Objective: As part of the European Union BIOMED Programme, six partners (Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and UK) are collaborating in a Project, co-ordinated by the UK Cochrane Centre, to identify reports of controlled trials, by handsearching European general health care journals. The aim of the Project is to ensure that by 1998, all reports of trials identified in European general health care journals from 1948 onwards are accessible through The Cochrane Controlled Trials Register, published as part of The Cochrane Library.

Methods: General health care journals published in Europe have been identified and ranked according to their likely yield of reports of trials. Each partner in the Project has recruited and trained handsearchers to identify relevant reports. Electronic records are generated and submitted for inclusion in The Cochrane Controlled Trials Register. They are also forwarded to the (US) National Library of Medicine via the Baltimore Cochrane Center, for re-tagging with the appropriate Publication Type terms in MEDLINE, or inclusion in an ancillary database currently under development.

Results: Over seventy journals are being/have been handsearched within the Project. More than 15,000 reports of trials have been identified, which were not previously easily identifiable as reports of trials (ie were not coded as trials within MEDLINE). Of these, 13,000 are already available in The Cochrane Controlled Trials Register and 7,000 have been re-tagged in MEDLINE.

Discussion: This Project has already made a major contribution to the Cochrane Collaboration and should continue to provide substantial help to those preparing systematic reviews.