For Health Research Professionals

How To Use the Cochrane Library

Cochrane Collaboration College for Policy at George Mason has released a new Prezi presentation to help consumers navigate the Cochrane Library. The Library, which consists of seven different extensive databases and is used by a broad range of stakeholders, provides independent high-quality evidence for health care decision-making.  The presentation shows how to navigate and browse the Library, while saving your searches. The Prezi complements Cochrane's own extensive resource guides and tutorials for the Library that can be found here.

The Cochrane Library Databases

The Cochrane Library, which consists of seven different extensive databases and is used by a broad range of stakeholders, provides independent high-quality evidence for health care decision-making. A quick overview (including two self-paced online tutorials) on how to search the library can be found here.

• The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (Cochrane Reviews) is the primary output of the Cochrane Collaboration. Each Cochrane review identifies an intervention for a specific disease (or other problem in health care) and determines whether or not this intervention works by summarizing the results of research gathered from randomized controlled trials.
• Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects (DARE) is a unique database, containing abstracts of systematic reviews that have been quality assessed. Each abstract includes a summary of the review together with a critical commentary about the overall quality.
• Cochrane Central Register of Controlled trials (clinical trials), known as CENTRAL, includes details of published trials taken from bibliographic databases and other published resources.
• The Cochrane methodology register is a bibliography of publications that report on methods used when conducting controlled trials, studies of methods used in reviews, and more general methodological studies which could be relevant to anyone preparing systematic reviews.
• Health technology assessment database (technology assessments) details completed and ongoing health technology assessments (studies of the medical, social, ethical, and economic implications of healthcare interventions) from around the world.
• The NHS Economic Evaluation database includes economic evaluations from around the world, evaluated for quality and highlighting relative strengths and weaknesses of each study.
• The About the Cochrane Collaboration database contains information on the 80 groups that make up The Cochrane Collaboration, including contacts and information on the aims and scope of the Cochrane Review Groups, Methods Groups, Fields, and Networks.

The Cochrane Podcast Library

The Cochrane podcast library also provides web broadcasts on everything from authors walking listeners through their own Cochrane reviews to editorial discussions.

US Cochrane Center Online Tutorials

The United States Cochrane Center has also developed free, online tutorials for researchers interested in evidence-based medicine.

• Understanding Evidence-Based Healthcare: A Foundation for Action
  An online tutorial with over five hours of lectures and slides, the course was designed to help individual learners, doctoral programs, medical residencies, and consumer advocacy programs understand the fundamentals and concepts behind evidence-based healthcare.

• Handsearching, Identifying and Classifying Controlled Trial Reports
  Another free-of-charge online course, the tutorial serves as a training exercise for those planning to engage in handsearching. Although the final assessment is related to eyes and vision, the course is applicable and useful to health professionals from all specialties. There are no prerequisites for this course, but participants should have a basic knowledge of the approaches and language related to study design. After completing this course, the participant will understand the difference between a randomized control trial (RCT) and a controlled clinical trial (CCT) and be able to handsearch a print journal, an online journal, or conference abstracts to identify and classify reports of RCTS and CCTs.

• Translating Critical Appraisal of a Manuscript into Meaningful Peer Review
  Containing eight hours of lectures and accompanying slides, this online course on journal peer review serves as a resource for health professionals who are serving or wish to serve as peer reviewers of the biomedical literature. Participants will learn how to apply critical appraisal to manuscripts submitted for peer review; how to provide meaningful feedback to authors and editors that they can use to improve manuscript quality; and the purpose, process, and responsibilities in peer review from the perspective of the author, editor, and peer reviewer.  Different types of clinical research questions (and the appropriate designs for studying them) as well as the strengths and limitations of various study designs will also be discussed.