Dear Cochrane Community colleagues,

I am delighted to inform you that the redesigned and enhanced Cochrane Library will launch on Tuesday, 7 August 2018.

Our colleagues at Wiley are communicating this news direct to customers separately and have also contacted users who have saved searches.

To ensure the transition process to the new publishing platform runs smoothly, we strongly recommend not using the saved search function from 00:01 GMT on Monday 6th August 2018 until 23:59 GMT on Tuesday 7th August.  Changes saved during this period may not be transferred to the new site. During this period all other search function in the Cochrane Library will remain available. All previously saved searches will be transferred onto the new search platform with no action required on the part of users and customers.

All aspects of the Cochrane Library have been redesigned to improve the Cochrane Library user experience including:

• Improved article design for Cochrane Reviews, CENTRAL records, and all content.
• Search expanded across all content types, including Cochrane Reviews and Protocols, CENTRAL, Editorials, Special Collections, Cochrane Clinical Answers, and other systematic reviews from Epistemonikos, via a new federated search feature.
• A new Spanish language portal and discoverability of translated content in multiple languages via basic search.
• Cochrane Clinical Answers now fully integrated into the Cochrane Library.
• Improved search results display, including new filters for all content, and multiple record export options.
• Advanced search tabs better integrated, and MeSH search feature improved.
• Linking CENTRAL records to Cochrane Reviews.
• Easy navigation from Cochrane Reviews to related podcasts, Editorials, and Cochrane Clinical Answers.

We will announce full details of launch to Cochrane Members, users, and stakeholders on Wednesday 8th August via external communications together with Wiley and our technology platform provider, HighWire.

If you have any queries or concerns about anything else, please contact Wiley customer support team (cs-cochrane@wiley.com).

I am delighted to share this exciting news with you today. This complex project has been all about improving user experience; we have ambitious plans for future development of the Cochrane Library and these can only be delivered by this move to a new publishing platform.

With best wishes,

David Tovey
Editor in Chief

Dear Cochrane Members,

Voting is open for two Cochrane elections:

• Election of a Governing Board member
• Election of an Author representative to the Cochrane Council

Visit elections.cochrane.org to view the candidates standing and cast your votes.

To allow for additional time to resolve queries related to voters’ membership status, the voting deadline for both current elections has been extended by one day to the end of the day in any timezone on Monday 6 August. Results will still be announced as planned on Tuesday 7 August 2018.

Cochrane Crowd is an online citizen science platform that enables anyone with an interest in health to contribute to health evidence. Our volunteers make it easier for health researchers to find the latest, high-quality evidence on what treatments work and don’t work. This means health practitioners can more easily access current evidence to inform the treatments they provide. Just a few minutes each day makes a huge difference.

This webinar introduces Cochrane Crowd and how you can get involved.

Wednesday 22nd August 1-2pm BST

crowd.cochrane.org

Support for Project Transform was 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.

The Pan African Clinical Trial Registry (PACTR) has been redeveloped with the aim of providing a more user-friendly, easy-to-navigate website for researchers, policymakers, funders and the public. PACTR is a regional clinical trials registry which aims to serve the needs of African clinical trials, clinicians and trial participants.

The revised database is available at www.pactr.org.

Some of the improved features include:

• Easy navigation
• An easy-to-search GIS map showing clinical trial locations by subject
• Optimised search functions with easy-to-download formats

PACTR is the only African WHO-endorsed primary registry of clinical trials conducted in Africa. It is open-access and trials are registered free of charge. PACTR was originally developed in 2006 with a focus on AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.  In 2009 it was expanded to include all conditions and renamed PACTR. PACTR is based at the South African Medical Research Council and is managed by Cochrane South Africa with initial funding from the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP).

“The overall aim is to increase transparency by promoting clinical trial registration and also to provide a consolidated platform to search for information on clinical trials,” said Tamara Kredo, Deputy Director of Cochrane SA. “PACTR aims to assist in the regulation, registration and ethical oversight of clinical trials in Africa.”

“PACTR is increasingly becoming the registry of choice for African trials and recently registered the 1500th trial,” said Elizabeth Pienaar, PACTR Project Manager.

“PACTR is unique in recognising that African trialists often face additional challenges in trial registration and seeks to provide ways of overcoming these. For example, a common problem in sub-Saharan Africa is limited, unreliable and costly internet access. With this in mind, the registry provides manual registration for those without reliable internet access,” said Pienaar. “These features are included and updated in the new version.”

Feedback on the website and its new features is welcomed at pactradmin@mrc.ac.za or elizabeth.pienaar@mrc.ac.za

Michelle Galloway
Cochrane SA

Five candidates are standing for election to the Governing Board this year:

• CULLUM, Nicky           
• EKE, Ahizechukwu      
• GUPTA, Deepak          
• HOOFT, Lotty  
• JEFFERSON, Tom

Read more about why they’re standing and what they propose to do for Cochrane in their Candidate Statements on elections.cochrane.org.

There is one position available on the Board for this election. If you’re a Cochrane Member you’ll be entitled to vote for your preferred candidate and you’ll receive instructions on voting opening day, 24 July 2018. If you are unsure whether you are a Cochrane Member, please contact membership@cochrane.org.

Best wishes to all candidates standing!

Nine candidates are standing for election to the Cochrane Council as Author Representative:

• CIAPPONI, Agustin
• CLAY, Fiona
• DAVIES, Mark
• DEL GIOVANE, Cinzia
• FRANCO, Juan V.A.
• HODDER, Rebecca Kate
• JORDAN, Vanessa
• MARTIS, Ruth
• PETSKY, Helen

Read more about why they’re standing in their Candidate Statements on elections.cochrane.org.

There is one position available on the Council for this election. If you’re a Cochrane Member and Author you’ll be entitled to vote for your preferred candidate and you’ll receive instructions on voting opening day, 24 July 2018. If you are unsure whether you are a Cochrane Member, please contact membership@cochrane.org.

Best wishes to all candidates standing!

On Friday, 29th June 2018, Cochrane enthusiasts from all over Croatia and neighbouring Bosnia and Herzegovina gathered in Split, at the University of Split School of Medicine, for the 10th Annual Croatian Cochrane Symposium. They were rewarded for their efforts with excellent presentations from this year’s invited speakers: Prof. Taryn Young, Director, Centre for Evidence-based Healthcare, Chief specialist scientist, Cochrane South Africa and Head, Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Stellenbosch University, South Africa; Dr Tamara Lotfi, Secretariat Coordinator for the Global Evidence Synthesis Initiative and Ms. Selena Ryan-Vig, Communications & Engagement Officer at Cochrane UK and former facilitator of Students 4 Best Evidence (S4BE).

The topic of this year’s symposium ‘Building capacity for Cochrane Systematic Review production and dissemination’ drew a varied crowd of participants, from journal editors and health professionals to students and representatives of patient/consumer organisations. They had the opportunity to learn from Prof. Young how evidence maps are created and their role in informing research and practice, from Dr. Lotfi how to build capacity for systematic review production in research centres in LMICs, whereas Ms. Ryan-Vig enlightened students on their role in Evidence-based Health Care and provided numerous incentives for joining S4BE. Dr. Tina Poklepović Peričić, Co-Director of Cochrane Croatia, gave a thorough overview of the training materials available through Cochrane for capacity building and announced a new online training course in Croatian.

Given that 2018 also marks the 10th anniversary of the founding of Cochrane Croatia, Asst. Prof. Irena Zakarija-Grković, Co-Director of Cochrane Croatia, gave a brief overview of the first ten years of Cochrane Croatia, from first deliberations between Prof. Ana Marušić and Sir Iain Chalmers in 1994 on establishing a Cochrane Group in Croatia, followed by talks with Prof. Alessandro Liberati in 1997 about creating a Branch of the Italian Cochrane Centre in Croatia, which was realised in 2008, to the promotion of Cochrane Croatia to full, independent centre status in 2017. This was followed by a presentation on the vision and mission of Cochrane Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cochrane Croatia’s first Affiliate, founded in 2018, which was delivered by Cochrane Bosnia and Herzegovina’s first Director, Dr. Filipa Markotić.

The afternoon was reserved for practical workshops and round tables providing an opportunity for a capacity building strategy to be developed as well as for participants to gain first-hand experience in producing evidence maps and using the SPARK tool for prioritization of systematic review topics in health policy and systems research.

We thank the City of Split and the University of Split School of Medicine for sponsoring this year’s symposium as well as Cochrane South Africa for supporting Prof. Young. We are grateful to all our speakers for their effort, time and generousity and look forward to future collaborations.

Irena Zakarija-Grkovic
Co-Director,
Cochrane Croatia

Cochrane’s organizational Dashboard presents our achievements in key metrics.
 
We use it as an excellent tool to reflect on our accomplishments on a quarterly basis.
 
Here are just a few highlights from Q1 2018:

• The use of Cochrane.org has increased by 44% (YOY), with 71% of visits from non-English language browsers.
• Cochrane Crowd now has over 8,541 members, a 64% increase (YOY).
• 91% of new Cochrane Reviews were published with a summary of Findings table, up from 70% on the same periods in 2015.

See Cochrane’s QI2018 Dashboard in full
 
Find out more about Cochrane’s organizational Targets for 2018

This week Cochrane was given the opportunity to speak as part of the UK’s first ever Evidence Week at the Houses of Parliament in London, UK.

The initiative, led by Sense About Science, brought together MPs, peers, parliamentarians and others interested in science and health to talk about why health evidence is important and matters to global decision-makers.  It aimed to highlight the role of the House of Commons Library and share insights into the work of Parliament in seeking and scrutinizing the value of evidence for making better healthcare decisions. 

Cochrane joined Sense about Science, the House of Commons Library, the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology and House of Commons Science and Technology Committee as well as partners SAGE Publishing in arranging a week of events and briefings.

As part of the week of briefings, Dr Lynda Ware, Senior Fellow in General Practice at Cochrane UK, presented to wide-ranging delegates on how Cochrane uses high-quality, relevant, synthesized research evidence to help make informed decisions about health care. 

Dr Lynda Ware commented: “We are bombarded by health claims and it is difficult to make sense of them all. It is hard to filter out the fake and misleading from those that are true and evidence-based. As a global organization providing the very best analysis of research evidence available, Cochrane can help us find our way through this information to make informed decisions about health care.”

Attendees to Dr Ware’s talk came from government departments, independent fact checking organizations, press officers working in science communications as well as researchers looking at how evidence can help tackle some of the big social problems of our time  - homelessness and an aging population. 

• Read more about Evidence Week
• Read more about Dr Lynda Ware

The 2017 Journal Citation Report (JCR) has been released by Clarivate Analytics, and we are delighted to announce that Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR) Journal Impact Factor is now 6.754.

This is a significant increase on the 2016 Journal Impact Factor, which was 6.264.

The CDSR Journal Impact Factor is calculated by taking the total number of citations in a given year to all Cochrane Reviews published in the past two years, and dividing that number by the total number of Reviews published in the past 2 years. It is a useful metric for measuring the strength of a journal by how often its publications are cited in scholarly articles.

Some highlights of the CDSR 2017 Journal Impact Factor include:

• The CDSR is ranked 12 of the 154 journals in the Medicine, General & Internal category
• The CDSR received 62,332 cites in the 2017 Journal Impact Factor period, compared with 57,740 in 2016
• The five-year Journal Impact Factor is 7.669 compared to 7.084 in 2016.

Cochrane’s Editor in Chief, David Tovey, commented: “I am delighted to see a further rise in Impact Factor for the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. There is also a pleasing increase in total citations, and the five year impact factor is strong. All of these data demonstrate the usage and impact of our reviews, and reflect enormous credit on our contributors and groups.”

The main Journal Impact Factor report and the Cochrane Review Group reports will be delivered in early August 2018.

• More information is available here on how the CDSR Journal Impact Factor is calculated.