Project Transform has five components:
Evidence Pipeline
Cochrane Crowd
Cochrane Engage
Production Models / Living Systematic Reviews
Australian Guidelines
Evidence Pipeline - Finding relevant research in a timely and reliable way
Evidence Pipeline will address the difficulty in finding reports of studies for inclusion in a review in a timely and reliable way. With ongoing growth in the volume and diversity of research outputs this issue is becoming ever more pressing.
The project will build an ‘Evidence Pipeline’ in which study citations identified through automated and enhanced centralised search activities, including Project Transform's Cochrane Crowd platform, are ‘triaged’ to the most relevant review group or review using machine learning technologies. It will also assign suggested study type flags automatically: RCT only to begin with, and other types (e.g. diagnostic test) in later releases. The objectives are to improve the efficiency by which study reports are identified and to support the inclusion of all relevant studies in Cochrane information systems.
Read more about Evidence Pipeline here.
Cochrane Crowd - Developing pathways for potential new contributors
Cochrane Crowd will address the challenge of finding pathways so potential new contributors can participate in Cochrane. Cochrane Crowd will create more opportunities to get involved in our work by enabling new contributors to complete simple tasks linked to brief online training and allowing these activities to contribute to an online profile.
And as more and more health research is published every day, our Crowd contributors will help us meet the growing challenge of identifying the research we need to produce high-quality and up-to-date health evidence.
Read more about Cochrane Crowd here.
Cochrane Engage - Increasing the efficiency of working collaboratively
Cochrane Engage will increase the opportunities for the global Cochrane community to work together. Cochrane Engage is an online platform where contributors can post a task, describe who they are looking for, and what reward or compensation they will provide. The system will match these tasks to the skills and interests of community members. The objectives are to improve the efficiency by which Cochrane contributors can find others to help, and to better utilise the global Cochrane community in the production of our reviews.
Read more about Cochrane Engage here.
Production Models / Living Systematic Reviews - Ensuring our content is relevant and up-to-date
Current models for producing Cochrane reviews are often challenging, complex and time-consuming. Author teams, Review Groups and other Cochrane community members are looking for new approaches to producing Cochrane reviews that can streamline the process, while still ensuring quality.
Production Models has explored a variety of ways we currently produce Cochrane reviews, what others are doing and what we might do differently to improve the review production process (view our report of this work). With a focus on how author teams work and how technology might help, Production Models is currently piloting a new way of producing Cochrane reviews, Living Systematic Reviews, that could help us more efficiently produce high-impact reviews that are of high quality and up-to-date.
Visit our Living Systematic Reviews page to find out more about this exciting innovative approach to producing Cochrane reviews.
Australian Guidelines
The aim of this new area of work is to create a system that allows Australian guideline developers access to tools, systems and services that can make it easier for them to access, use and conduct systematic reviews.
In 2016 we will focus on working with guideline developers to understand their evidence needs and how we can help provide easy access to the kinds of tools and services they would like.
For more information on Project Transform's Australian Guidelines component download the project summary or contact Tari Turner.