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Systematic Reviews: Cochrane Systematic Reviews

Cochrane Systematic Reviews

Cochrane logo Cochrane systematic reviews focus on the effects of interventions in health care in order to support decisions made by policy makers, practitioners, and patents. Their reviews are vetted by the Cochrane Collaboration and must follow extensive guidelines with stringent requirements. Because of that they are  internationally recognized as the highest standard in evidence-based health care resources. 

About Cochrane

Proposing a Cochrane Systematic Review

Proposing a New Cochrane Review: you must submit a protocol to Cochrane for peer review and acceptance.

Cochrane Training

Cochrane Training: recorded and live webinars, events, guides, and handbooks. Many of the introductory resources are free while many of the advanced ones are restricted to Cochrane members. 

Finding Cochrane Systematic Reviews

undefined The Cochrane Library is an online collection of Cochrane systematic reviews, protocols, clinical trials, methods studies, and more. Many Cochrane reviews are also indexed in PuMed, Medline, EMBASE, and CINAHL.

Cochrane Guidelines

Cochrane Handbook

Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions 

The manual for authors of Cochrane systematic reviews. It provides detailed information on planning a review, searching, selecting studies, data collection, risk of bias assessment, statistical analysis, GRADE and interpreting results, as well as more specialized topics (non-randomized studies, adverse effects, economics, patient-reported outcomes, individual patient data, prospective meta-analysis, qualitative research, reviews in public health and overviews of reviews.

 

Methodological Expectations of Cochrane Intervention Reviews (MECIR)

Describes Cochrane's standards for conducting Cochrane systematic reviews of interventions. 
PRISMA

PRISMA 2020

The PRISMA checklist and flow diagram are recommended. 

Software for Cochrane Systematic Reviews

Cochrane's preferred core software is: 

  • Review Manager (RevMan) - software for preparing and maintaining Cochrane Reviews: protocols, manuscripts, characteristics of studies, comparison tables, study data, meta-analysis. (web and desktop versions available) 
  • Covidence - a web-based tool which helps you screen records, assess risk-of-bias, and extract data. Free for authors of Cochrane Reviews. 
  • GRADEpro GDT - an online tool to create a Summary of Findings (SoF) table
  • EPPI-Reviewer – a web-based tool which helps you with all stages of the systematic review process: reference management, screening, risk of bias assessment, data extraction and synthesis. Free for authors of Cochrane Reviews. 
  • Archie- Cochrane's database for managing contacts and documents and delivering them for publication. 

Study Selection

The Cochrane Handbook allows also allows the use of multiple applications with machine learning or text-mining to semi-automate study selection. After you screen a certain number of citations, the software prioritizes the rest of the citations in order of estimated relevance. You must still review each record but it helps you identify studies that are most likely to be relevant earlier in the screening process: 

  • Covidence – a web-based tool which helps you screen records, assess risk-of-bias, and extract data. Free for authors of Cochrane Reviews. 
  • DistillerSR – a web-based tool which helps you screen records and extract data. It has a number of management features to track progress, assess interrater reliability and export data for further analysis. Reduced pricing for Cochrane authors.
  • EPPI-Reviewer – a web-based tool which helps you with all stages of the systematic review process: reference management, screening, risk of bias assessment, data extraction and synthesis. Free for authors of Cochrane Reviews. 
  • Rayyan – a free web-based application for collaborative citation screening.

Data Extraction

The Cochrane Handbook allows the use of many applications that collect, store, and share data:

  • Covidence – a web-based tool which helps you screen records, assess risk-of-bias, and extract data. Free for authors of Cochrane Reviews. 
  • EPPI-Reviewer – a web-based tool which helps you with all stages of the systematic review process: reference management, screening, risk of bias assessment, data extraction and synthesis. Free for authors of Cochrane Reviews. 
  • Systematic Review Data Repository (SRDR) - a web-based tool for data extraction and management
  • DistillerSR – a web-based tool which helps you screen records and extract data. It has a number of management features to track progress, assess interrater reliability and export data for further analysis. Reduced pricing for Cochrane authors.