Article type
Year
Abstract
Background: The Cochrane Anaesthesia Review Group (CARG) was registered in February 2000. CARG is responsible for producing and updating reviews in anaesthesiology, resuscitation, perioperative, prehospital, emergency and intensive care medicine. Ideally all reviews dealing with these interventions would be found in the CARG module, however our scope overlaps with other Groups. Many reviews, within CARG s scope, will be found in other Groups modules. There are a variety of reasons for this: the review title may predate CARG; the intervention may be relevant to a group of patients such as neonates or pregnant women. CARG, like many Groups, is committed to collaborate on topics that are on the borderline between Groups, both in performing the reviews and in the editorial process. If a CARG review overlaps with another Group, that Group is asked to contribute by providing a peer referee. This is acknowledged in the review. Some Groups are heavily committed, and the review is effectively shared between the Groups.
Objectives: The objective of this study was to evaluate the number of reviews in The Cochrane Library that could be classified as either belonging to CARG (that is were registered with us or could have been); overlapped with CARG (that is were registered with another Group but were of interest to CARG) or definitely did not come within our scope.
Methods: We searched the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (The Cochrane Library issue 4, 2003). Three reviewers independently assessed all review titles and allocated them to one of three groups: CARG, overlap with CARG, not CARG. Disagreements were resolved by consensus.
Results: 3281 review titles were studied: 1344 published protocols and 1837 published reviews. Of the protocols, 45 came within CARG s scope; 35 of these were officially registered with CARG. The remaining ten protocols were registered to other Groups. 28 out of 1344 published protocols overlapped CARG s scope. The remaining 1271 were outside CARG s scope.
Of the 1837 published reviews, 33 came within CARG s scope; 10 of these reviews were officially registered with CARG. The remaining 23 reviews were registered to other Groups. 48 of the 1837 published reviews overlapped CARG s scope. The remaining 1756 were outside CARG s scope.
Conclusions: Reviews cannot be looked at in isolation. Naturally many review titles overlap several Groups; ideally those Groups contribute to the editorial process. A collaboratively edited review is generally of a high standard. Presently review titles belong to only one Group. They can only be published in one Group s module (even if another Group contributed significantly to the editorial process). One measure of a Group s success is its number of published reviews; this may lead to reluctance to relinquish titles. Yet Titles change; reviewers widen their scopes, to the extent that the eventual published review often bears little resemblance to the original registered title. Ideally in the future, The Cochrane Library will recognize shared reviews and will allow them to be accessed from each of the contributing Groups modules.
Objectives: The objective of this study was to evaluate the number of reviews in The Cochrane Library that could be classified as either belonging to CARG (that is were registered with us or could have been); overlapped with CARG (that is were registered with another Group but were of interest to CARG) or definitely did not come within our scope.
Methods: We searched the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (The Cochrane Library issue 4, 2003). Three reviewers independently assessed all review titles and allocated them to one of three groups: CARG, overlap with CARG, not CARG. Disagreements were resolved by consensus.
Results: 3281 review titles were studied: 1344 published protocols and 1837 published reviews. Of the protocols, 45 came within CARG s scope; 35 of these were officially registered with CARG. The remaining ten protocols were registered to other Groups. 28 out of 1344 published protocols overlapped CARG s scope. The remaining 1271 were outside CARG s scope.
Of the 1837 published reviews, 33 came within CARG s scope; 10 of these reviews were officially registered with CARG. The remaining 23 reviews were registered to other Groups. 48 of the 1837 published reviews overlapped CARG s scope. The remaining 1756 were outside CARG s scope.
Conclusions: Reviews cannot be looked at in isolation. Naturally many review titles overlap several Groups; ideally those Groups contribute to the editorial process. A collaboratively edited review is generally of a high standard. Presently review titles belong to only one Group. They can only be published in one Group s module (even if another Group contributed significantly to the editorial process). One measure of a Group s success is its number of published reviews; this may lead to reluctance to relinquish titles. Yet Titles change; reviewers widen their scopes, to the extent that the eventual published review often bears little resemblance to the original registered title. Ideally in the future, The Cochrane Library will recognize shared reviews and will allow them to be accessed from each of the contributing Groups modules.