Teams at Australia’s University of Newcastle, Cochrane Heart, and Project Transform’s living systematic review (LSR), machine learning and citizen science experts have combined forces to re-publish one of Cochrane’s first LSRs in record time. Following an update in September 2017, the LSR of ‘Interventions for increasing fruit and vegetable consumption in children aged five years and under’ was re-published in just four months!
The review team had assistance from Cochrane’s machine classifiers and Cochrane Crowd to identify the RCTs from their monthly search results. Amazingly, Cochrane Crowd contributors screened 1,600 citations (involving over 6,000 individual classifications) for this update in just 5 hours! Lead author Rebecca Hodder estimated this reduced the team’s screening time by 60%, allowing the authors to focus their efforts on incorporating five new and seven ongoing eligible studies. With the ongoing monthly searches so far revealing another ten new studies and four new ongoing studies, the review authors expect to include these in their next update, to be published by May.
A big thanks to Nicole Martin, Cochrane Heart Group Managing Editor, and Cochrane’s Editorial and Methods Department for coordinating their work to ensure the editorial review and sign-off process was completed as quickly as possible.
Hodder RK, Stacey FG, O'Brien KM, Wyse RJ, Clinton-McHarg T, Tzelepis F, James EL, Bartlem KM, Nathan NK, Sutherland R, Robson E, Yoong SL, Wolfenden L. Interventions for increasing fruit and vegetable consumption in children aged five years and under. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2018, Issue 1. Art. No.: CD008552. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD008552.pub4.
Support for the Cochrane Review 'Interventions for increasing fruit and vegetable consumption in children aged five years and under' and application of machine/crowd technologies to monthly searches was provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Foundation.
Support for Project Transform is provided by Cochrane and the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia (APP1114605). The contents of the published material are solely the
responsibility of the Administering Institution, a Participating Institution or individual authors and do not reflect the views of the NHMRC.