: Journal Manager of the Journal of Natural Health Product Research/Publisher of NHP Publications; Board Member of the Natural Health Product Research Society of Canada; and Board Member of the Canadian Interdisciplinary Network of Complementary Medicine Researchers, the Canadian Chapter of the International Society for Traditional, Complementary, and Integrative Medicine Research. Jeremy earned a PhD in Health Research Methodology from the Faculty of Health Sciences, McMaster University; an MSc in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the Graduate Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Toronto; and an Honours BSc in Biology from the Faculty of Science, McMaster University.
Dr. Justin Presseau is a Scientist at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute where he leads the Psychology and Health Research Group, and is an Associate Professor in the School of Epidemiology and Public Health and the School of Psychology at the University of Ottawa. He holds a PhD in Psychology from the University of Aberdeen (UK). His research program operates at the intersection between health psychology and implementation science, spanning evidence synthesis to behaviour change intervention development and evaluation. His work draws on behaviour change theories and methods to understand factors that promote and undermine behaviour change in health settings.
Janina is a Co-op student studying Biomedical Science at the University of Ottawa. She is working under the supervision of Dr. Moher and Dr. Cobey on a project evaluating scholarly peer-review training. Janina has experience working as a research and project assistant in previous co-op positions at Health Canada’s Radiation Protection Bureau and for the Cochrane Centre for Health Equity. She is interested in further pursuing biomedical research. Outside of work and school, she enjoys reading, painting, and playing volleyball.
Danielle Rice joined the Knowledge Synthesis Group at the Ottawa Methods Centre in 2017 as a visiting fellow. Danielle contributes to research with the Centre for Journalology, including projects related to predatory journals and promotion and tenure guidelines. Danielle holds an MSc in Psychiatry (McGill University) and a BA in Psychology (University of Waterloo). She is currently completing her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at McGill University and was awarded a Vanier Graduate Scholarship to support this work. She is interested in evidence synthesis, and the reproducibility and methodological quality of research, especially within the field of mental health.
Jessie is a third-year clerk at the University of Ottawa. She is currently leading a project under the supervision of Drs. Moher and Cobey on the scholarly peer-review training. To stay up-to-date with new medical research, she also writes for 2 Minute Medicine, providing concise reviews of recently published journal articles. Throughout her undergraduate degree, she did molecular biology research on tuberculosis and a summer internship in Essen, Germany under the DAAD scholarship. Her research interests are centered around meta-research and burn-out in academia. Outside of school and work, she spends all her free time with her 5-month-old Rhodesian Ridgeback puppy, Atlas, and her two rats, Des and Soba.
Chenchen Zu (Summer student)
Bea Nguyen (Summer student)
Larissa Shamseer (PhD student)
Daniel Korevaar (PhD placement)
James Galipeau (Senior Clinical Research Associate)
Hana Raffoul (Co-op student)
Alicia Ricketts (Research Assistant)
