This is part of a series of Cochrane case studies about prioritization work by Cochrane Review Groups. You can read more by visiting the priority setting case study page.

The Cochrane Incontinence Group (CIG) were one of the first Groups to use the James Lind Alliance (JLA) Priority Setting Partnership model almost eight years ago. This approach had been successful in guiding review production for almost a decade, but in recent years the group has worked on refreshing the list of priority reviews that was created as part of the JLA partnership.

They have an ongoing relationship with the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) in the UK, and this remains a key component of their prioritization efforts. The CIG is a registered stakeholder with NICE so they receive email alerts about forthcoming guidance topics, respond when a relevant topic is identified, and liaise with the guideline team to ensure reviews are published or updated.

In 2015 they engaged with another key guideline development group in their field - the Incontinence panel of the European Association of Urology (EAU). The EAU has 20 different panels, but the CIG only liaised with one - the Incontinence Panel, a group of European urologists. The focus of this prioritization exercise was to identify gaps in the CIG topic list and to develop a list of reviews that would meet the needs of this important stakeholder group.

The process started with the CIG preparing a list of all their reviews that included the most recent date of publication for each. This allowed the group to easily see which reviews were up to date and which were ripe for revision. The list was then sent to the EAU Incontinence Panel to identify any missing topics, important reviews that needed updating, or titles they thought were no longer clinically relevant and could be marked as stable. The results of this process were not collated by the panel chair; instead each individual member submitted their own feedback. In some cases this lack of consensus created a challenge for the CIG, with panel members giving contradictory rankings. The group noted that if they were to use this model again, they would ask the panel to deliver a consensus verdict.

Another challenge stems from the fact that the panel meet infrequently, so it took approximately six months for feedback to be received. The CIG consider this prioritization exercise to have a shelf-life of about a year, but that the process overall doesn’t have an end date. New treatment options emerge, the need to reassess older approaches is continuous, and both are reflected in the changing needs and opinions of the EAU panel.

The CIG approach to prioritization has the advantage of ensuring that Cochrane incontinence reviews feed into important clinical guidelines, plus they report that it wasn’t particularly onerous. The main task was to compile the initial list for the EAU panel to review. That took a little less than a day ,and maintenance of the list will be even less time-consuming. The NICE ‘push’ method is also a relatively low-impact way of engaging with a key stakeholder, although of course when the group gets a positive response from NICE regarding a guideline update, then there’s a flurry of activity to ensure the review/update is delivered on time!    

In their most recent prioritization exercises, the Group has chosen not to invest a lot of time and effort into the prioritization method itself; instead resources are used to deliver reviews and updates themselves. Some might argue that this approach is too narrow, as it cuts out input from consumers. The Group is conscious of this and as a result is thinking about revisiting the JLA method, which served them so well in the past.

If you have any questions or comments about this blog series or if you’d like to tell us about your group’s prioritization work please contact Ruth Foxlee at the Cochrane Editorial Unit – rfoxlee@cochrane.org

Ruth Foxlee, Information Specialist, Cochrane Editorial Unit

Lydia Wilson, Intern, Cochrane Editorial Unit

Luis Eduardo Fontes is a physician, specializing in intensive care and gastroenterology, and a Professor of Medicine at Petrópolis Medical School. He is also one of the five Affiliate Directors of the Cochrane Brazilian Network, launched in 2016, and here explains about his exciting new role, and experience hosting the first Cochrane Symposium in Rio de Janeiro.

Can you tell us a little more about your newly launched Petrópolis Affiliate?
The team that will run the Affiliate Center with me consist of seven physicians who also teach at the same medical school.Our Affiliate Center is located in the city of Petrópolis, which is a very nice historical city 70 Km from Rio de Janeiro. We are being hosted and supported by the Petrópolis Medical School which has a beautiful campus full of native trees and flowers. From the windows of our Center, we can see rolling hills and lots of birds. Occasionally, we can even see small monkeys (“saguis”) playing on the branches of the nearby trees
.  
Before becoming an Affiliate Center, our team had been working with the Brazilian Cochrane Centre (Cochrane Brazil) as volunteer translators and as authors of Cochrane systematic reviews.

What does it mean to you becoming an Affiliate Director of the Cochrane Brazilian Network in 2016?
 It is an honour and a huge responsibility. We had planned to work with Cochrane Brazil long before the idea of the creation of Affiliate Centers. Personally, I feel very excited to be part of the Cochrane family and to participate in the efforts to disseminate the concepts of evidence based healthcare to students, health professionals, media channels, patients and the community in general.  We plan to collaborate with Cochrane Brazil in promoting Cochrane's work and Cochrane evidence in our region.

Can you tell us about your recent first 1st Cochrane Symposium on Evidence-Based Health in Rio De Janeiro?
The event took place on a Saturday morning, in the campus of Petrópolis Medical School in October 2016. The main themes were the importance of high-quality evidence in the decision-making process, and how it is essential to be able to critically appraise the literature nowadays. We reinforced Cochrane’s role in producing high-quality evidence and the work of Cochrane Brazil in training authors and disseminating evidence throughout our country since 1996. The event was about the launch of our Affiliate Center and the importance of evidence based health in the daily lives of everyone in the community: the students, the healthcare professionals and the patients. We had about 210 participants, including doctors, nurses, dentists, pharmacologists, hospital managers and researchers, as well a large number of undergraduate and graduate students.

 The event was very successful with the public. Every lecture was followed by intense discussions and vivid participation from the audience. Regina Torloni and Rachel Riera, co-directors of Cochrane Brazil, gave lectures about the story of the Cochrane Collaboration and its worldwide relevance and their experience teaching graduate and post-graduate students about Cochrane evidence. The greeting videos of Mark Wilson and Álvaro Attalah (Director of Cochrane Brazil) were much applauded.

We are proud that, among many other candidates, Cochrane Brazil selected us to become an Affiliate Center. We are proud to have their confidence and to have been officially nominated to be part of the Cochrane family. I am very happy and proud to have inaugurated the first Cochrane Affiliate Center in the world!

Finally, one of the main newspapers in Brazil (O Globo) published an interview with the president of the Federal Court of Justice on which she clearly mentioned that from now on the judiciary in Brazil will be using Cochrane Library to inform decisions.

How important is this announcement in promoting evidence based health care across Brazil and its many regions?
This interview was a landmark in the process of incorporating evidence in Brazil and it had a big societal impact. It is an excellent example of the importance of making Cochrane known to other audiences, beyond the university and healthcare communities. The recognition of the importance of Cochrane evidence by the national judicial system and by the media was the result of the hard and persistent work of Cochrane Brazil, and especially Alvaro Atallah efforts, over the last 20 years.

Luis Eduardo Fontes
Coordenador Médico UTI Adulto - Hospital de Ensino Alcides Carneiro - Petrópolis-RJ
Professor, Medicina Intensiva / Urgência e Emergência - Faculdade de Medicina de Petrópolis
Coordenador do Centro Afiliado Rio de Janeiro do Centro Cochrane do Brasil

Being able to identify randomized controlled trials (RCTs) is a critical part of most Cochrane Reviews that evaluate the effects of health treatments. In May last year Cochrane launched Cochrane Crowd. This platform enables anyone with an interest in health to dive into tasks that help identify and describe health research.

By late December 2016, more than 4,000 people had signed up to help and we were in sight of reaching one million individual classifications. For those of you new to Cochrane Crowd, each task is based on people answering a single question about a piece of research. Each piece of research is looked at multiple times by different people, and a final decision is made based on a certain number of decisions that are in agreement. We call each decision made a classification. We decided to try to reach this impressive milestone of one million classifications in style by running a 48-hour citation screening challenge. We also decided to make it a fundraiser, raising money for Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) and UNICEF.

Pre-challenge jitters
The challenge was set to start on Monday 19 December at 10am UK time, and finish at 10 am Wednesday, 21 December. As the date drew closer I began to worry: what if no one joins in because it’s so close to Christmas? What if we’ve totally miscalculated and don’t reach one million during the 48 hours? What if the whole site goes down, and never works again….

And we’re off
Then suddenly it was too late to do anything but make a cup of tea, get settled comfortably, and wonder if my first record would be an RCT. It wasn’t. In fact the first 100 or so records I screened during the challenge were all ‘rejects’ but it didn’t matter. The challenge was underway and it was thrilling to see so many people online and to watch the classifications counter steadily going up.

For the next few hours a good rhythm was established. Contributors in Australia, New Zealand, and neighbouring countries of the Asia-Pacific then went offline to get some kip, whilst others in the US and Canada woke up to join the fun.

24 hours later
At the halfway point we’d done 26,169 classifications, bringing our total to 985,362. Over 100 people had so far joined the collective effort. I began to allow myself to think we might actually do this. It seemed others were thinking the same, as suddenly the pace picked up considerably, driven on in equal measure by the approaching milestone and by Gordon’s brilliant and encouraging banner messages (Gordon is our IT maestro extraordinaire!).

By 4.20pm on Day Two we stood at 999,194 classifications. With my heart racing, and my fingers inaccurately trying to type frantic tweets whilst also screen, we crossed the one million mark just seven minutes later at 4.27pm.

I threw my headset off (why was I even wearing it?) and did a victory lap round my tiny study. As I sat back down, remembering my responsibilities to tweet and email, I felt a little emotional. To reach this milestone for Cochrane Crowd through the efforts of so many, not just during this challenge but throughout the last few years, felt significant.

No time to sit back and relax - we still had work to do!
We crossed the one million mark around 17 hours before the challenge was due to end. The rest of the time would therefore be focused on raising as much money as we could for MSF and UNICEF. More tea was made, the headset inexplicably put back on, and the pace picked up once more. Together we went on to raise a further £2,000, bringing our total to over £7,000.

And now, relax
At 9.59am on 21 December 2016 I wondered if my last record would be an RCT. It wasn’t, but it didn’t matter - we’d already found hundreds of them. As the challenge ended, I couldn’t help but feel we’d all become more than participants. We had been on an adventure together.

In numbers
Number of people who took part: 302
Number of countries: 48
Number of RCTs found: 838
Amount raised: £7,038
Number of individual classifications made: 54,110
Time at which we reached one million in total: 4.27pm GMT on Tuesday, 20 December 2016
Proportion of records screened in the first 24 hours: 48%
Proportion of records screened in the second 24 hours: 52%
Number of cups of tea made during challenge: too many to count!

In words
We received some really helpful feedback about what people felt worked well and what we could do to improve the experience next time. Here’s just a small sample of feedback that made me smile:

Why did you join the challenge?
"Erm, I actually simply joined Cochrane Crowd - and found myself in the middle of it :)”

Describe the experience:
“Great working with people around the world. Great sense of unity”
“I liked seeing that others were "out there" doing the same thing”
“The awareness that colleagues around the world were working on the same job at the same time”
“Very easy to do - even whilst eating a sandwich”
“It was serious fun”

Thank you
It most certainly was serious fun. If you took part in this event: thank YOU. There are lots of people that make Cochrane Crowd work - in fact, that’s exactly the point: lots of people, working together, can achieve brilliant things. We ended 2016 on a high. Let’s make 2017 even more exciting for Cochrane Crowd.

If you missed this event, don’t worry, there will be more challenges, and in the meantime why not pop over to Cochrane Crowd and get some practice in. And don’t forget to drop in and say hi on Twitter @cochrane_crowd.

Happy 2017 and happy citation screening.

From Anna, Emily, Gordon and the rest of the team

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.

Xun Li coordinates the Simplified Chinese translation project. Here she tells us about an initiative to incorporate the translation of Cochrane abstracts and Plain Language Summaries into medical English courses at Beijing University of Chinese Medicine (BUCM).

How did the initiative begin?
The idea of making the translation of Cochrane evidence part of medical English courses at BUCM arose due to the need for medical English students to understand systematic review methodology. At the same time, it also solved the need to find translation volunteers to make Cochrane evidence accessible in Simplified Chinese. It is an opportunity for students to practice medical translation, as well as an efficient way to learn about systematic review (SR) methodology. In addition, at BUCM, it is important for Medical English majors to fully comprehend the concept of evidence-based medicine (EBM) and establish translation capacity.  The initiative is supported by some education funding from Beijing University of Chinese Medicine.

How does it work?
Cochrane abstract translation was introduced to undergraduates majoring in Medical English at BUCM in their sixth and seventh semesters. In the sixth semester, we introduced the concept of Cochrane SRs and encouraged students to practice translating the abstracts and Plain language summaries (PLS) into Chinese. In the seventh semester, we revised the translations and selected two typical pieces as the teaching material for the class and spent an hour focusing on the structure and skills for translation. Forty-nine students formed 24 groups and selected 24 abstracts and PLS as assignments. In the first week each group finished the translation and summarized the questions they encountered. In the second week we organized a discussion and each group finalized the translation and went through a revision process. When the students handed in the translation, we did the final revision and submitted it to Cochrane via Smartling, at the same time sending feedback and scores to the students. The score counted for 10% of the final marks for the Medical English Translation course.

Has the scheme been a success so far?
After proper training, the third year undergraduates are capable of translating Cochrane SR abstracts and PLS. It is therefore worth trying to teach an approach that integrates methodology and practical skills. The Cochrane translation practice has been a set part in teaching for Medical English Majors in BUCM and will continue, with improvements, in the future. Furthermore, many students have been encouraged by the recognition of their own translation work and have consequently struck up an interest in evidence based medicine and Cochrane Systematic Reviews. Some of the students have continued to do volunteer translation for us, after being introduced to it during the course. Working with students has overall been a very positive experience and something we recommend to other translation teams.

• Find out more about translations.
• Read evidence in Simplified Chinese.

Richard Morley is Cochrane's Consumer Co-ordinator. Cross-posted, with permission, from the Cochrane Consumer Network site.

In 2015 the Cochrane Consumer Network took a hard look at the state of consumer involvement in Cochrane and found much to celebrate:

• a long history of consumer involvement, going back to the start of Cochrane
• a network of, at the time, more than 1300 patients (over 1500 in 2016), care givers, and others who have volunteered their time to help
• between 300 and 500 people who regularly contribute to reviews and in other ways in any 12-month period
• overwhelming understanding and support for the principle of involving consumers, right across the organisation

But there is still much to do because the review also found:

• inconsistencies in the ways consumers are involved
• desire from consumers to be more involved, in different ways, and to be better supported
• a need for more guidance, tools, and resources from authors and others to help them involve consumers better
• an expectation from our partners that consumers be involved beyond the job of peer reviewing, for example in helping to identify priority review questions and important outcomes

To address these concerns, in 2016 the Consumer Network Executive prepared the Consumer Delivery Plan to 2020. The plan sets out eight key priorities for the development of consumer involvement in Cochrane. The first priority is to “Develop and adopt a statement of principles about consumer involvement in Cochrane”.

Here are three good reasons why we need a statement like this:

More consistency, more openness and better research
Consumer involvement is important because the way we work should be open for all to see, and because it results in evidence that meets the needs of the people who use it. A shared agreement on the consumer role and how the entire organization can work with consumers will make our work clearer, reduce variations and uncertainty, and improve our effectiveness.

Everyone will know what to expect
The statement has three guiding principles: equity (consumers’ contributions in both expertise and time are valued equally with other contributors), inclusiveness (making sure that, as far as possible, consumer representatives come from a wide range of countries and backgrounds and are fully involved), and partnership (involving consumers in many ways in the review production process, from concept to knowledge translation, and in all other Cochrane activities, including the way the organization is governed). The statement will help everyone understand how we can work together.

Our partners expect it
Increasingly funders, publishers, and users of research expect, and often instruct, researchers to involve consumers in their work. In November for example, the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council and the Consumers Health Forum of Australia released their own statement on Consumer and Community Involvement in Health and Medical Research, and there are similar statements in New Zealand, the UK, and elsewhere. Cochrane is a part of the same network of organizations and needs to show its practice is up to date.

Please review the statement and let us know what you think of it. What have we missed? Can it be improved? You have until the end of December 2016 to have your say.

Why not join the Cochrane Consumer Network? It’s free, and you receive monthly news digests about the latest health evidence and opportunities to get involved.

You can also join the conversation on Facebook and on Twitter by searching for @cochraneconsumr.

If you have any other questions about the statement or anything else to do with consumer involvement, please email Richard Morley, Cochrane Consumer Co-ordinator.

This is part of a series of Cochrane case studies about prioritization work by Cochrane Review Groups. You can read more by visiting the priority setting case study page.

Until recently Cochrane Heart worked mainly with expert clinicians in an internal prioritization activity. For example, between May and August 2016 the group assessed and prioritized their portfolio of reviews on atrial fibrillation with the help of subject experts in their editorial team. The final outcome of this exercise was the identification of three priority reviews, a number of reviews in need of an update, two potential new topics and a number of titles that are no longer relevant and will therefore not be pursued further. An important goal of this project was to inform decision making in relation to Cochrane’s new Updating Classification System. In addition the group has implemented stringent acceptance criteria (e.g. reviews that inform guidelines or underpin primary research) so all new reviews can be considered ‘priority’ by default regardless of the topic area.

To expand on this work the Group has embarked on a prioritization exercise focussing mainly on consumer needs, with the aim of helping the group decide on new topics for future reviews and to make existing reviews more relevant by identifying patient-relevant outcomes that might have been missed. This investigation of consumer questions on the prevention and treatment of heart problems was new territory for the Group, so after some brainstorming at the editorial base they decided that World Heart Day, organized by the World Heart Federation (WHF), would be a great point to launch their Power your life - Ask questions campaign. The Cochrane Heart deputy Co-ordinating Editor, Pablo Perel, has a long-standing association with the WHF, who were very receptive to the idea. They allowed the Group to use World Heart Day branding to help promote the survey. A key element is that it is jargon-free. There is some brief guidance on how to frame a question but ultimately the survey allows patients and carers to pose their own questions about treating and preventing heart problems. The group is disseminating the survey via their website and on Twitter. It has also been mentioned in National Institute for Health Research (NIHR, UK) Research, the the British Heart Foundation, the World Heart Federation and Farr London twitter feeds. The WHF has agreed to include information about the campaign in their members’ newsletter.

Now that World Heart Day has passed, the survey has been re-branded slightly to ‘Your heart – Your questions’ and will remain open until the end of 2016. The respondents will be informed of the results via email, to foster a sense of ownership for participants. The group is keen to distribute the survey as widely as possible, so please feel free to send it out via your consumer networks!

For any questions or comments about this blog series or if you’d like to tell us about your group’s prioritization work please contact Ruth Foxlee at the Cochrane Editorial Unit – rfoxlee@cochrane.org

Ruth Foxlee, Information Specialist, Cochrane Editorial Unit

Maria Gerardi, Administrative Assistant, Cochrane Editorial Unit

Howard White is the CEO of the Campbell Collaboration. Cross-posted, with permission, from the Campbell Blog.

The National Institute for Clinical Evidence (NICE) has produced new consultation guidance on ‘Air pollution - outdoor air quality and health’. Not very newsworthy you might think. Well you’d be wrong.

The Telegraph (UK) ran the story on the front page under the headline ‘Axe Speed Bumps to Save Lives: NICE says “speed bumps could be removed to cut pollution”.' Whilst somewhat less dramatic, the same spin on the story was across the media:

• ITV News: Could speed bumps be a thing of the past?: “Councils should promote smoother driving and consider removing speed bumps to cut down on harmful pollution, a health watchdog said”.
• The Guardian: ‘UK health body proposes removal of speed bumps to cut air pollution’: ‘Speed bumps should be removed… health experts have said’.
• And of course the car lobby, such as the website Carthrottle.com, picked up the story too: 'It's official: Speed bumps are terrible for the environment and need to die'. 

But doesn’t traffic calming such as speed bumps save lives? I checked the Cochrane Library, which confirmed that ‘Area-wide traffic calming may have the potential to reduce death and injuries’ though – as usual – more research is needed. So I tweeted that NICE was recommending removing speed bumps, but the trade-off with the benefits of traffic calming needed to be taken into account. NICE replied that they ‘haven't called for a ban on speed bumps or their removal’. So I turned to the NICE website. Indeed the guideline has just one reference to speed bumps, which states that ‘Evidence on traffic-calming measures such as speed bumps suggested that these may increase emissions by adding to decelerations and accelerations. Evidence from area-wide schemes does not show increases. So where physical measures are needed to reduce road injuries they should be designed to minimise their impact on air pollution. The evidence was weak, so this was a "consider" recommendation.'

So NICE were right that they hadn’t recommend to ‘axe speed bumps’. But they were uniformly and widely misreported as having done so. Is that the fault of the media for sensationalizing, and thus misrepresenting, the story? Or is it the fault of NICE for not handling the story well?  As communicators of evidence, we surely have a responsibility to do the best we can to ensure that the evidence is not misrepresented and misused by those with an axe to grind.

We welcome views on comments on how to better communicate ‘complex evidence’ to the media.

This is part of a series of Cochrane case studies about prioritization work by Cochrane Review Groups. You can read more by visiting the priority setting case study page.

The Cochrane Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI) Group moved to Bogota, Colombia in 2012, where it is now part of the School of Medicine at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Starting over as ‘new’ group, the editorial team wanted to look at the protocols and reviews they had inherited. In the course of refreshing their portfolio of titles, they wanted to develop closer ties to stakeholders and to focus on the questions that are a priority for people living in low and middle-income countries (LMICs).

For this exercise the STI Group adapted the Health Technology Assessment (HTA) prioritization method. As a first step, they made an evidence mapping of the trial reports on the STI Group’s Specialised Register in order to identify potential questions and evidence gaps. Then they created a database of approximately 30 STI experts or organizations. The groups/individuals (mostly clinicians) in this database came from high-income countries as well as LMICs. The second step was to launch an online survey, in which each organization or individual was asked to submit their top four STI questions. This generated a final list of 15 questions that were mapped to the STI Group’s review portfolio. This exercise allowed the group to identify which important titles were missing and confirm which of their existing titles where of the highest priority. They have produced a list of four top priority reviews and three top priority protocols that they will aim to publish in 2016/17.

Overall, the process took approximately a year, although it isn’t something the editorial team thinks of as a completed project. Stakeholder needs change, so they are planning to repeat the exercise every two years. This year they hope to write up the evidence mapping process, setting out what worked well for them and what they would like to change next time. They also intend to run a priority setting workshop at the STI & HIV World Congress in Brazil in July 2017, which will give them the opportunity to engage key stakeholders and work through issues and questions face-to-face.

As the only Cochrane Group based in a LMIC, dealing with a range of diseases that have such a devastating impact in LMICs, the team is keenly aware of the need to produce reviews that benefit people in other countries throughout South America, Africa, and Asia, as well as in Brazil. Coming from a setting where resources are limited, they are also acutely aware that an ongoing commitment to prioritization work has real finance and human resource implications. The production of high quality, high-priority systematic reviews requires dedicated teams of authors who have the appropriate skills and are adequately supported. For that reason, the Group has worked to set realistic and achievable goals in terms of the number of high-priority reviews they can produce. They are also actively investigating ways of funding prioritization in the future – both the priority setting work and the production of the reviews themselves.

For any questions or comments about this blog series or if you’d like to tell us about Cochrane group prioritization work please contact Ruth Foxlee at the Cochrane Editorial Unit – rfoxlee@cochrane.org

Ruth Foxlee - Information Specialist, Cochrane Editorial Unit
Lydia Wilson – Intern, Cochrane Editorial Unit

An estimated $170 billion of research funding is wasted each year because its outcomes cannot be used [1]. The waste occurs during 5 stages of research production: question selection, study design, research conduct, publication, and reporting [2,3]. Much of this waste appears to be avoidable or remediable, but there are few proposed solutions. 

What should Cochrane do to address this problem? To get ideas from the community, we circulated (June 2016) a survey to 90 people who attended the Research Waste/EQUATOR Conference (Edinburg 2015) and are also in involved one or more Cochrane Groups. We asked their opinion about what Cochrane could do to reduce research waste and support the REWARD Alliance work. 29 people responded to the survey (response rate of 33%).  During the Cochrane Colloquium in Seoul, a Special Session was organized to present the survey results as well as other initiatives to reduce research waste and to discuss Cochrane’s role further.

Key messages from the survey and the Special Session include:

• Support priority setting processes for systematic reviews. All Cochrane Review Groups are already encouraged to engage in a formal prioritization process, and many Cochrane Review Groups are already defining their priorities and examples are being documented. However, the processes followed to define the priorities vary, and it also remains a challenge to include priorities of disadvantaged groups and low and middle income countries. Not surprisingly, about 60% of survey respondents indicated Cochrane could do more in priority setting, for example by being more inclusive and by developing a clearer and more consistent process.
• Advocate for systematic reviews with funding organizations: 86% of respondents to the survey felt that Cochrane could do more in working with research funders in advocating systematic reviews be conducted prior to funding new research.
• Speed up the ‘empty review’ process: 62% of survey respondents indicated that ‘empty reviews’ (reviews that have no studies eligible for inclusion or only included a single small RCT) are very to extremely important. “Empty reviews are important but they ought to take weeks not months, at least once the search is complete. As soon as you see the review is empty, getting that out should be very, very quick.” In response to this concern, Cochrane will change the focus of ‘empty reviews’ from guiding clinical practices to identifying research gaps and stimulating further research in relevant areas. A pilot to change the editorial process for empty reviews will take place in 2017.
• Work with partners to strengthen reporting of research: 60% of survey respondents felt that Cochrane should do more in ensuring better reporting of research and research results, among other in clinical trial registries, especially through working with strategic partners such as AllTrials and WHO ICTRP.
• Automate the review process: The production of more rapid reviews is important and automation tools are a means to do this. Project Transform is an important step in this direction, but will need continued contribution from the Cochrane community and beyond to succeed.

To further stimulate and promote research in this area, Cochrane announced the Cochrane-REWARD prize and is now calling for nominations for the 2017 prize, which should be submitted by 28 February 2017. Detailed information about the submission process can be found on the Cochrane website.

We look forward to receiving many submissions for the prize and to receiving any other suggestion for ways in which Cochrane can contribute to reducing waste in research.

Please contact Sylvia de Haan for further information.

References:

1. Chalmers I, Glasziou P. Avoidable waste in the production and reporting of research evidence. Lancet. 2009 Jul 4;374(9683):86-9.
2. Macleod MR, Michie S, Roberts I, et al. Biomedical research: increasing value, reducing waste. Lancet. 2014 Jan 11;383(9912):101-4.
3. Glasziou P, Altman DG, Bossuyt P, et al. Reducing waste from incomplete or unusable reports of biomedical research. Lancet. 2014 Jan 18;383(9913):267-76.

Cochrane CEO Mark Wilson, provides a recap of events from the Colloquium and what we have to look forward to.

Dear Colleagues,

It’s three weeks since the close of our 2016 Cochrane Colloquium held in the vibrant city of Seoul, South Korea, and therefore a good time to draw breath after the frenetic activity that took place there to assess the initial feedback we’ve received from participants, review its major outcomes, celebrate achievements, and identify the challenges that still lie ahead.

The extensive post-Colloquium survey feedback reflects my own view: that the Seoul Colloquium was an outstanding success! It was the first to be held in East Asia, and of the over 800 participants who attended almost half came from that region. This gave the Colloquium a unique atmosphere and represented the successful opening up of Cochrane to new local audiences in East Asia, a key reason for having a peripatetic annual organizational and scientific gathering. Attendees were able to choose from four plenaries addressing global health priorities and how Cochrane should respond to them, 96 workshops, 151 oral presentations and almost 200 posters, with the survey feedback showing enormous appreciation for the range and quality of all of them. In fact, the biggest complaint was that there were too many attractive and compelling sessions to choose from! An offical Colloquium report with the survey feedback will be shared with the community in December.

The emergent theme underlying all of these events became: ‘Change is happening’ in Cochrane (with thanks to the excellent blog post from the Evidence Synthesis team at Exeter University for the phrase). Collaborators from all parts of the Cochrane world could see the changes driven by our Strategy to 2020 arriving in many different and exciting ways; and I think the Colloquium marked a watershed moment as a new level of engagement and support from the Cochrane community for these changes emerged. Many of you were impressed and excited by the Special Session at the Annual General Meeting (AGM), where different members of the community had the opportunity to share their stories of responding to the challenges of the Strategy. As well as live presentations from a selection of Cochrane Groups from around the world, the session included a fantastic video highlighting just a few stories and accomplishments of what Strategy to 2020 means to Cochrane Groups, and their work within local contexts.

The Colloquium also saw important decisions being taken. At the AGM, members agreed to the proposed governance reforms formalized in Cochrane’s new Articles of Association that were widely consulted on over the past year. The Steering Group has now been replaced by a Governing Board, which will include both internal and external members. And critically, the approved changes move Cochrane from a membership model based on Groups to individual membership, enfranchising thousands more people to vote both for candidates for the Board and on our organizational policies and governance. Elections for four new internal members will take place in the coming months. We want to promote a new generation of Cochrane leaders to emerge through this process and therefore encourage all of you who are interested to consider putting yourself forward as a candidate for the new Board at such a tremendously exciting time.

In addition, a new Cochrane Council will be established in the next six months with representatives initially drawn from the existing Cochrane Group types and the Author Forum. The Council will provide a forum for Groups to meet and discuss high level matters with each other, and to make sure that the voice of Cochrane’s Groups is heard by the Board. Each of the Cochrane Group Boards/Executives agreed election or nomination mechanisms for them to decide their first representatives to the Council.

The Steering Group also approved, and the respective Cochrane Group Boards endorsed, hugely significant organizational structure and function changes. The CRG transformation programme was approved in its entirety and Editor in Chief David Tovey and his team, assisted by a new CSG-appointed support group, will begin implementation immediately. The Centre Directors Board endorsed the new proposals related to geographic-oriented Groups, as well as a new ‘Collaboration Agreement’ text that establishes mutual responsibilities and accountabilities between the Centres and the Central Executive. You can read more about these changes on the Structure & Function section of the Cochrane Community site; and by the end of the year a Centres portal will be created providing a permanent home for all Centre-based resources.

My grateful thanks to Professors Hyeong Sik Ahn and Hyun Jung Kim, and the whole Cochrane Korea team, for all their work in hosting such a successful event. Thanks also to Cochrane Australia for the support it provided, and to all those who ran workshops, held meetings, and contributed in many other ways whether they attended the meeting in person or not. A Colloquium is always a powerful and positive reminder that Cochrane’s success is based on the multitude of contributions by its global network of collaborators. In the second of my presentations at the AGM, I stressed that achieving Strategy to 2020 requires us to build an organization that attracts and retains the best people, lives its values and can sustain its activities – and to do that we must forge a new kind of collaboration drawing on Cochrane’s heritage and experience of working together. To succeed over the next two decades Cochrane needs to become an organisation which is more collaborative: and collaborates in different, wider, deeper ways. This is a challenge, but the Seoul Colloquium showed us all that it is already beginning to happen.

With my very best wishes,

Mark Wilson
CEO