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

Dear CET colleagues,

I am delighted to announce the appointment of Jo Anthony as the new Head of the Knowledge Translation department, and Chris Champion as the new Head of Membership, Learning & Support Services.

Jo has more than 20 years’ experience in print and broadcast journalism and as a senior executive and communications specialist. She joined Cochrane in 2014 as Media and Communications Officer, and during the last four years has worked with Cochrane Groups, authors and editorial teams to increase the coverage, reach, accessibility and impact of Cochrane’s evidence around the world. She designed and implemented media and dissemination plans, was central to the development of Cochrane’s new brand identity and led the Central Executive Team’s events management support for the Global Evidence Summit last September. She has a proven track record of leadership roles within global organizations, including the BBC, commercial media, and digital content production companies managing international multi-disciplinary teams.

Chris Champion has been part of Cochrane for more than eight years. Having developed his editorial skills at Oxford University Press he joined Cochrane as a Managing Editor in 2009 working first at the Developmental, Psychosocial and Learning Problems Group, and then at the Common Mental Disorders Group in Bath, UK. After five years as a Managing Editor he was appointed as Senior Advisor to Cochrane’s Chief Executive Officer, and in 2015 became Senior Programme Manager in the CEO’s Office. Having worked in Cochrane’s Review Groups, participated in and led various Cochrane committees, and more recently been the lead on several major Strategy 2020 initiatives such as the structure and function projects, the formation of the Knowledge Translation framework, and developing and implementing the new Cochrane Membership scheme, Chris has a real depth of understanding of Cochrane and our community and is therefore well placed to understand and deal with the challenges that the new Membership, Learning and Support Services department will face.

Both candidates beat off strong external competition in the recruitment process over the last month, and their appointment is indicative of the tremendous talent we already have within the Cochrane community. They will formally take up their new roles from Monday 5th March. I’m sure you’ll join me in warmly welcoming them to their new posts!

Best wishes,

Mark

Mark G. Wilson
Chief Executive Officer

We are pleased to announce a new module on Network Meta-Analysis (NMA) for the Cochrane Interactive Learning course.

Developed in partnership with Cochrane’s Membership, Learning and Support Services, NMA subject matter experts and world-leading e-learning designers, the new module is the tenth in the Cochrane Interactive Learning course and continues our commitment to provide high quality, engaging and innovative distance learning.

Chris Champion, Head of Membership, Learning and Support services: “I’m delighted to be able to launch this tenth module of Cochrane Interactive Learning focussed on network meta-analysis. As a globally diverse organisation, the ability to deliver high quality, engaging learning online is critical for Cochrane to meet its mission.  This new module is a direct response to Cochrane’s content strategy and is part of our commitment to continually augment and update the Interactive Learning programme. We hope that Cochrane authors and editors alike will find this to be a valuable training resource to develop their knowledge around this increasingly important area of systematic review methodology.”

David Tovey, Cochrane’s Editor in Chief says: “Cochrane launched its Content Strategy in 2018. One of the highest priorities identified was to increase the number of reviews using network meta-analysis, where multiple interventions can be assessed against one another to provide more intuitive and applicable health care decision making support. This new Interactive Learning module is part of a broad range of initiatives to support Cochrane authors to take up this challenge and it will sit alongside guidance in the new Cochrane Handbook, an extension of the MECIR standards for network meta-analyses and the continuation of regular face-to-face training from the Comparing Multiple Interventions Methods Group. We hope that, taken together, these initiatives will help us increase the production of these reviews in Cochrane and therefore to meet the needs of our users more effectively.”

Professors Julian Higgins and and Tianjing Li were the subject matter expert team co-authoring the module: “We enjoyed our collaboration with the Cochrane Membership, Learning and Support Services team to produce this new module. The module introduces the underlying concepts and assumptions of network meta-analysis, which is of increasing importance to evidence-informed healthcare. It describes the benefits of network meta-analyses, and illustrates their features using examples and interactivity.”

The new module is freely available to Cochrane contributors, and residents of HINARI countries, and there are also subscription options. Find out more and access the new module at: interactivelearning.cochrane.org

The US Cochrane Center, based at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, has closed. Director Professor Kay Dickersin, and Associate Directors Tianjing Li and Roberta Scherer have stepped down from their positions, but will continue to work with Cochrane in other capacities. Cochrane’s Governing Board Co-Chairs Martin Burton and Cindy Farquhar thanked them for their commitment to Cochrane’s work over many years: “Professor Kay Dickersin has led the US Cochrane Center since it was founded, and has been at the heart of Cochrane’s work in the United States for over 20 years,” Cindy said. “On behalf of the entire Cochrane community, including the many people she has so generously and graciously supported as Director of the Center, we would like to thank her and all of her team at the Johns Hopkins School.” In their letter to the Governing Board and the Centre Directors’ Executive, Professor Dickersin, Dr Li and Dr Scherer wrote: “Over the years, we have thoroughly enjoyed working with you, other Centre Directors, and our colleagues at US Cochrane West and Cochrane Caribbean. We wish you all the best and lots of success in growing Cochrane.”

Cochrane plans to establish a new US Network and will issue an invitation soon for expressions of interest from institutions and organizations in the United States to join the Network and host a new Cochrane US Center, which will manage the Network including the two existing US Associate Centers: Cochrane US West, which opened in 2015 based at the Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) in Portland, Oregon; and Cochrane Caribbean, launched in June 2013 at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica.

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.