Cochrane Mexico has been recognized for its outstanding achievements in promoting evidence-based decision-making in health care by moving from a Cochrane Associate Centre to being awarded full, independent Centre status.

The Mexican Cochrane Centre consists of five Associated Centres located at Culiacán (Sinaloa's Pediatric Hospital), Guadalajara (University of Guadalajara), Mexico City (Mexico's Children Hospital Federico Gómez and Clínica Médica Sur Foundation) and Cuernavaca (National Institute of Public Health).

Cochrane Mexico will continue to promote evidence-based decision making in health care in Mexico and the region by supporting and training new authors of Cochrane Reviews, as well as working with clinicians, professional associations, policy-makers, patients, and the media to encourage the dissemination and use of Cochrane evidence.

• Read the full press Release on Cochrane.Org
• Visit the Cochrane Mexico website

We are delighted to announce the appointment of Jacob Rosenberg as the new Co-ordinating Editor of Cochrane Colorectal Cancer at the Herlev Hospital and University of Copenhagen in Denmark. Professor Rosenberg has authored or co-authored nearly 800 publications, including 706 scientific articles, 53 book chapters, and 26 textbooks, and has delivered several hundred scientific lectures internationally and within Denmark. He is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, US. He has been Editor in Chief for Ugeskrift for Læger and the Danish Medical Journal for 13 years and associate editor of the Scandinavian Journal of Surgery for 2 years. He was also a member of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) for 7 years and is past president of The Royal Copenhagen Medical Society.

Professor Rosenberg said: “I am delighted to take this position and look very much forward to the work. Cochrane Colorectal Cancer has currently a broad scope covering various issues within abdominal surgery. My goal is to streamline the editorial process, to continue the great work of enhancing the quality of the reviews, and to increase awareness and importance of the publications from our Cochrane Review Croup."

• Visit the Cochrane Colorectal Cancer website

2017 Dashboard is keeping us on track for 2018

Cochrane’s Annual Dashboard presents some key metrics on our organizational performance over the previous calendar year. It includes data on Strategy to 2020 target achievements, and key metrics around the four Strategy to 2020 Goals. It’s an excellent tool to use to reflect on what we accomplished in 2017 and the work to be done in 2018.

Some highlights from the 2017 dashboard include:

• Record numbers of people accessed and used Cochrane evidence to inform their health decisions: 12.5 million Reviews accessed from the Cochrane Library in 2017 (28% up from 2016); and Cochrane.org web visits increased from 5.7 million in 2015 to over 15 million in 2017.
• New national licences in India and South Africa contributed to 3.66 billion people worldwide having free at the point of use access to the Library.
• All of Cochrane’s 2017 targets were met with the exception of the launch of the new Cochrane Library (which is now scheduled for April 2018).
• Cochrane Library sales and royalties increased dramatically compared with 2016, contributing to a 17% increase in overall income and a £269,000 operational surplus. Cochrane reserves rose to £5.65 million.

See the 2017 Dashboard

Read more about the Dashboard

Read more about Cochrane's Strategy to 2020

Dear Cochrane Members and community colleagues,

The Governing Board met in Lisbon, Portugal, on 19th, 22 and 23rd March 2018 and we wanted to share with you some of our key decisions. More information will be available in due course (as will the full open access minutes) but if you have any questions about these decisions, please contact one of us, any member of the Board, or Lucie Binder in the CEO's office.

We are pleased to report that the Board has approved the following items:

• A new Content Strategy framework and funding of £70,000 in 2018 and £200,000 in 2019 to support organizational content priorities for 2018-2020.
• The establishment of a permanent Cochrane ‘Fast-Track Service’ and financial support for its implementation in 2018-2019 (£89,500 per year for two years).
• The proposed process for reviewing Cochrane’s policy on commercial sponsorship and conflicts of interest for Cochrane Groups; and financial support for its implementation of £74,689.
• The plan to hold a Global Evidence Summit every four years after the next one in 2020 or 2021.
• The establishment of Cochrane Mexico as a new Cochrane Centre.
• The Cochrane MS and Rare Diseases of the Central Nervous System Group's application for Strategic Development Support.
• New governance resources, including a Governing Board Charter and Code of Conduct for Trustees (to be published soon).

We also make the following acknowledgements:

• Our thanks to the Central Executive Team and the entire Cochrane community for their work and commitment in delivering an extraordinary programme of work in 2017 and 2018 to achieve the Strategy to 2020 Objectives.
• Our thanks to the Cochrane Council for its work to date and to co-chair Julie Brown, who is stepping down from her role. We will be looking at ways to improve how the Council and Board work together given the Council’s essential role as a voice of the Cochrane community.
• Our welcome to Dr Ginny Barbour, new Chair of the Cochrane Library Oversight Committee (CLOC), who is supported by Dr Tracey Koehlmoos as Deputy Chair. The CLOC is looking to recruit up to three new members, including an individual with expertise in publishing law. Enquiries should be sent to Cochrane’s Editor in Chief, Karla Soares-Weiser.

And, finally, our grateful thanks to Cochrane Portugal’s Director, Professor António Vaz Carneiro, and his team for hosting the 2018 Cochrane Governance Meetings in Lisbon.

The Agenda and open access papers are available here on the Community site. The full Minutes will be available soon.

The next Governing Board face-to-face meeting will be during Cochrane Colloquium 16-18 September 2018, Edinburgh.

With our best wishes,

Cindy Farquhar and Martin Burton

Co-Chairs, Cochrane’s Governing Board

TaskExchange has launched new features especially for evidence newcomers and translators!

TaskExchange is Cochrane’s online platform that connects people needing help on health evidence projects (Cochrane and non-Cochrane) with people who have the time and skills to help out. TaskExchange now has almost 2,100 contributors collaborating on systematic review and guidelines projects, with tasks including language translation, consumer and clinical review, data extraction, screening and guideline development.

We are always evolving and improving, and our most recent features aim to make TaskExchange even better for translators as well as newcomers to the world of evidence.

Evidence newcomers can now browse beginner tasks directly from the TaskExchange homepage. And all beginner tasks are marked with a green leaf, so they can be easily identified in the general task list.

‘Many of our contributors join TaskExchange to build skills in evidence production,’ says Tari Turner, Co-Lead of TaskExchange. ‘They may be medical or allied health students, Cochrane Crowd members, or people with a general interest in evidence but little or no hands-on experience. We wanted to make it easy for these people to start contributing to evidence. On TaskExchange, evidence newcomers can now access appropriate tasks directly from the homepage. They no longer need to wade through tasks requiring significant prior experience. This will make it much easier for them to get involved.’

If you’d like to gain evidence skills, visit TaskExchange today and browse the tasks for beginners!

Task posters now have the option of labelling their task as entry level; that is, appropriate for evidence newcomers. It’s as easy as ticking the box when you fill out the details of your task!

These changes have been well received by student communities. ‘At Students 4 Best Evidence, we’re really excited to learn about this new TaskExchange feature, which aims to make it clear which tasks are suitable for students’, explains Selena Ryan-Vig, Students 4 Best Evidence facilitator. ‘Not only will this make it easier for students to contribute to the work of Cochrane, but it also offers them the opportunity to gain really valuable experience and knowledge along the way. Hilda Bastian, one of the founding members of Cochrane, once said ‘young people are the most striking phenomenon. They’re bringing a blast of energy, enthusiasm…and cutting edge scientific work with them. It’s fantastic that TaskExchange are finding new ways to try and harness this.’

If you’re posting a task, consider labelling it as an entry level. Head to TaskExchange to post a task today!

Translation tasks are very popular on TaskExchange, and the platform has a dedicated group of translators with skills in many languages. To streamline the platform for translation tasks, several changes have been made. These include the ability to browse translations tasks from the home page, to filter for tasks in a particular language, to receive weekly email alerts related to that language only, and to nominate language skills in personal profiles.

Juliane Ried, Cochrane’s Translations Co-ordinator, explains, ‘We receive a lot of interest from volunteers who want to contribute to Cochrane and make use of their language skills. TaskExchange has already proven to be a great platform to help these people put their skills to work. The new language features will make it even easier for polyglots and those looking for their help to come together. TaskExchange has become an instrument to facilitate the multi-lingual nature of Cochrane’s community and research.’

If you’re a translator interested in working on health evidence projects, head over to TaskExchange and browse the translation tasks today!

Sign up to TaskExchange, follow us on Twitter and contact us at taskexchange@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 Senior Management Team sets annual targets for delivery by the Cochrane community and Central Executive Team in support of Strategy to 2020.

What do we plan to do in 2018?

Together the Central Executive Team and Cochrane community will:

1. Form eight new Cochrane Review Group Networks, and begin implementation of Network plans and improved ways of working together.
2. Complete the new standardized technology workflow for Cochrane Review production.
3. Agree Cochrane’s future priority review types, methods and data sources through the development of a ‘content strategy’, and begin associated implementation activites.
4. Deliver more features and enhancements of the Cochrane Library after its re-launch.
5. Build capacity and engagement in Knowledge Translation activities across the organization.

Read more about how these targets will be met, how Cochrane defines success, and how we did in 2017.

Cochrane Crowd joined forces with two other Citizen Science platforms, Mark2Cure and Stall Catchers, for CitSciMed Blitz. Read on to hear how the blitz led to some “firsts” for Cochrane Crowd, and for prize winner announcements.

Anna Noel-Storr from Cochrane Crowd met Ginger (Mark2Cure) and Pietro (Stall Catchers) at the CitSci2017 conference in St Paul, and they’ve been keen supporters of each other’s platforms ever since. Readers will remember Cochrane Crowd and Mark2Cure joined forces for last year’s MedLit Blitz. When it came time for this year’s blitz, the three platforms collaborated for the first time. Each platform ran a 24-hour challenge within a one-week period, with contributors encouraged to participate in all three challenges.

One of the beauties of a collaborative blitz lies in members of each platform being introduced to the other platforms. Seeing regulars from Mark2Cure and StallCatchers pop up on the Cochrane Crowd leaderboard was exciting, and seeing Anna appear on the Stall Catcher leader board, albeit briefly, was also quite a thrill!

This blitz was also a first for Crowd in a technical sense. It was the first challenge event Crowd has run using the Cochrane Classmate interface. This meant Anna and Emily from Crowd could communicate directly with participants throughout the challenge, adding an element of live feedback that hasn’t been possible before.

Without further ado, let’s look at the prize winners!

The overall winner of CitSciMed Blitz, with the highest ranking across the three platforms, was Michael Landau. The grand CitSciMed Blitz trophy is being custom made for Michael and will be sent to him shortly.

Including Michael, 14 people took part in all three challenges and will henceforth be known as CitSciMed Blitz triathletes! The triathletes are Michael Landau, Michael Capraro, Kien Pong Yap, Tom Adams, Stephanie Johnson, Chadia Khatib, Guy Calkins, Alex Freeman, Zoe Wilkinson, Samuel Ognenis, Christiane de Becker, Laurie Cochran, Andama Adinan, Olivia and Nicole.

The top ranked contributor for each platform will also receive a CitSciMed Blitz trophy.

The winner of the Stall Catchers trophy was Michael Capraro, who took the leader position in the Stall Catchers challenge finishing 1st at score, total movies, and real (non-training) movies analysed. The winner of the Mark2Cure trophy was Kien Pong Yap. And finally, the winner of the Cochrane Crowd trophy was Nikolaos Sideris who screened a whopping 5188 citations over the 24 hours.

Each platform has also awarded prizes to runner-up contributors, and those who ranked 2-10 in the Cochrane Crowd challenge will receive a signed copy of Iain Chalmer’s book Testing Treatments. They are Therese Dalsbø, Kien Pong Yap, Deirdre Beecher, Dhasarathi Kumar, Michael Landau, Karen Ma, Tom Adams, Jayapradha and Michael Capraro.

Congratulations to all prize winners!

Cochrane Crowd extends a huge thank you to all the Citizen Scientists who took part in CitSciMed Blitz, and a special welcome to those who contributed to health evidence through Cochrane Crowd for the first time. Thanks also to Pietro and Egle from Stall Catchers and Ginger from Mark2Cure for their great company and adventurous spirits.

The team at Cochrane Crowd plan to run annual collaborative blitzes with Mark2Cure and Stall Catchers, and plans are afoot to make them bigger and even better. The next one will coincide with Citizen Science Day 2019.

You can read CitSciMed Blitz wrap ups from Mark2Cure and Stall Catchers, here and here.

To contribute to Cochrane Crowd, sign up to the platform here. For more information about Cochrane Crowd email crowd@cochrane.org, and follow us on Twitter.

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 World Health Assembly (WHA) is the decision-making body of the World Health Organization (WHO). The main functions of the WHA are to determine the policies of the Organization, appoint the Director-General, supervise financial policies, and review and approve the proposed programme budget. The WHA is held annually in Geneva, Switzerland. this year's agenda can be found here.

As we did in 2017, Cochrane will send a small delegation to the WHA from 21-26 May 2018. If you are planning to attend the WHA or have any suggestions for the Cochrane delegation, please contact Cochrane's Senior Advisor (Partnerships, External Affairs & Fundraising), Sylvia de Haan.

Dear community colleagues

We are delighted to inform you that we have appointed Senior Editors for seven of the CRG Networks. The Project Team has been unanimous in agreeing that the new Senior Editor role is critical to the success of the CRG Transformation Programme, therefore we have consciously set the bar for appointment very high and been specific in our assessment of the leadership characteristics and skill-sets needed for the appointed candidates.

These essential characteristics include:

• A strong commitment to and understanding of the CRG Transformation Programme;
• The capacity and willingness to support change through the networks;
• Editorial experience at a high level;
• The ability and willingness to think strategically, and to focus on detail where needed: for example, in respect of review quality;
• Credibility within the editorial community allied with high level communication, leadership and influencing skills;
• Knowledge and understanding of the work of Cochrane’s CRGs and their contribution to the success of the Networks.

In total, we received 28 applications and interviewed a shortlist of 18 candidates. The six appointments were the unanimous choice of the recruitment panel that included Martin Burton (ENT Co-ordinating Editor and co-chair of the Governing Board), Jan Clarkson (Oral Health Co-ordinating Editor and member of the Governing Board),  Jonathan Craig (Kidney and Transplant Co-ordinating Editor), Nicky Cullum (Wounds Co-ordinating Editor), Fergus Macbeth (Lung Cancer Co-ordinating Editor, Co-chair of the Cochrane Council and also the Funding Arbiter panel), Karla Soares-Weiser (Deputy Editor in Chief), and David Tovey (Editor in Chief). We will not run another round of selection before September 2018, therefore interim appointments have been agreed with the Project Team in order to facilitate the initiation of activities within these Networks.

Please see below the list of Senior Editors and Associate Editors and their CRG Network:

 The Senior Editors and Associate Editors will formally take up their new roles from April/May, and I’m sure you’ll join us in warmly welcoming them to their new posts.

In addition, we are delighted to announce the appointment of the additional members who, along with the Senior Editors will form a new Editorial Board, which will meet for the first time in Lisbon. These are:

• Tammy Clifford, Senior Adviser representing the Evidence User community
• Sally Green, Senior Adviser (Knowledge Translation)
• Julian Higgins, Senior Methods Adviser
• Paul Garner, Senior Adviser (Innovation and Review production)
• Jimmy Volmink, Senior Adviser (Equity and Diversity)

Finally, we look forward to seeing many of you next week for our first formal CRG Networks meeting on Tuesday 20th and Wednesday 21st March during Cochrane’s Governance Meetings in Lisbon.

With best wishes

David Tovey and Karla Soares-Weiser

Related items:

• News item - Official launch of the first Cochrane Review Group Networks

• News item - CRG Networks and the Cochrane Community: Working better together

• Visit the CRG Networks Portal