Sign up for meetings, abstracts, and special sessions for Cochrane’s 25th Colloquium in Edinburgh is now OPEN!

If you’re new to Colloquia, and Edinburgh is the first Cochrane Colloquium for you, Holly Millward, Cochrane’s Events and Brand Support Officer for Cochrane can offer some practical tips and advice. Holly works within our Knowledge Translation Department and part of her role supports Groups host events as well as our Governance Meetings and our annual flagship organizational meeting, the Cochrane Colloquium. Quebec was Holly’s first Colloquium, back in 2013.

So what can you expect?

Cochrane Buddies

is new for 2018! Cochrane Buddies are people who have been to multiple Colloquia and will be available during breaks and lunch based at the Cochrane Community stand in the main exhibition space, Cromdale Hall. Buddies will be there to provide advice and support to newcomers, consumers and other attendees. They will be wearing a bright ‘Cochrane’ sash so you can’t miss them! The Community stand will be easy to find and is a great meet-up place for you and your Cochrane colleagues. Do head over to the Community stand if you have any queries, or just to say Hi to us!

Social media

Whether you will be in Edinburgh or not, you can stay up-to-date with the key discussions on Twitter. Use the event hashtag: #Cochraneforall and join the conversation.

General advice

• Plan which sessions you would like to attend before you arrive – take a chance to look through the full schedule and sign-up to the sessions you would like to attend before you get the Colloquium;  it can be an overwhelming task when you are there!
   
• Try out each of the different session types – keynotes are a great chance to get a topic overview from leading experts; special sessions let you provide feedback on organization-wide priority topics; workshops are useful for hands-on training; oral sessions give you a chance to hear about specific research or projects
   
• Take a breath – during concurrent sessions there will be lots of options to choose between. Pick carefully and don’t worry if you think you will miss something, it is likely to come up again in another session. Also, ensure you have scheduled breaks, and you take lunch – Colloquium days are long and it’s important to pace yourself
   
• Join in with the social events – whether it’s learning to Ceilidh, going on a historic bus tour, or having a laugh with your colleagues on the Gala Dinner dance floor, take a moment to have fun and feel the Cochrane community spirit!

If you’re feeling lost or unsure, head for the Cochrane Community stand in Cromdale Hall. The Community stand will be situated in the middle of the room, next to the Wiley/Cochrane Library stand. You’ll always be able to find Cochrane staff and Buddies nearby to help.

Schedule & sign-up

Download the Colloquium app, or login to the website to see the full schedule and sign-up for the sessions you want to attend.

Once you’ve signed-up for everything you can then download the sessions to your Outlook or Google calendar, or see your schedule in the app!

The app is available for Android and Apple devices, from the app stores, search 'Cochrane Colloquium 2018'. Use your Colloquium account details to login to your personalized schedule.

Social events

There are lots of social events and tours available alongside the Colloquium:

• If you have time, do sign-up and donate to the Anne Anderson fundraising walk on the 15th. The walk raises money for the Anne Anderson Award Prize that is awarded at the Colloquium each year to female member of Cochrane who has made a significant contribution to the enhancement and visibility of women's participation within the organization
   
• And why not learn to Ceilidh during lunch on the 16th? If you’re up for it, show off your new Ceilidh skills at the Gala Dinner!
   
• There are also, plenty of leisure tours you can book from the website, find out more
   
• Looking for a restaurant or bar in Edinburgh? Check out the list of suggestions from our Scottish colleagues

Safe journey and we look forward to seeing you in Edinburgh!

Holly Millward

Events and Brand Support Officer

Louisa Walsh, Anneliese Synnot and Sophie Hill from Cochrane Consumers and Communication share their top tips for getting the most out of online meeting.

In the global world of Cochrane, remote meetings are the norm as we connect with colleagues all over the planet. But have you ever considered what the key ingredients are to make a really good online meeting? Well, we did…and we learned a few things we did not know.

Being the Cochrane Consumers and Communication Group we took a look at the evidence and consulted people. We found that whether you’re a meeting organiser or a participant there are some simple things you can do before, during, and after online meetings to make them more efficient, effective and enjoyable – for everyone!

Our top tips for ONLINE meeting ORGANIZERS

Before the meeting

1. Ask: do I really need a meeting?

• Remember to ask yourself – what is the purpose of this meeting?
• If you need to hear ideas, have an active discussion, make decisions or allocate tasks, then YES.
• If some of the work can be done by creating a shared document (like a Google Doc) or email comments will do, then NO/MAYBE.

2. Be kind with your times  

• Consider the impact of time zones, summer time – and family-friendly work policies!
• Ask attendees their preferences and change times around.
• Consider how long or how short you really need the meeting to be.

3. Get your tech right

• Videoconferencing versus teleconferencing - consider issues of software access and internet speeds and people’s personal preferences. Ask in advance or give people the choice.
• Consider distributing software instructions– don’t assume people know how to use your program.

4. Prepare and distribute meeting materials in advance

• One week in advance is preferred but if this is impossible, let people know when to expect it.

5. Consider any access needs

• Be proactive. Address access needs well ahead of the meeting. For example, do any of your participants need new software, an alternative meeting format or an interpreter?

During the meeting

6. Be an active chair

• Good chairing is a rare skill but it can be learned. Mixing inclusiveness with efficiency is a nice balance.
• Don’t assume people know each other at the first meeting. Start with introductions.
• Consider if the purpose of the meeting is suited to going around the ‘table’ and asking everyone in turn their views. Tell them the order you are using.
• Invite anyone who has been quiet to contribute. Remember that possible power imbalances may affect how participants contribute.
• Use names– it clearly identifies who you are speaking to and keeps participants engaged.
• Remember the instruction for muting when people are not speaking.
• For some platforms, check everyone knows they can add or view comments.
• Remember not to confuse any non-Cochrane people by speaking Cochranese!

7. What helpers do you need?

• With a larger meeting, or using new technology, you might need a helper.
• Helpers can: monitor conversations or questions in the chat box (if relevant), keep track of who hasn’t spoken, take minutes, or keep the meeting to time.
• Establish who is taking minutes or action points in advance.

8. Keep to time

• To assist, work out a meeting schedule in advance (potentially with timings) and ask participants if this is acceptable.

9. Open and close the meeting with a summary

• Set the scene at the start with what you are hoping to discuss and achieve.
• At the end of the meeting, summarise and reiterate any actions.

After the meeting

10. Circulate a meeting summary

• Getting meeting minutes or a meeting summary to your participants allows them to complete their actions and also shows that the meeting – and their input – was valuable to you.
• Meetings minutes are also likely to be more accurate if completed soon after the meeting.

11. Follow up agreed actions

• If you have actions arising from the meeting, then complete them. This demonstrates that you value your project partners and the time they give to meetings and the project.

Our top tips for ONLINE meeting PARTICIPANTS

Before your meeting

1. Do you really need to attend?

• If you think you don’t need to be at the meeting, or that you can make a more useful contribution over email, don’t be afraid to raise it with the organisers.

2. Don’t forget to RSVP

• Your attendance may be vital to the meeting going ahead, or the topics under discussion, so don’t leave your organiser and other participants in the dark.

3. Do you have special requirements?

• If there is something you need to be able to access the meeting let the meeting organiser know.

 4. Prepare!

• It usually benefits everyone if you read any meeting documents, test your technology and think about your talking points before the call.

During the meeting

5. Keep your responses short and sweet

• By staying on topic you both get your point across more powerfully and allow room for others to have their voice.
• It may help to prepare your key points in advance – depending on the meeting purpose.

6. Make use of available meeting tools

• If your meeting is using tools like chat boxes for questions and virtual hand raises, use them, particularly if you don’t want to interrupt the meeting flow, or can’t get a word in!

7. Mute yourself when you’re not speaking

•  It improves sound quality and stops everyone hearing your dog barking.

8. Support quieter meeting members

• If you notice someone is not speaking or being heard, you can support them by asking to hear their opinion.

9. In an audio-only environment, identify yourself before making your point

• When there is no video, consistently stating your name before you ask your questions or share your view reduces confusion around who is talking.

After the meeting

10. Read meeting minutes

• It is fine to send corrections or additional information to the organiser.

11. Follow up agreed actions

• If you can’t complete your actions, let the organiser know.

 

If you’d like more information, tips and hints, check out these resources:

• Mittleman DD, Briggs RO, Nunamaker JF. Best Practices in Facilitating Virtual Meetings: Some Notes from Initial Experiences. Group Facilitation: A Research and Applications Journal. Number 2, Winter 2000.
• Hampton SE, Halpern BS, Winter M, Balch JK, Parker JN, Baron JS, Palmer M, Schildhauer MP, Bishop P, Meagher TR, Specht A (2017). Best Practices for Virtual Participation in Meetings: Experiences from Synthesis Centers. Bull Ecol Soc Am, 98: 57-63. doi:10.1002/bes2.1290
• Jurd, K. Delivering effective VC meetings and tutorials.

 

Acknowledgements: Thanks to Camille Condon, Sally Crowe, Lyubov Lytvyn, Belinda MacLeod-Smith and Chris Watts for their input to this blog post.

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.

This case study is a great example of how undertaking a prioritisation exercise not only helps a Cochrane Group to deliver the reviews our stakeholders want; it also helps to focus precious editorial base resources.

Cochrane Skin Group (CSG) has a very wide scope and this informed their approach to priority setting. With the exercise that began in March 2017, they made a conscious effort to shift from trying to cover all of dermatology to a more focused approach – producing the reviews that are most likely to make a difference in people’s lives.  The group were keen to cover unanswered questions in areas where there is a high global burden of diseases. They further refined the scope of the exercise by focusing on delivering high quality reviews that use novel or complex methodologies.

The group started by contacting the entire CSG membership, the Cochrane Child Health and Nursing fields,  along with international professional dermatology societies, guideline development groups, healthcare commissioners and patient representatives – this included the World Health Organization, National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, American Academy of Dermatology, European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology, European Dermatology Foundation, British Skin Foundation, National Eczema Society, L’Association Française de l’Eczéma, National Eczema Association (US and Australia), Nottingham Support Group for Carers of Children With Eczema, Acción Psoriasis, Psoriasis International Network, Psoriasis Association, Psoriasis and Psoriatic Arthritis, Vitiligo Society, Hidradenitis Suppuritiva Trust, Alopecia UK, and Skin Cancer Awareness and the UK Dermatology Clinical Trials mailing list. They asked all of these stakeholders to identify their top five priority questions, to be addressed over the next three years. In parallel, the group reviewed the results of several James Lind Alliance priority setting partnerships (JLA PSP) – acne, cellulitis, eczema, epidermolysis bullosa, hair loss, hidradenitis suppurativa, and vitiligo – and the research priorities identified by national and international guideline groups.

After gathering the title suggestions from the stakeholder survey and the research results from the JLA PSPs and guideline groups, a shortlist was sent to the CSG editors who each rated their top ten questions. The skin disorders with highest burden, identified in the Global Burden of Disease Project, and historic existing or ongoing Cochrane Skin titles were also considered throughout the process and helped to guide shortlisting decisions. CSG editor ratings were combined, and an editorial meeting was held to discuss the results. A list of seven priority titles was created in September 2017. Three titles already had a team of CSG authors in place and the remaining four were opened up to new author teams via a competitive application process.

A key benefit of priority-setting is the way in which it can strengthen relationships with stakeholders. The group sent the protocols of the prioritised titles to policy makers and guideline developers to ensure that the questions raised will be properly addressed in the completed reviews. They presented the results of the exercise to the CSG membership and the CSG-COUSIN research group at their annual CSG meeting in Amsterdam (January 2018). The full details of this priority setting exercise are available on the  Cochrane Skin website.

The group is very pleased with the results of the exercise, which they felt was achievable and affordable, and work on all seven priority titles is now well underway. The editorial base team report a significant shift in the way they plan their workload and interact with authors. They are strongly committed to supporting these priority reviews, to the extent that they will drop other work when a priority title comes in. In turn they expect author teams to meet ambitious deadlines and have tightened up their editorial processes accordingly. There is an obvious potential for this to affect the pace at which other titles progress, but the group is confident that this rationalisation of precious resources is right because it is based on transparent stakeholder engagement, ensures longer term sustainability and maximises their chances of making meaningful impact on health care outcomes and improving lives.

The group is in the process of reviewing their entire current portfolio, checking against the results of the priority exercise to determine which titles they should focus on beyond these 7 priority titles. They plan to carry out a similar exercise every three years and will look at ways to continue to broaden their international reach via different stakeholders.

Ruth Foxlee, Senior Advisor to the Editor in Chief, Cochrane Editorial & Methods Department
Maria Gerardi, Administration Officer, Cochrane Editorial & Methods Department

Gerd Antes is the scientific director of the Cochrane Germany Foundation. In this article, he shares his knowledge and critical point of view about the risks of open access publishing.

Since Thursday, July 19th  2018, the German media have been full of martial words that one may not usually associate with the world of science, or to be precise, scientific publishing. The press upheaval follows comprehensive investigations broadcast by German public radio and television stations (the Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) and Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR)), and published in the newspaper the Süddeutsche Zeitung. The investigations examined authorship in scientific journals that have been referred to for a number of years as 'Predatory Journals'.  In this article, I would like to discuss the background that led to the emergence of Predatory Journals.

The English term Predatory Journals has become a household name ever since the creation of Beall's List of Predatory Journals and is known by all those who examine the credibility of scientific journals.

The German translations of the term lagged behind until the problem became increasingly known in Germany.

Infobox: What are Predatory Journals

The term Predatory Journal was coined by the American librarian Jeffrey Beall and refers primarily to unscrupulous online publishers who issue freely accessible articles online. These studies and journals are presented as scientific and serious, without necessarily having undergone a thorough peer review process. 

These 'predatory activities' are the result of an aberration that can only be understood by knowing about the massive upheavals that the scientific publishing industry has undergone in recent years.

Those who cannot pay may no longer read! The drama of classic publication systems

In classic, conventional publications, project reports and results, study reports or even editorials and opinion articles were disseminated by publishing houses and newspapers.  To read the articles or access the periodicals or journals in which they where published, the end user had to pay for them out of their own pocket. Or else they were purchased and provided by public or academic institutions, such as libraries. The main problem with this financing system was and is that the end prices for subscriptions and individual purchases have been rising over the years. This, of course, poses a problem as part of the potential readership, especially the ones with lower incomes, are completely excluded from the knowledge contained in those publications. Those who cannot pay  no longer have the possibility to read!  An article can cost about $36 in a single purchase.

Those who cannot pay, cannot  publish! The Open Access system becomes expensive for authors

'Control' over knowledge by private publishers, their excessive pricing schemes and thus the limited free access to this knowledge led in the early 1990s to an initiative called Open Access (OA). The initiative wanted to guarantee free access to knowledge and literature. In addition to the technical restructuring that this shift required, the initiative demanded that the knowledge be free for all all over the world (at least to all who have an internet connection or access). Not surprisingly - but overlooked in many idealistic points of view - this shift meant a profound change in the funding structure of the publishing world. The burden of paying shifted from the reader to the authors, their employers or academic insitutions. Now, those who cannot pay, cannot write ! A publication in an OA journal costs just over $ 1,500. If it includes many graphics, prices can soar to up to 5,000 dollars.

Paying for Quality

As with any fundamental change, this funding revolution created loopholes for 'robbers' or 'predators'. In the old model, the leading journals prided themselves on their high rejection rates. Authors and articles that did not live up to the strict quality standards of the peer review process were simply turned down. Rejection rates were in some cases well above 90%. This was regarded as a high quality feature and at the same time as the justification for the high prices. This is ironic enough since peer reviewers usually do their work for free.

In the new OA model, this whole principle is turned upside down. Since the authors pay for their own publications, high rejection rates are harmful to business for publishers. That would limit their output and hence their income. Lowering the quality requirements, in this case, actually benefits business. More so, when new journals emerge on a market where 'serious‘ authors are rare, this happening is nearly unavoidable.

Financial restructuring leaves room for abuse

It took a relatively long time before these economically predictable occurances were deliberately abused by publishers on a large scale. Individuals and companies created new journals that only existed online. The only reason for their creation was to incite authors to publish with them and pay them for their publications. Manuscripts that were submitted to them by authors were left untouched whilst  a  'turbo' peer review process supposedly took place. The text was then published with a professional look online, free and open for the public to access.

There are now an incredible number of such journals in existance. We know all this thanks to the work of a man called Jeaffrey Beall, a librarian who uncovered this large scale fraud and made it public in 2008 by publishing a list (short: Beall’s list) containing the names of predatory journals (see also: Predatory open-access publishing).  The number of items on this list has rapidly increased over the years.

It is happening closer to home than thought…

While in the early days of this development its causes were almost exclusively found in low- to middle-income countries, that is no longer the case. Over the past two years it has become increasingly clear that even high-income countries are not spared. On the contrary, they play an increasingly active role. And not only publishers or journals are to blame, authors themselves sometimes knowingly contribute to these fraudulent activities as was revealed in the journal Nature. (See also: Stop this waste of people, animals and money; Predatory journals: Not just a problem in developing world countries, says new Nature paper; Is Canadian research falling prey to predatory journals?)

Press catches wind

While in Canada this development has been discussed and analyzed by government as well as the scientific community, Germany has thus far shown consistent ignorance. The press only caught wind of the issue recently and brought it to light after months of very extensive and thourough investigative research.

The following press release, for example, has been taken up in a plethora of reports, interviews and broadcasts:
"More than 5000 German scientists have published in scientific journals"

The investigation has also been taken up internationally: "German Scientists Frequently Publish in Predatory Journals"

That is as far as the current developments go.

At this stage, I do not want to pick up on the discussions that have arisen as a result of these news. The spectrum ranges from dramatization to trivialization, and a first step must surely be the harmonization of all statements.

However, I would like to emphasize here that, in my opinion, this development is one of the systematically overlooked, undesirable side effects of the digitalization movement. The technical revolutions that have taken place allow every lay individual to put together a professional-looking journal on the Internet, in which scientists from reputable institutions may then publish their findings, without even realizing what they are getting into.

Last but not least

Science should thank the media for opening the door to exposing these facts of fraudulant scientific publishing.

Gerd Antes
Cochrane German Foundation

Editor in Chief of the Cochrane Library, David Tovey, describes the journey of updating the Cochrane Library, which spans being a journal and a knowledge resource, and includes current and archive content, multi-lingual text, and a varied collection of databases.

It all began in April 2012 at Cochrane’s business meeting in Paris: a ‘strategic session’ aimed at agreeing a content strategy for Cochrane and our primary output, the Cochrane Library. My team had prepared well: there was broad approval for moves towards greater diversity in content, and more flexibility in its presentation and delivery to end users (readers). If that moment represents conception, it has been an awfully long gestation.

Readers less familiar with Cochrane may be uncertain about what constitutes the Cochrane Library. Is it a journal? Is it a knowledge database? Therein lies some of the complexity. The Library is a collection of knowledge databases. One of these, the best known and most used, is the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR). This contains some 7600 systematic reviews, published over the past 25 years, many of which have been updated several times. The CDSR is also a hybrid journal containing some open access content and some available via subscription, which is largely organised on a national, regional or institutional basis. It has monthly issues, an impact factor, and is heavily accessed and cited. The Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) is a concentrated collection of (predominantly) randomised controlled trials, curated from a variety of sources. It is an essential part of the search for all high quality systematic reviews, whether produced inside Cochrane or not.

The recommendations that emerged from the Paris meeting formed the basis for goals 1 and 2 of the subsequent Strategy to 2020: to produce high quality, relevant reviews that inform health care decision making and to ensure that those reviews are accessed and used. The work to deliver on these goals can be tracked forward to our current Transformation Programme, which has brought together our 52 Cochrane Review Groups into 8 thematic Networks, and the development of our Content and Knowledge Translation strategies. These all reflect an awareness that our content needs to meet increasingly diverse and sophisticated decision maker needs and reflect emerging methods and data sources. We also need to find different ways to communicate review findings, based on a range of different user types (‘personas’ in tech development-speak), and including more diversity in language, presentation (or ‘packaging’) and delivery.

Fast forward from Paris to the café at the Novotel, Hyderabad in September 2014. Around a table in the late afternoon during the Cochrane Colloquium, Todd Toler and Deborah Pentesco-Murphy on behalf of our publishers, John Wiley and Sons laid out their proposals. In essence, after many frustrations, we all recognised that the Wiley Online Library platform, which had hosted the Cochrane Library for many years, was not able to accommodate Cochrane’s plans, without undermining its ability to host all Wiley’s other journals. We agreed that the solution was for Cochrane to be hosted separately, at Wiley’s expense, on a new platform, which would be identified through an RFP (Request for Proposals) process. The discussion energised us all, and it was not difficult to get clearance from our Governing Board to proceed. We had a plan.

A few months later, the venue is a Business School residential centre near London. The largest interview team I have ever experienced – seemingly about 20 people in the room, with more on the phone. Two of us from Cochrane. Four candidate teams over two days. Two clear leaders, and an eventual winner: a software company called Semantico, based in Brighton.

The development was meant to take 12 months. Six or seven months in, we were already behind schedule, when in a blink of an eye Semantico ceased to exist; acquired by Highwire a platform technology company based in Stanford USA with encouraging experience of having hosted major international journals. It may seem churlish now to point out that one of the influences in our choice of development partner was the personal commitment from Semantico’s founder and owner to stay the course. As it turned out not only did Semantico cease to exist but so did its entire Senior Management Team – submerged below the surface without so much as a ripple. The Semantico project manager, then and now viewed widely on all sides as one of the many unstinting heroes of the project, provides the only visible continuity, apart from the developers.

As time went on it became increasingly clear that our deadlines were not being met. The tri-partite development approach originally agreed by Cochrane, Wiley and Highwire was severely tested – we always knew that it was the greatest risk to the project. We got further and further behind schedule despite everyone’s best efforts, which were considerable. Our Governing Board looked over our shoulder, expressed its concern, but permitted us to proceed.

Most of us have had to familiarise ourselves with a new language and new processes. This is a world where ‘waterfall’ is an alternative to ‘agile’. Everyone seemingly agrees that ‘agile’ is the preferred method – leading to show and tell sessions we can attend following every two week ‘sprint’ where we can see the progress that is being made and provide feedback. There are ‘scrum teams’, ‘stand ups’ (brief functional meetings where comedy is not usually a feature), ‘tickets’ and some new acronyms: UX (user experience), UAT (user assessment testing), SMEs (subject matter experts). We talk of ‘SOS’ when we mean ‘Scrum of Scrums’, we document almost every breath in ‘Confluence’, and every task in ‘Jira’. None of the Cochrane editorial team has used these before but by the end of the project several of the team members could choose either as their specialist subject on a quiz show. We talk about ‘Epics’, by which we don’t mean ‘Gone with the Wind’, ‘stories’ (ditto) and ‘features’ (still ditto). You can complete a feature or story without signing off an epic. Or perhaps it is the other way around. Somewhere back in the distant past lies our comfort zone.

After all these tribulations, we have finally reached the first summit. Cochrane has a brand new Cochrane Library. It looks superficially similar to its predecessor so as not to alarm our frequent users, but with some important enhancements.  Our multi-lingual content is easier to find and better presented. This is important. In the past three years we have seen a tripling of the number of people accessing the summaries on Cochrane.org, our own website. This has been almost entirely driven by the increases in use in Francophone and Spanish speaking countries. It is true that if you provide content that is easy to find and in people’s own languages, they will come. The new Cochrane Library incorporates more links between related pieces of content, internally and between the Library and external sites. This includes more links between the bibliographic records in CENTRAL and the reviews in CDSR, and more links from reviews to relevant guidelines. The Cochrane Library now includes content aimed at practising health professionals – Cochrane Clinical Answers - and a federated search of the Epistemonikos platform to identify non-Cochrane systematic reviews. There are other features and functionality available now, including some aimed at ensuring that the Cochrane Library meets the needs of, and links with other developments in the scientific publishing landscape such as Crossref, ORCID, Altmetric, Read Cube and others. Most importantly, there is the promise of many more to follow, including the potential to search by PICO parameters (Population, Intervention, Comparators, Outcomes), and the ability to publish different content types, such as methodological articles, rapid reviews and more varied forms of systematic review, and to package them in different ways customised around the needs of evidence users.

There is no denying that the journey has been harder than we all imagined in 2012. Perhaps that is the underlying message. There is a reason why project management language is now dominated by its technology influences. Nothing is simple when you are building a product that spans being a journal and a knowledge resource, includes current and archive content, multi-lingual text, and a varied collection of databases. If you are planning such a large technology project, my advice is to take 10 deep breaths and ask yourself: do you know everything you need to know? Are you sufficiently clear on your requirements and have you communicated them effectively? What will the implementation effort be, and how much will this distract you from everything else you want to achieve? Study it as hard and in as much detail as you can, and then consider whether to add a nought on to every calculation.

Nonetheless, across the three organisations, committed, skilled groups of people have worked tirelessly to deliver the new Cochrane Library. I am extraordinarily proud of the contributions all of our teams have made, whilst recognising the costs, the sacrifices and pain that the project has incurred. Throughout a long and arduous process, the relationships within and across our organisations have remained positive, cordial and collegiate. We are all pleased with what we have delivered and excited about the next steps. Please visit the Cochrane Library, and send me your feedback. We hope that it will become the ‘home of evidence’ that our ‘Strategy to 2020’ envisaged.

David Tovey
Editor in Chief
Cochrane Library

• Visit the Cochrane Library
• Read 'Cochrane Library: an improved online platform to guide health decision-making across the world

Targeted Updates aim to provide policy-makers, in particular guideline developers, with up-to-date information from Cochrane Reviews, tailored to their needs and working to a fast timeline.  Targeted Updates use Cochrane Reviews as their foundation, but focus on updating selected comparisons and outcomes, working in close consultation with the Cochrane Review Group. In this post, the Cochrane Response team describes a recent case study.  For more information, please see Targeted Updates.

Case Study E: A Targeted Update commissioned by an HTA agency produced within 9 weeks with support from a CRG

What is a Targeted Update?

Targeted Updates (TU) are focussed documents that use the Cochrane Review as their foundation, but focus on updating only one or two important comparisons, and the most relevant outcomes. They include an updated Summary of Findings (SoF) table, analyses, and abstract, and use Cochrane methodology. The full search results, risk of bias assessments, and references do not form part of the Targeted Update, but are available as supplementary information. Targeted Updates are intended for use by policy makers. Please see the Cochrane Community blog for information and case studies from the Targeted Updates 2015-16 project.

What was the process of the project?

In October 2017 the Swiss Medical Board (SMB) contacted Cochrane Response about commissioning a TU on robot-assisted surgery in gynaecology for their health technology assessment (HTA) report development work. Cochrane Response contacted the Cochrane Gynaecological, Neuro-Oncology and Orphan Cancer (GNOC) Review Group, which oversees production of the Cochrane review Robot-assisted surgery in gynaecology. They informed us they were willing to support us with the update search, content expertise, and peer review process. The commissioner requested a PICO that was narrower in scope in terms of both population and intervention than the Cochrane review. We subsequently developed a protocol and a project plan to carry out the work within 9 weeks (from January to March 2018). The Cochrane GNOC group information specialist carried out the update search and we also searched an online clinical trial registry. Two of our systematic reviewers screened the records and extracted data from new included studies. We added references and data to a copy of the review RevMan file, carried out GRADE assessments, and wrote the Targeted Update. Throughout the process we followed Cochrane methodology. We also contacted authors of ongoing trials and authors of articles where we needed more information to determine study inclusion or to clarify which data to extract. An interim TU was delivered to the SMB after 6 weeks where it was reviewed by their Scientific Secretariat. The interim report was also peer reviewed by experts coordinated by the Cochrane GNOC group. Review comments came back after 1.5 weeks and the final TU was delivered after another 1.5 weeks.

Involvement and feedback from the Cochrane review group

The Cochrane GNOC group reviewed and approved the protocol and project plan, and their information specialist carried out the update search. They also provided content expertise along the way, especially on queries about inclusion during the screening process and on comments from peer reviewers. The group had prepared peer reviewers in advance, so their comments could be forwarded within 2 weeks. Cochrane Response delivered to the CRG an updated RevMan file, PRISMA flowchart, and data extraction files. Although the TU PICO was narrower than the Cochrane review PICO, we searched and screened as per a full Cochrane review update, as well as for the TU. Consequently, the search, screening and data extraction carried out for the TU can now be used for the full Cochrane review update.

“We have a great starting point with the data which has been added to the RevMan file”

“It was an excellent collaboration as far as we are concerned and a great learning opportunity. The TU is clear and concise. We’d be happy to do more.”

Gail Quinn and Clare Jess, Managing Editors, Cochrane Gynaecology, Neuro-oncology and Orphan Cancers Group

Involvement and feedback from the commissioner

The commissioner helped develop and approved the protocol and project plan. After screening and before data extraction Cochrane Response provided a list of included and excluded studies and discussed some queries on study inclusion and outcome measures with the commissioner. The final list of included studies and type of outcome data to include were decided together with the commissioner. The commissioner provided feedback comments on the interim TU, and finally also on the final TU.  

“Within the context of assessment of evidence for one of our HTA reports, we identified a Cochrane review published in 2014 as highly relevant. The team of Cochrane Switzerland, with whom we are collaborating, pointed us to Cochrane Response and their service of Targeted Updates. Our experience with them has been very positive. All the timelines were met and the communication with the Cochrane Response team has been effective. We would highly recommend this service, in particular if timelines are tight.”

Prof. Dr. med. Peter Suter, President Swiss Medical Board

• Visit the Targeted Updates webpage to read other case studies
• For more information, email contact@cochraneresponse, Cochrane Response
   

Jennifer Dawson works with Cochrane’s Knowledge Translation Department as a Wikipedia Consultant. Her role includes maintaining and building further relations with Wikipedia, connecting new editors to the Wikipedia community, and supporting requests for engagement in Wikipedia work from the Cochrane community. This blog post shares two strategies for improving the quality of Wikipedia articles using Cochrane evidence.

Billions of people around the world use Wikipedia as a source of health information each year.(1) Who is reading Wikipedia’s medical content? Studies have shown that people use Wikipedia for many purposes, ranging from looking up medical information for themselves or for their family members, to medical students and experts alike looking for some quick background information on a health subject matter.(2)  

In 2014, Cochrane started a partnership with Wikipedia to support sharing relevant Cochrane Evidence in Wikipedia’s health articles and to develop strategies to keep Wikipedia’s health-related content up to date, unbiased, and of high quality. Cochrane Groups have taken different strategies to get involved in the initiative, including educational approaches.

Cochrane-UK Students 4 Best Evidence: Wikipedia training and Edit-a-thon

In June 2018, five Cochrane Interns participated in Wikipedia training during their month-long placement with Cochrane UK and Students 4 Best Evidence. Students had an opportunity to learn Wikipedia editing in four hands-on interactive workshops. The training ended with a “Wikipedia edit-a-thon” where the group worked together to use Cochrane Evidence to improve 28 Wikipedia articles in 1.5 hours. These 28 Wikipedia articles have already received over 500,000 article views in less than four weeks!

Get involved and make a difference

Medical knowledge saves lives and given the high level of online traffic, evidence shared on Wikipedia has the potential to help a lot of people. Out of over 7000 active Cochrane Reviews, presently over 2000 are used as evidence in Wikipedia articles. Volunteers are needed to continuously improve Wikipedia’s medical content as new high-quality evidence becomes available. There are different ways to get involved in the Cochrane-Wikipedia Initiative and all levels of experience is welcome!

• Visit the Cochrane Wikipedia project page to learn more about Wikipedia editing and current volunteer opportunities
• Email us your questions

 

References:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:WikiProject_Medicine/Popular_pages/Total
2. Heilman JM, West AG. Wikipedia and Medicine: Quantifying Readership, Editors, and the Significance of Natural Language. Eysenbach G, ed. Journal of Medical Internet Research. 2015;17(3):e62. doi:10.2196/jmir.4069.

Hi there! So, you signed up to TaskExchange to help on health evidence projects? Excellent! Maybe you’re looking for more experience and to build new skills, or maybe you’ve got some spare time and want to use existing skills in a meaningful way. Whatever your reason, here are 6 tips for success on TaskExchange.

Hang on, you’re not a member of TaskExchange? Interested in getting help or helping out on health evidence projects? Take a look here.

 

Tips for finding relevant tasks

1. Sign up to weekly task alerts

Make your life easy by signing up for weekly task alerts. Select the type of tasks you are interested in, and tailored tasks matching your interests will be popped into your inbox each week. Simple!

Sign up to email alerts by logging in and heading to Manage Preferences on the dropdown menu.

2. New to health evidence? Look for green leaf tasks

Many of our members are new to health evidence and looking to gain experience. If that’s you, look out for the beginner tasks marked with a green leaf on the task list. You can even go directly to the beginner tasks from a link on our homepage.

Check out available beginner tasks here.

Tips for being chosen

3. Sell your strengths

Task posters want to know a bit about you. So we recommend setting up a really great TaskExchange profile before applying for your first task. It should be up-to-date, accurate and complete. And another wee tip: proofread! Treat this a bit like a job application, so give it a read over and make sure it inspires confidence. Task posters will be knocking on your door!

Set up your profile by logging in and heading to Manage Profile in the dropdown menu.

4. Send winning messages

Found a task you’d like to do? When you message the task poster, let them know why they should choose you. Again, treat this like a job application and include details like your relevant experience, why you’re interested and whether you’re available within the designated time period for the task. And allow us to reiterate, please proofread!

Once you’ve been chosen

5. Be reliable, be accurate, be polite!

You’ve been chosen for a task – that’s fantastic! Now it’s time to get on with the job. The usual things your mother taught you apply here: Do the job to the best of your ability, ask questions when you need to, be polite and get the job done within the agreed timeframe.

Once you’ve finished the task

6. Get recommended for future tasks

Did a great job? Of course you did! Now is the time to use TaskExchange’s recommendation feature. When you complete a task, the task poster can recommend you for future tasks. Your recommendations appear in your public profile, and you can use them in your CV and in job applications too, so they’re very handy.

How does this work? Once you’ve finished a task and sent the work to the poster, log in, go to the My Applications tab in My Tasks and click complete on the relevant task. The poster will then be prompted to fill out a recommendation.

 

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.

Hi there! So, you signed up to TaskExchange to find help for your health evidence projects? Brilliant! Maybe you’re leading a systematic review and you’re looking for someone to help with data extraction, translation or statistical advice, or perhaps you’re sketching out a new project protocol and looking for consumer involvement from the get go. Whatever your reason, read on for our top 6 tips for finding help for your health evidence project on TaskExchange.

Hang on, you’re not a member of TaskExchange? Interested in getting help or helping out on health evidence projects? Take a look here.

 

Get your task post right

Get your task description perfect, and you’re likely to get quick responses from the right people. It’s well worth putting in a little bit of time at the beginning to ensure your task post attracts precisely the kind of person you’re looking for. It’ll save you time in the long run.

1. Use a pithy task title.

The task title is your attention grabber. It should allow someone to quickly determine their suitability and interest. Here’s an example of a good task title, ‘Seeking patient partner for guideline panel on treatment for shoulder impingement syndrome, June -August 2018, approx 10 hours total.’ Whereas a less helpful title is something like ‘Guideline panel for impingement syndrome’. Note that a good title will include both the clinical area and the task type.

2. Be clear about who you’re looking for.

Describe the skills and experience someone needs in order to undertake your task. The clearer you can be, the less time you’ll spend reading responses that don’t quite hit the mark.

3. Specify the reward you’re offering.

Is it authorship, acknowledgement, payment, or more than one of these options? Be sure to include a reward as it will attract helpers to your task.

Choose the right person

So you’ve received some responses to your task. Awesome! How do you decide who to pick? First, you’ll read the response messages that come through. But what other information can you use?

4. Check TaskExchange profiles

Have a thorough read of responders’ TaskExchange profiles. A well-written profile should give you a good feel for who they are as well as their experiences and skillsets.

5. Check recommendations

Check to see if the responders have been recommended by other TaskExchange users. Recommendations appear on profile pages and will help you get a sense of the quality of work someone produces and how reliable they are. You may also find that you know the recommender; it’s a small world after all! *Cue musical interlude!* Keep in mind that no recommendations may just mean that the responder is new to TaskExchange. Speaking of recommendations, don’t forget to recommend people who do a great job on your task!

6. Search directly for the help you need

You can search the TaskExchange network to find people with exactly the skills you are looking for, and then send them a message to gauge their interest and availability. We suggest doing this as well as (not instead of) posting a task. To search the network, log in, go to Browse Network and filter by topic expertise or skills.

 

What works for you? Share your tips with us at taskexchange@cochrane.org or tweet them to 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.

 

 

Let’s meet the people who bring you Cochrane Crowd

Welcome to our first Cochrane Crowd Crew blog. This will be a blog series where Emily, Cochrane Crowd’s Communications & Partnerships Manager, interviews one of the fabulous Crowd team members, and shares what she discovers.

For this first chat, Emily spoke to Crowd’s Co-Lead Anna Noel-Storr about bringing up her daughters, her love of books, incessant email checking and why she’s still excited about Cochrane Crowd after all this time.

By the way, if you don’t know about Cochrane Crowd, first watch this 2-minute video.

 

Name: Anna Noel-Storr

From: Oxford

Job: Co-Lead on Cochrane Crowd

Time on Cochrane Crowd: Started Cochrane Crowd! And its precursor.

Emily: So Anna, you’ve been working on Cochrane Crowd and its precursor, the Embase project for 6 years now. What keeps you motivated?

Seeing what can be achieved when lots of people work together is a pretty good motivator! We just crossed the 2 million classifications mark. These classifications have helped identify tens of thousands of randomised trials, a few thousand diagnostic studies, and meant that we’re no longer playing catch up with resources like Embase or ClinicalTrials.gov. Seeing progress like this is hugely motivating. We still have a long way to go but the work itself is incredibly satisfying. I think I might be the luckiest person to have this job.

Emily: What were you doing before Embase and Cochrane Crowd?

Before Cochrane Crowd came along, I was very focused on another area of work entirely. I was, and still am, based with the Cochrane Dementia and Cognitive Improvement Group and for a few years I worked intensively on an initiative to expose the highly variable quality of methods and reporting in studies to do with dementia diagnosis. I then worked on an initiative to try to improve the standard of reporting in future studies on dementia. It was fascinating work and I felt very fortunate to be given the freedom to work so much on it. I had to learn a great deal very quickly. If you’re interested in the area of dementia diagnosis, or over-diagnosis in general, then here are the links to the papers produced from this work https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23110863 and https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24944261

Emily: What fun stuff are you working on at the moment?

We have lots of exciting developments just around the corner. I’m probably most excited by the roll-out of the new Crowd PICO task. It’s been much tougher than I imagined to get this task into shape and we know it’s not perfect yet but I think the community are going to enjoy it. We’re also, soon, going to roll out something called “Screen For Me”. This will be a new service where author teams can enlist the help of the Crowd for their specific reviews. And if those two developments aren’t enough, we’re also forming a new partnership with another great organisation but more on that soon.

Emily: Are you working on any great stuff outside of Cochrane Crowd?

Bringing up my daughters is certainly an adventure at times, but I think you’re asking me whether I have any hobbies or interests other than Cochrane Crowd (as if!)? If you take away Cochrane Crowd and the day-to-day chaos, I mean, fun of parenting, there isn’t a great deal of time left over but I do try to find a little time for extra-curricular activities. My daughters are both creative and love music, and they’ve inspired me to explore that side of myself more. I’m attempting to learn to play the piano. I’m comically bad at times but am slowly making progress.  I also love drawing. I stopped drawing for about a decade when I was in my mid-twenties. When I finally picked up a pencil again, it was daunting but I’m so glad I did. With an intense job, and a young family, having a couple of very absorbing interests really helps to calm the mind!

 

Emily: What is something that most people don’t know about you?

I don’t actually like tea. Ha! I am of course kidding. Love the stuff.

I suppose most people don’t know that I don’t actually have a scientific background. I started out doing English Literature at university. I then changed to History and went on to do a Masters in History. I even started teaching History at one point before remembering just how much I had hated school and didn’t like being back there even if it was as a teacher rather than a student.

Emily: Are there any apps, software, podcasts or books you couldn’t live without?

I am one of those people who checks their email incessantly. I go through phases of trying not to, and I think I’m breaking the habit slowly but right now if you took that away I’d probably have some anxiety.

I’ve never really got into podcasts but I am considering it and would love some suggestions of good ones. I’ve recently started running and I think listening to a podcast might distract my brain from my complaining knees!

I have a fairly extensive collection of books. We are hopefully moving soon and I’m wondering if I should use that as an opportunity to cull my collection a bit but I’m doubtful I can. I have a few special books given to me on my 18th and 21st birthdays, but to be honest every book that I’ve enjoyed reading or connected with I wouldn’t want to see go! For example, and just to get a tiny bit sad for a moment, when my father was dying I had to travel to London a lot. During those difficult weeks I read three books that will always hold a slightly special meaning for me. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that the books become connected with the context in which they were read making some extra special because of what was happening outside of the story.

Emily: Finally, what advice would you give to your younger self?

I turned 40 very recently and found myself excited to get a new decade underway. My younger self was quite different from my aging self! I was an incredibly shy child. I was afraid of making mistakes, of making a fool of myself, and always worrying what others thought of me. If I was able to advise my younger self I’d say to really think about where you direct your energy: do you want to waste it worrying, or direct it towards things that matter – like Cochrane Crowd!

 

Sign up to Cochrane Crowd, follow us on Twitter and contact us at crowd@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.