The final report presenting results and conclusions from the CEU’s Plain Language Summary pilot project is now available.

Over the past six months, seven Cochrane Review Groups (CRGs) have been piloting the use of a Plain Language Summary (PLS) template and checklist developed by Cochrane Norway. CRG editorial staff have sent the template to their review authors, used the template to write PLSs themselves, and/or used the checklist on PLSs written by review authors.

CRG editorial staff involved in the pilot found the template to be useful and feasible to implement. While they had several suggestions about how we could improve the template, they all plan to use it after the pilot period has ended.

We still lack data about the experiences of review authors who have used the template. However, based on the positive feedback that the template received from editorial staff, the report suggests that the PLS template is made an official Cochrane resource. The report also suggests several issues that should or could be addressed, either before or after official approval.  

Current versions of the template and checklist that were used in the pilot are available on Cochrane Norway’s website.

If you have any comments or questions on the report's recommendations or suggested next steps, please get in touch with Julie Wood (jwood@cochrane.org).

• Final report
   

Any registered Author in Cochrane’s contacts database, Archie, with an active account will be eligible to vote.

Dear Cochrane Authors,

Voting is now open for the election of two (2) Author representatives to the new Cochrane Council.

To access the candidate statements and online voting form, please visit the Cochrane Community site, here: http://elections.cochrane.org/.

The deadline for voting is the end of Friday 10 March 2017 in any timezone. The two successful candidates will be announced in the week beginning 13 March 2017. Questions about any aspect of this process should be submitted to voting@cochrane.org.

Candidates standing:

The following eligible* candidates have put themselves forward for election (listed in alphabetical order):

1.    Lawrence Best
2.    Soumyadeep Bhaumik
3.    Julie Brown
4.    Agustín Ciapponi
5.    Tom Fahey
6.    Gill Gyte
7.    Vanessa Jordan
8.    Sarah Lensen
9.    Roshan das Nair
10.    Mohan Pammi
11.    María Ximena Rojas Reyes
12.    Lorainne Tudor Car
13.    Marialena Trivella

How to vote:

• Each voter gets one vote for each Author representative position available, so in this election, voters get to choose the two candidates they would like to see elected from the pool of candidates standing.
• Once you have read the candidate statements, above, please vote for two (2) candidates from the pool of thirteen (13) standing.

Eligibility to vote:

• Any registered Author in Cochrane’s contacts database, Archie, with an active account will be eligible to vote. This includes Authors who are not eligible to stand for election themselves as they have not published a Cochrane Review in the Cochrane Library.
• You can confirm you are eligible to vote by logging into Archie (archie.cochrane.org), searching for your person record, and confirming you have an active role, listed as “Yes” in the Author role in the Roles tab. If you do not have an Archie account, you may request one by contacting your Cochrane Review Group.

Reminder of the Council’s role:

The new Cochrane Council was established in November 2016 at the recommendation of the Governing Board, following a review in which directly elected Group representatives on the Board were replaced with representatives elected by the full Cochrane membership. The intention of establishing the Council is to ensure that Cochrane Groups retain an effective voice in Cochrane’s leadership and strategic decision-making. The purpose of the Council is to provide:

• A forum for Cochrane Groups to consider high-level matters affecting Cochrane as a whole;
• A mechanism to raise matters and provide input to the Governing Board on behalf of Cochrane Groups; and
• A forum to consider matters at the request of the Board and inform Board deliberations.

The initial Council will primarily include representatives drawn from, or with the recommendation of, the Group Executives. The Council will review and modify its membership over time, adjusting the balance of members, reflecting changes following the Structure and Function review, and bringing in additional members from other sectors of Cochrane’s community such as translators, knowledge translation hubs, etc.

Although Authors do not have their own Executive, they did have a representative on the Steering Group before it transitioned to the Governing Board. For this reason, there will be two Author representative positions on the Council at this stage.

With best wishes,

Mona Nasser

Cochrane Author, former Author representative on the Steering Group and current member of the Governing Board

Denise Thomson

Chair of the Governance Review Working Group* and member of the Governing Board

---

*For this first election, the Governance Reform Working Group** has agreed that any Author who has published at least one Cochrane Review in the Cochrane Library is eligible to stand for election. The Author’s name must be listed in the Authors section of the Cochrane Review, but that person does not have to be lead/correspondence Author on the Review.

• You do not need to be nominated by any other members of Cochrane in order to stand for election.
• You are eligible to stand even if you have also been eligible to stand as a different representative (e.g. for Managing Editors). 
• The term of membership will be two years. For more information on membership, please see the Council’s Terms of Reference.
• You must be available to travel to Geneva, Switzerland, for the Council’s first meeting on Thursday 6th April 2017. Your travel and accommodation costs, and other expenses, will be covered by Cochrane.

**Current Working Group members: Denise Thomson, Lisa Bero, Joerg Meerpohl.

The IKMD team is pleased to announce an update to Archie, effective 8 February 2017.
 
With this Archie update, we introduce a new translations component. This facilitates translation data processing to support future, optional full-text Cochrane Review translations in the Cochrane Library, and to make our translation technology infrastructure more robust and ready for future improvements.
 
Furthermore, we have implemented minor bug fixes and feature improvements. For a full breakdown of the fixes and new functionality available in Archie, please see the Archie Updates section of the Community website.
 
Should you come across any bugs or errors, please use the Archie Problem Reporting Form.
 
We value your input on Cochrane software, including Archie. We invite you to post your suggestions on our Archie Ideas forum, where others can vote and comment on these suggestions.

The Cochrane Governing Board, previously known as the Steering Group, met in December 2016. The meeting minutes are now available to view online. If you have any questions about the decisions or the work of the Governing Board, please contact the Central Executive team.

Additional resources:

• Governing Board membership
• Full list of meeting minutes and open access papers.

Looking for help on your systematic review?

TaskExchange is an online platform that connects people needing help with their systematic review with people who have the time and skills to help.

If you’d like assistance with your review, in addition to talking to your author team members and Managing Editor, browse TaskExchange to find a helper, or post a task and watch the offers of assistance roll in!

Task poster Melina Willson, Managing Editor, Cochrane Breast Cancer Review Group located at the NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre, University of Sydney, says:

“We used TaskExchange late last year and had a quick and positive response. Four articles were translated within a week for one of our Cochrane reviews on breast reconstruction. TaskExchange is a great platform to speed up what could otherwise be a laborious process of finding people to help on a review.”

TaskExchange can be used to find help for almost any systematic review task, including literature searching, article screening and translation, data extraction, statistical support, and consumer reviews. Helpers are usually acknowledged in the published review.

To get started with TaskExchange, sign up and browse members or post a task.

You can follow TaskExchange on Twitter to keep up with the latest news, and email taskexchange@cochrane.org for further information.

Dear Cochrane Members,

We write to you to express our concern regarding United States President Trump’s immigration and travel ban. As of 5 February, that ban has been suspended. Regardless, Cochrane is committed to a culture in which every individual is treated fairly and with respect. This ban violates two principles that we hold dear:

Collaboration - by fostering global co-operation, teamwork, and open and transparent communication and decision-­making.

Enabling wide participation - in our work by reducing barriers to contributing and by encouraging diversity.

Our vision is a world of improved health where decisions about health and health care are informed by high-quality, relevant and up-to-date synthesized research evidence. This can only be achieved through freedom to collaborate to advance science and health. The value in meeting in person and widely discussing and exchanging ideas cannot be underestimated. We recognize the distress that this ban is causing many of our members and the chilling effect it will have on our work and science overall.

In the coming days and weeks, Cochrane will be joining with other scientific and professional societies to formally protest this ban. If you have suggestions or ideas on how Cochrane could get involved, please share your ideas by emailing ban@cochrane.org.
 

Sincerely,
Lisa Bero and Cindy Farquhar, Co-Chairs
On behalf of Cochrane

Methods convenors and active members of Method Groups (as defined in Archie) are invited to vote.

Voting has opened for Methods Representatives on Cochrane Council. The Cochrane Council will provide a forum for Groups to meet and discuss high level matters with each other, as well as making sure the voice of Cochrane's Methods Groups is heard by the Cochrane Board.

Methods convenors and active members of Method Groups (as defined in Archie) are invited to vote. Please contact your Methods Group convenor or Jackie Chandler (Methods Co-ordinator) if you are unsure if you are a member of a Cochrane Methods Group.

• Read about the nominated representatives.
• Vote for two Methods Representatives on Cochrane Council.

The election of four new members of Cochrane’s Governing Board, conducted over December and January, is now complete. Our warm congratulations go to the following new members of Cochrane’s Governing Board, who will join the Board at their next face-to-face meeting in Geneva in April 2017:

•          Jan Clarkson, UK
•          Gerald Gartlehner, Austria
•          Peter Gøtzsche, Denmark
•          Nancy Santesso, Canada

As Co-Chairs of the Board, Lisa Bero and Cindy Farquhar would like to welcome these new members to the Board.

Our sincere thanks go to all the candidates who stood in this first election to be held under Cochrane’s new Articles of Association, adopted in October 2016. Their contribution and willingness to volunteer their time is greatly appreciated. The new Articles and electoral polices greatly expanded the eligibility of Cochrane contributors to stand and vote for Board positions, leading to a record number of votes received. Further details are available on the Board elections page.

This election was a special election, delayed to follow the decision on the new Articles of Association. The regular cycle of Board elections in the middle of each year will now resume. The next Board election will commence in June 2017.

Dear colleagues

There is a close collaborative working relationship between Cochrane’s Information Specialists (CISs) and the Central Executive’s Informatics & Knowledge Management Department (IKMD) in relation to our Linked Data work - specifically, annotation of Cochrane Reviews and Studies. We expect the work on annotation and metadata management to expand and become even more important in the coming years, and therefore we are formalizing this closer collaboration by introducing a ‘dotted line’ support and advisory relationship between CISs and Chris Mavergames, Head of Informatics and Knowledge Management.

All existing formal lines of accountability remain in place and are unaffected by this change. CISs continue to report to the Coordinating Editor (Co-Ed) of their Review Group and then to David Tovey as Editor in Chief. This new ‘dotted line’ advisory relationship does not change that all workload management and day-to-day operational management of the Information Specialists’ work remains with their respective Co-Eds.

As part of our recognition of the future importance to Cochrane of data structures, metadata standards, and other data-level aspects of our technology and knowledge management infrastructure, Chris will be taking on the title of Chief Information Officer (CIO) as well as Head of IKMD. The CIS Executive will continue to have an advisory role to him on relevant issues.

If you have any questions or concerns about this development, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
 

Best regards

David Tovey, Editor in Chief/Deputy CEO

 Chris Mavergames, Head of Informatics and Knowledge Management/CIO

Dear colleagues - Happy New Year!

2016: a year of organizational change and growth

For a year that brought us world-changing events, some of you may be glad to see the back of 2016. For Cochrane it has been a very good year - we saw continuity and growth in all our key organizational indicators, and huge progress being made on our major Strategy to 2020 initiatives. Many of these are due to be launched in 2017, bringing significant changes and – we hope - improvements to our products, ways of working, outreach and, most importantly, impact on health decision making by users of Cochrane evidence.

Usage of the Cochrane Library measured through website visits continued to show astonishing growth: 45% in the first nine months of 2016 compared to the same period the year before. As of September 2016 39% of all Cochrane Reviews are freely available worldwide through our ‘green’ and ‘gold’ open access policies, and this number continues to grow. At the same time, income from sales of the Cochrane Library greatly exceeded our annual targets, with royalty revenues increasing by 13.2% in 2016 compared to 2015, giving us the flexibility to continue to invest in the strategic priorities set out in our Strategy to 2020. We also achieved significant fundraising success, attracting our first major grants to support Cochrane Strategy to 2020 initiatives, including a grant of USD$1.15 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation which will support our Linked Data work.
 
We also successfully completed significant parts of our organizational reforms in 2016. The Steering Group approved new structure and function plans for Cochrane Review Groups in October. At the same time, Centre and Associate Centre Directors endorsed new detailed responsibilities and accountabilities for geographic-oriented Groups. These legitimize the Cochrane Network concept and introduce new smaller Affiliate Groups that can be set up in existing and new countries. We will implement these changes in 2017, as well as the major governance changes that were a highlight of the year for us. Cochrane’s new Articles of Association, which were unanimously approved by the Annual General Meeting in October, have replaced the Steering Group with a Governing Board, and a switch from a Group-based to an individual membership model, enfranchising thousands more people to vote both for candidates for the Board and on our organizational policies and governance. As you will be aware, the first Board elections to take place under this new model are now underway, and I encourage you to cast your votes for four new members from the 11 excellent candidates standing. We are also finalizing the selection of Cochrane Group representatives on the new Council advisory body to the Board; this group will meet for the first time in April at the Mid-Year Meeting in Geneva.
 
These developments are, in many ways, just the first fruits of the huge amounts of work we are doing together to deliver our Strategy to 2020 ambitions. Next month we will share with you our detailed projection of what success will look like by 2020 for each one of the 28 strategic objectives. The Governing Board approved these ‘definitions of success’ in December, along with the 2017 Plan & Budget, which is now available for you to read and use. The Plan & Budget provides the framework for all centrally managed activities and spending by the Central Executive Team (CET); and this year shows the amounts allocated to each of the four Strategy Goals. Of the £7 million approved to be spent in 2017, 24% (£1.7 million) will be returned directly to Cochrane Groups via funding programmes for methods development, translations, training, and review production; and also for governance, centralized support to Managing Editors and Information Specialists, and commissioned work for various Strategy to 2020 projects.
 
Data gathered in 2016 show that Cochrane Group funding continues to remain stable, with strategic support being provided to Groups in Cochrane Canada to assist them achieve longer-term sustainable funding, we hope, in 2017. At the same time, new Cochrane Groups continue to develop, including:

•         the launch of our first single-country Network in Brazil with five new Affiliates
•         the recognition of dynamic new Fields in the areas of Global Ageing and Rehabilitation
•         agreement in December on the formation of a new Cochrane Iran Associate Centre to expand Cochrane’s reach into a region where our influence has previously been very limited.

We anticipate that these new Groups will contribute to an increase in total funding (from £15 million in 2016) attracted by Cochrane Groups to support their work; and my deepest thanks and appreciation for the tireless work of so many of you to secure this funding.
 

2017: completion and launch of major new initiatives

 
2017 is going to be a critically important year for Cochrane, and one of its highlights will be the Global Evidence Summit (GES) in Cape Town, South Africa, 13-16 September, with four partner evidence organizations. We are in the final stages of developing a compelling and wide-ranging programme of training and workshops - just as at our normal Colloquia - which will complement the new activities and sessions that will be specially designed for the Summit. More details on this programme will follow soon. I very much hope that you are planning to attend as it will give you a unique opportunity to work with and learn from colleagues from other important evidence-using and evidence-producing organizations. We believe the GES will provide the leading event of the year for those interested in evidence-informed policy and practice in health care and other sectors, too.

There is so much to look forward to in the coming 12 months, and whilst the changes that are coming may be, at times, disorientating, we are already seeing in the ways that we measure the output and impact of Cochrane’s work the value of the changes we are making. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about all that lies ahead, please don’t hesitate to contact me, Editor in Chief David Tovey or any of my Senior Management Team or CET colleagues.
 
With my very best wishes,
 
Mark Wilson