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Future Cochrane webinar series - registration and recordings

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In February 2022, Cochrane's Governing Board approved the proposed change to Cochrane’s evidence synthesis production model. We know this is a profound shift, leading to all kinds of questions, and new ideas right across the Cochrane community.

Our key focus since March 2022 has been to deliver more detailed plans about the model, begin implementing those plans, and share this information and address questions along the way. 

A series of Future of Evidence Synthesis Programme webinars has been underway since April 2022, some focusing on individual projects and other addressing the questions and concerns of specific Cochrane groups, including Geographic Groups, Fields, Review Groups, Methods Groups and Consumers. The webinars ran on a fortnightly cycle initially, but from October will run monthly.

Next webinar: 

Cochrane Q&A: Changes ahead and what they mean for Cochrane Review Groups
Colleagues working in Review Groups are encouraged to attend this online Q&A session. It is a chance to ask the Project Team any questions you may have about the planned changes ahead and the whole session will be given over to questions. Please note: this session is for those working in Review Groups only, to ensure that we can answer as many questions from that group as possible.

  • Date and time to be announced 

Webinar recordings:

Catch up on any sessions you may have missed by viewing them on the dedicated Future of Cochrane miro website. 

 

22 March 2023

2022 Anne Anderson Award Prize money recipient, Paola Andrenacci

Paola Andrenacci

The Anne Anderson Award recognizes a female member of Cochrane who has made a significant contribution to the enhancement and visibility of women's participation within Cochrane. The winner then designates the cash award to assist a woman from a low-resource setting with her Cochrane activities. Here the winner of the 2022 cash award reports back.

The Anne Anderson Award is one of several prizes awarded annually. The goal of the Anne Anderson Award is to recognize and stimulate individuals contributing to the enhancement of women’s visibility and participation in Cochrane’s leadership. In the footsteps of Anne Anderson, many outstanding women continue to contribute and inspire other women to improve health knowledge for the good of their communities.

The Award recipient receives a plaque from Cochrane honouring her contributions (usually, this would happen at the annual Colloquium). She then designates the cash award of 3000 USD to assist a woman from a low-resource setting with her Cochrane activities, who should eventually provide a brief written report on how the funds have been used.

Paola

2022 Anne Anderson award winner, Tiffany Duque nominated Paola Andrenacci to receive the award money.
Paola Andrenacci is a Clinical Nutritionist, from  Argentina specializing in liver diseases.

How will receiving the prize money help you personally?
In 2021, I applied to participate in the Cochrane US Mentoring Program which fulfills Cochrane's vision and mission and was selected to be part of Cohort 2 (non-native English speakers) living in low-middle income countries (LMIC). My main interest was to acquire knowledge, develop and improve my skills in evidence-based nutrition, knowledge translation to then share and motivate other colleagues with what I had learned to help make health decisions based on the best quality of evidence.

The Cochrane US Mentoring Program has not only successfully met all of my goals, but has also provided me with incredible training opportunities. I received a full scholarship to attend the WHO/Cochrane/Cornell Summer Institute and completed the training in July 2022.

Being part of the program was certainly a motivation and inspiration for me thanks to the enormous generosity of Tiffany Duque. This allowed me to continue in the program today, being the Year 2 coordinator, and Mentor and Mentee at the same time!
 
What are your future plans?
Without any doubt and reaffirming my commitment, my future plans will be to continue working hard so that the Cochrane US Mentoring Program continues to grow and reach every corner of the world so that students and health professionals have training opportunities and to continue developing the best quality evidence for decision making in health care.
 
What is your message to people thinking about submitting a nomination for the Anne Anderson Award?
It is time to pause to reflect and express gratitude. Nominating Tiffany Duque generated a lot of emotion for me. The Anne Anderson Award recognizes and celebrates women in Cochrane for their cumulative achievement, originality, independence of thought, leadership and inspiration to others within Cochrane and Tiffany meets all of these requirements, as well as being a very generous and warm woman, and provides constant support at every step for the mentees. I am very happy for the recognition of her! The cash prize helps nutritional science professionals like me, who live in low- to middle-income countries, to achieve what is otherwise impossible. I am very grateful to Tiffany Duque for selecting me to receive the cash award this year.

Tiffany
  • Watch Tiffany's Award Acceptance video here
  • To find out more about the Anne Anderson award, please see here
8 March 2023

Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods: Adding to our quality

Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods

Cochrane’s first open access journal, Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods, recently opened for submissions! See our announcement for full details.  

Why is Cochrane launching a new journal? And why now? We’re discussing Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods in relation to Cochrane’s four key values: Collaboration, relevance, integrity and quality.

Today is Quality.

Quality is about reviewing and improving what we do, while maintaining our rigor and trust.

Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods welcomes innovative ideas and is not afraid to trial new ways of publishing. This includes showcasing practices that support research integrity, including: the ability to include Open Research Badges; embedding consumer involvement within the journal; piloting how to better visualise research, such as with gap maps; and improving peer review with a range of initiatives, detailed in the collaboration and integrity news items.

As part of improving what we do, the journal pushes boundaries and advocates for new approaches in evidence-based healthcare. It welcomes hard hitting commentaries and debates from researchers across the field and aims to develop the evidence base for how we produce and publish evidence synthesis. This may include, for example, studies within reviews, and sharing best practice and case studies in evidence synthesis production, management and publishing.

Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods requires the use of the most appropriate reporting guidelines when writing your manuscript, such as PRISMA and its extensions or other study design reporting guidelines found via the EQUATOR Network. Authors should report on all items in the checklist; either confirming where the item is in the article or state that the item was not considered, and why not. This is to improve the completeness of reporting to facilitate peer review and the readability of the research.

For more information on Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods:

 

7 March 2023

Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods: Adding to our integrity

Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods

Cochrane’s first open access journal, Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods, recently opened for submissions! See our announcement for full details.  

Why is Cochrane launching a new journal? And why now? We’re discussing Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods in relation to Cochrane’s four key values: Collaboration, relevance, integrity, and quality. 

Today is Integrity.

Integrity includes ensuring independence and transparency. 

As a Cochrane journal, Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods abides by Cochrane’s conflict of interest policy. This policy is stricter than most other journals and not only requires study funding and author interests to be declared at the earliest point possible, but also mandates that some funding and conflicts of interest will prevent people from being authors.
 
Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods expects data sharing, with a transparent statement on the availability of the data in the submission, along with a citation if possible. It is also part of the Open Research Badges program, whereby authors can clearly indicate on their publications whether their data and materials are open and available to other researchers, and whether their study was preregistered.

Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods will be part of Wiley’s transparent peer review pilot, which means the peer reviewer reports, authors’ responses, and the editor’s decision letter will be linked from the published article to where they appear on Publons (if accepted). Authors do have the choice to opt-out, if they prefer, and peer reviewers can choose to sign their reports or remain anonymous.

Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods has a strong commitment to open science and high research integrity, which helps move science forward with trust and credibility.

Please join us on 9 March 2023 for a webinar with Michael Brown, Editor of Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods.
 

Please join us on 9 March 2023 for a webinar with Michael Brown, Editor of Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods.

 

For more information on Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods: 

 

21 February 2023

Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods: Adding to our relevance

Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods

Cochrane’s first open access journal, Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods, recently opened for submissions! See our announcement for full details.  

Why is Cochrane launching a new journal? And why now? We’re discussing Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods in relation to Cochrane’s four key values: Collaboration, relevance, integrity and quality. 

Today is Relevance.

Relevance is about having the right evidence at the right time in the right format. 

In the last post, we discussed how Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods strengthens Cochrane’s ability to meet our stakeholders’ needs and publish different types of evidence synthesis beyond systematic reviews. 

For all submissions, the editors also expect a clearly stated question and evidence of stakeholder need or research that informed the question, as well as encouraging patient important outcomes and/or standardized outcomes, as defined by COMET

In terms of the format, Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods aims to make this as easy as possible for authors. The journal supports free format submissions so authors don’t have to spend hours updating manuscripts to specific formatting requirements before submission.  

In addition, the editors encourages accessible language to be used in all submissions. This is hugely beneficial for researchers from across disciplines, non-native English speakers and consumers who will not be familiar with overly technical or difficult to read language. In addition, plain language summaries will be expected for all submissions that include health-related outcomes to ensure the research has as broad a reach as possible.  

Authors are also able to include graphical or visual abstracts alongside submissions to help readers identify and visualise the important messages quickly and easily. We have guidance on creating visual abstracts available to help authors.    

And then we have evidence at the right time. To ensure articles are shared and made discoverable as early as possible, Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods considers articles previously published on preprint servers, or, during submission you can opt-in to Under Review, a preprint server that aims to open up the peer review process. Once submissions are accepted, Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods shares the accepted draft article online immediately to prevent any delays in getting the research to the community. This happens before the article is copyedited and the final version is shared. 

Embedding relevance will facilitate our impact globally, which the journal will showcase with a variety of journal and article metrics. 

Please join us on 9 March 2023 for a webinar with Michael Brown, Editor of Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods.

 

Please join us on 9 March 2023 for a webinar with Michael Brown, Editor of Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods.

For more information on Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods: 

6 February 2023

ROB 2 guidance for all systematic reviewers from Cochrane pilot

Person working in office

Cochrane switched from using its first risk of bias tool to using the updated version, RoB 2, in 2019. Cochrane adopted a phased approach allowing authors to decide when to use it and offering them support from the editorial team. A paper outlining their experience and lessons learned has been published in BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine.

The 2019 relaunch aimed to improve its usability and to reflect current understanding of how the causes of bias can influence study results. While it is the recommended tool to assess the risk of bias in randomised control trials included in Cochrane Reviews, it is also  likely to be widely adopted by many systematic reviewers outside of Cochrane.

Cochrane’s phased approach meant users of the tool informed the development of guidance. The ROB 2 tool has some fundamental differences from the original tool, which was first used in 2008. This caused some issues for some author teams where the tool was not applied correctly.

The paper highlights learning for all systematic reviewers, Cochrane and non-Cochrane, on:

  • The differences between the original version of the tool and RoB 2
  • Key steps to take when planning a review using RoB 2 for reporting both protocols or full reviews

The guidance was all based on learning from the authors during the pilot phase of the implementation.

The paper’s authors, including the ROB 2 tool developers, Cochrane editors and Applied Reserach Collaboration West's Tess Moore and Julian Higgins, concluded:

“Assessing the risk of bias for specific results allows us to see the impact this has on a synthesis or meta-analysis, whereas previously a study was usually judged for bias overall and might have left some results with a worse assessment of bias than was warranted.”

Article written by Tess Moore and originally published on NIHR Applied Research Collaboration West

3 February 2023

Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods: Adding to our collaboration

Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods: Adding to our collaboration

Cochrane’s first open access journal, Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods, recently opened for submissions! See our announcement for full details.

Why is Cochrane launching a new journal? And why now? Over the coming weeks we’ll discuss Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods in relation to Cochrane’s four key values: Collaboration, relevance, integrity and quality.

Today is Collaboration.

Collaboration underpins everything we do locally and globally. Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods provides a platform to collaborate more closely with many of our key stakeholders.

Researchers from across Cochrane groups, and those from the wider field who have not previously published with Cochrane, can now publish a variety of research seeking to inform and develop evidence synthesis. This includes methods research, priority setting, consumer involvement, and meta-research to improve research integrity.

We can also develop our partnerships with guideline developers, decision makers and funders through publication of evidence syntheses directly relevant to their interests, including as scoping reviews and rapid reviews.

Helping researchers develop professionally is embedded within Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods. Associate Editors are mentored by the Editor, Michael Brown, and annual peer reviewer excellence awards will shortlist potential new Associate Editors. We are also investigating how to best facilitate peer review mentoring to help early career researchers on the professional development ladder.

To ensure everyone gets the correct acknowledgement for what they do, Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods asks authors and other contributors to use ORCID iD’s. For authors, this facilitates the use of CRediT to provide detailed information about each individual author’s contributions to the work, and it also allows peer reviewers and editors to add reviews to Publons.

We work closely with Cochrane’s consumers. Our Consumer Editor, Helen Bulbeck, is responsible for bringing the consumer perspective to the journal’s development and peer review. The editors also encourage all authors to involve consumers in their research; all authors should include a transparent statement on how consumers were involved and if they weren’t, why not. There will also be opportunities for consumers to be authors.

The journal is committed to inclusivity and diversity with a gender-balanced Editorial Board and representation from across all continents. This will ensure Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods works with the wider international evidence synthesis community to create a journal that meets their needs.

By developing collaboration opportunities with Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods, Cochrane will be better able to achieve its mission of a world of better health for all where decisions are informed by high-quality evidence.

Please join us on 9 March 2023 for a webinar with Michael Brown, Editor of Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods.

Webinar invite

 

For more information on Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods:

26 January 2023

Guidance for Colloquium abstract submissions

Guidance for Colloquium abstract and workshop submissions

Cochrane London 2023: Forward together for trusted evidence
4-6 September 2023
Central London, UK

Cochrane UK is delighted to be hosting the  Cochrane Colloquium at the Queen Elizabeth II (QEII) Centre in London, UK from the 4 to 6 of September 2023, with satellite events and meetings on the 3rd September.

Cochrane is an international non-profit network that provides evidence-based scientific knowledge to improve healthcare for all people worldwide. Cochrane Reviews summarise all available research on a specific health question. They are up-to-date, follow a rigorous scientific methodology, and are free from commercial conflicts of interest. Health professionals, patients, and policy makers trust Cochrane Reviews for their healthcare decision-making. Cochrane works with researchers, health professionals, patients, policy makers, and media representatives from around the world to make Cochrane Reviews relevant and usable.

Cochrane holds an annual conference, known as a Colloquium, that brings together Cochrane researchers, clinical professionals, early career professionals, patients and carers, policymakers, and anyone interested in evidence synthesis and evidence-based healthcare. The events are a mix of keynote speakers, training opportunities, workshops, presentations, and a lively social and networking atmosphere. They are an exciting opportunity for a community of evidence synthesis enthusiasts to share, learn, and connect.  

We invite everyone to visit the website - colloquium2023.cochrane.org - for all information related to the colloquium as it's released, including submissions for abstracts and awards/prizes, registration, stipend applications, and the event programme.

The theme of the Colloquium is 'Forward together for trusted evidence', which explores the challenges for the future around the trustworthiness of healthcare information whilst also celebrating 30 years of producing trusted evidence. Today, we have launched guidance and recommendations to help you prepare in advance for your abstract submissions. The official call for abstracts will open on the 30 January 2023.

We invite abstract submissions for the following streams: producing trusted evidence; advocating for trusted evidence; informing health and care decisions; and co-production and working together. 

"The Cochrane Colloquium will bring people together in one place to discuss, develop and promote Cochrane’s work."

Catherine Spencer, Cochrane CEO said, “The Cochrane Colloquium will bring people together in one place to discuss, develop and promote Cochrane’s work. I am looking forward to a packed programme at my first colloquium and encourage you to start to think about your contributions now as the call for abstracts will be open soon.”

"We’d like to encourage everyone to start thinking about their contributions now – whether they are planning oral presentations, workshops or posters."

Martin Burton, Director of Cochrane UK, said: “We are really looking forward to receiving submissions of abstracts for London 2023.  We’d like to encourage everyone to start thinking about their contributions now – whether they are planning oral presentations, workshops or posters. We have prepared this guidance to help everyone to prepare their contributions in good time before submissions are formally opened on 30 January 2023.” 

 

 

18 January 2023

Major milestones and new beginnings: Cochrane announces first round of new Thematic Groups

Defocused sparkles for a celebration

Cochrane is closing out a year of significant change and challenges with positive news of a major milestone in our transition to a more streamlined and sustainable organization. Following an open and rigorous application process, we are pleased to announce the first set of pilot Cochrane Thematic Groups – each mapping to key areas of global health and social care.

The Cochrane Thematic Groups are:

  • Global Ageing
  • Health Equity
  • Nutrition and Physical Activity
  • Person-Centred Care, Public Health and Health Systems
  • Sexual and Reproductive Health
  • Vascular
  • Work and Health and Social Security

"The concept of Thematic Groups was developed at a grass roots level during last year’s community consultation process," explains Cochrane’s Editor in Chief, Karla Soares-Weiser. "The creation and remit of these new groups reflects the clear community consensus that our specialist content and methods experts must have a central role and home within our new production model."

"It’s already evident from the calibre of first round applications we received that this was a fantastic idea. Thematic Groups will open new avenues and opportunities for expanding our existing global networks and cross-disciplinary collaborations. They’ll also enable us to share vital subject expertise and practical know-how with internal and external stakeholders, including guideline developers, government agencies, policy makers and disease associations working on the world’s most pressing issues. We know there’s no shortage of complex global challenges to address – including pandemic recovery and future preparedness, equity, climate change and a raft of other important Sustainable Development Goals we have in our sights."

To contribute to global efforts across these critical areas, Thematic Groups will focus on priority setting and supporting the development and dissemination of high-quality evidence in accessible formats. They will work closely with the ten new multi-disciplinary Evidence Synthesis Units (ESUs) we plan to establish over the next three to five years. Any evidence syntheses developed by the Thematic Groups will be submitted to Cochrane’s Central Editorial Service.

To keep the community up to date with these and other developments, an updated Future Cochrane site will be launched in mid-December. It will include:

  • a new series profiling the people, partnerships and priorities of each new Thematic Group
  • key information about Cochrane’s new model and organizational structure
  • access to this year’s entire webinar series on various aspects of transition plans, projects and processes
  • the aims, milestones and estimated timelines for the 10 major projects underway to deliver our new model of production.

 "We know the last few years have seen the Cochrane community grappling with the uncertainty and profound challenges that come with major transitions," Karla says. "The establishment of our first round of Thematic Groups represents a really positive and significant step in Cochrane’s organizational transformation and sets the scene for a new year of further progress and promising possibilities."

1 December 2022

New auditors for Cochrane

Person reviewing paperwork

At the 2022 Annual General Meeting in October, members approved a resolution reappointing Sayer Vincent until the conclusion of a tender process to appoint new auditors. UK charities must be audited by law and the Governing Board followed legal advice in recommending the reappointment of Sayer Vincent until the conclusion of the process.

Following a rigorous tender and interview process,  it can now be reported  that the Governing Board has approved Price Bailey as auditors for a maximum term of five years, subject to members agreeing an annual Annual General Meeting resolution.   

30 November 2022
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