We are pleased to announce that the second funding round of a one-year pilot of the Cochrane Review Support Programme is now open.

Key features of the programme:

• All Cochrane Review Groups may apply for the awards.
• Groups may nominate no more than two titles – either new reviews or review updates – from the November 2015 revision of the Cochrane Priority Review List. Titles added to the list after Nov 2015 cannot be proposed for this funding round.
• 10 grants of £5,000 each will be awarded
• We will aim to decide the list of successful reviews and to have notified the applicants by mid-June 2016
• Reviews must be published a maximum of 13 months after the awards are notified

Cochrane recognizes that these awards are insufficient to meet the full costs of conducting reviews; rather, they are intended to facilitate and possibly accelerate publication of high priority reviews that are already planned or underway.

Applications close at 5pm GMT, Friday 6 May 2016. An application form can be found on the Cochrane Review Support Programme page on the CEU website.

Ovarian cancer is the seventh-most common cancer in women worldwide and has poor survival rates largely attributed to late-stage presentation. Women who have a suspicious ovarian mass without obvious disease outside of the ovary usually require surgery for diagnosis and staging. A new Cochrane Review provides crucial evidence on the accuracy of frozen section analysis, a rapid diagnostic test that can inform management decisions of suspicious ovarian mass during surgery.

Jo Morrison is a Co-ordinating Editor of Cochrane Gynaecological, Neuro-Oncology and Orphan Cancers and Toby Lasserson is a Senior Editor in the Cochrane Editorial Unit. In a new Cochrane Library editorial, they share their opinions on how they think this important review can guide clinical decision making.

Read the Editorial: 'Finding time to make the right decision: using frozen section to inform intra-operative management of suspicious ovarian masses'

In January 2015 the Cochrane Priority Reviews List was launched, and has become a ‘living’ record of Cochrane’s attempt to identify titles that are of greatest importance to our stakeholders and are likely to impact significantly on health outcomes worldwide. Cochrane-wide prioritisation remains an important project and has been included in the Strategy to 2020 Targets for 2016. After the first year of the project we have a better sense of the strengths and weaknesses of our initial framework and believe it is now time to revise it. 

A paper outlining the new framework and submission requirements and a new submission form are available on the CEU website. From March 2016, Cochrane Review Groups that have not undertaken a formal prioritisation process and wish to submit new titles should use this form. 

Ruth Foxlee, Information Specialist, Cochrane Editorial Unit

David Tovey, Editor in Chief, The Cochrane Library, and Deputy Chief Executive Officer

Following consultation with current Trials Search Coordinators (TSCs), the Cochrane Steering Group (CSG) has approved the TSCs’ recommendation that their title be changed to ‘Information Specialist’ and the title of Assistant Trials Search Coordinator be changed to ‘Assistant Information Specialist’.

As the job title of TSC is not used outside of Cochrane, its remit is not clear externally. ‘TSC’ also does not encompass either the diverse range of tasks that TSCs perform, or the varied skill sets they bring to the organization.

Bringing the Cochrane role title in line with the wider library and information profession is important for the professional recognition and career progression of current post-holders, and for the future recruitment of suitably qualified and experienced candidates to Cochrane.

This title change is effective across Cochrane as of 1 March 2016. If you have questions about this, please contact Elizabeth Stovold (estovold@sgul.ac.uk) in her capacity as CSG representative for the TSCs/Information Specialists.

The Cochrane Justice Health Field and the Cochrane Policy College have ceased operations effective 4 March 2016. An ongoing lack of resource capacity meant that the team were unable to continue to provide a coordinating base and we thank them for all of their hard work. Please direct all enquiries relevant to the Field’s work to the Central Executive team.

2015 Dashboard is keeping us on track for 2016

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 2015 and the work to be done in 2016.  

View the full 2015 Dashboard.

Read more about Annual and Quarterly Dashboards.

Read more about Strategy to 2020.

Cochrane Tobacco Addiction is celebrating their 20-year anniversary. In addition to taking this great opportunity to publicize their work, they are also using it to plan how they move forward.

Whether your interest in prevention and treatment of tobacco addiction is personal or professional, Cochrane Tobacco Addiction wants to hear from you!

The first step in their priority setting exercise is a survey for policy makers, healthcare providers and commissioners, smokers, former smokers, researchers and research funders. You can take the survey online.

You can also find more information on this priority setting process at Cochrane Tobacco Addiction's website.

Time to celebrate - the new Cochrane Community website is here!

We are delighted to welcome you to the new and improved Cochrane Community website - the final phase of rebranding Cochrane online. It's been just over a year since we launched cochrane.org with our new organizational logo and branding; following that, 130+ Cochrane Groups went through the same process. Now we're focusing on this website, to make it a key resource in the work of Cochrane Groups and contributors worldwide.

The Community website has grown organically over the years, and has become increasingly difficult to search and navigate. Groups have been using their external websites to bookmark key pages and resources for their contributors. It is our hope that this will no longer be necessary – although those hyperlinks will still work for the time being. We hope that the new structure will make it easy for you to find the right resources for each stage of the review production process; get a clearer view of the many projects in which the Central Executive team is involved; and access all the resources available to make review production and dissemination easier.

New features:

• Easy to navigate search: We have consulted with the community to develop a more streamlined navigation. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, try the search feature in the top right or every page.
• News and blogs in same place: No more switching between different pages to see what's happening across the community! Blogs and News are in the same feed here – just click on the news or blog tag at the end of posts to filter.
• Quick links: We reviewed analytics to find out what pages were viewed most on the old site. You now have easy access to the top pages from the main landing page on the right-hand side.

The Community site is still a work in progress. We’d love to hear from you about what is missing or edits you may have - please provide your feedback here!

Cochrane’s Mid-Year Meeting provides an opportunity for face-to-face meetings of the collaboration’s Steering Group and other groups and contributors responsible for helping to formulate and implement Cochrane policy.

Cochrane senior staff will lead a strategic session on 5 April, focusing on Cochrane's governance reform and knowledge translation initiatives. For more information on the session and initiatives, please review the supporting documents. Cochrane contributors not able to attend the meeting are invited to participate remotely; please submit comments and questions on either or both topics via Twitter using the event hashtag, #cochranelondon.

For more than 20 years, Cochrane has produced systematic reviews of primary research in human health care and health policy. We are internationally recognized as the highest standard in evidence-based healthcare resources.

This video is the story of how a team of Cochrane researchers in Canada are helping to change practice in the treatment of a common, yet potentially fatal childhood viral infection.

Croup (more formally known as laryngotracheobronchitis) causes swelling in the throat and windpipe and produces a seal-like barking cough and noisy breathing.

In 2011 researchers from the Cochrane Child Health Field, based in Alberta, Canada, were deeply involved in a lot of systematic reviews on child relevant topics. They were looking at ways that they could translate the information from these reviews to different stakeholder groups, such as clinician audiences and parents of sick children.

Get more information on Cochrane Child Health's croup resources

In the first monthly installment of our new video series, “Cochrane - Making a Difference,” Denise Thomson and Lisa Hartling from Cochrane’s Child Health Field share their story of how their health evidence is making a difference on the emergency frontline in Canada: