Article type
Year
Abstract
Background: The Cochrane Collaboration undertakes a successful program of handsearching with over 2000 journals currently being handsearched. The journals searched will inevitably include some journals covering health promotion and public health (HP&PH) intervention studies, but potentially there is a myriad of studies relevant to HP&PH that are being missed.
The Evidence for Policy and Practice Information and Co-ordinating Centre (EPPI Centre) maintains TRoPHI, a specialised free-access register of over 1,000 HP&PH trials for The Cochrane Health Promotion and Public Health Field (http://eppi.ioe.ac.uk/EPPIWeb/home.aspx). Although sourced mainly through reviews conducted by the EPPI-Centre, a system of quarterly updates from highly sensitive database searches of PubMed, EMBASE and CENTRAL was implemented in August 2004.
Objectives: In 2003-2005 the HP&PH Field received funding to improve access to 'difficult to locate HP&PH intervention studies and effectiveness reviews. This enabled the Field to explore handsearching as a means of increasing the registerÂs coverage.
Methods: The first activity was to develop a sustainable strategy for recruiting and training handsearchers from around the world. All HP&PH Field database members with an interest in handsearching were invited to participate in a pilot program involving six Medline-indexed HP&PH-related journals. These journals were currently not being handsearched by the Cochrane Collaboration and had been shown to have the highest yield of HP&PH trials.
Results: Five HP&PH Field database members volunteered to participate in the pilot study. The project identified many barriers and facilitators to the development of an international handsearching strategy. Feedback on the handsearching training materials has lead to improvements in the handsearching process. All trials and systematic reviews identified were forwarded for inclusion in the Fields register.
Conclusions: Due to the wide dispersion of published and unpublished HP&PH literature handsearching will always have an important role in the systematic review process. The lessons learned from the pilot study for locating trials in indexed journals are instrumental to developing effective handsearching strategies for locating studies in non-indexed journals and grey literature. Expansion of the FieldÂs register to include a wider array of study designs will also necessitate the further development of the handsearching training materials.
The Evidence for Policy and Practice Information and Co-ordinating Centre (EPPI Centre) maintains TRoPHI, a specialised free-access register of over 1,000 HP&PH trials for The Cochrane Health Promotion and Public Health Field (http://eppi.ioe.ac.uk/EPPIWeb/home.aspx). Although sourced mainly through reviews conducted by the EPPI-Centre, a system of quarterly updates from highly sensitive database searches of PubMed, EMBASE and CENTRAL was implemented in August 2004.
Objectives: In 2003-2005 the HP&PH Field received funding to improve access to 'difficult to locate HP&PH intervention studies and effectiveness reviews. This enabled the Field to explore handsearching as a means of increasing the registerÂs coverage.
Methods: The first activity was to develop a sustainable strategy for recruiting and training handsearchers from around the world. All HP&PH Field database members with an interest in handsearching were invited to participate in a pilot program involving six Medline-indexed HP&PH-related journals. These journals were currently not being handsearched by the Cochrane Collaboration and had been shown to have the highest yield of HP&PH trials.
Results: Five HP&PH Field database members volunteered to participate in the pilot study. The project identified many barriers and facilitators to the development of an international handsearching strategy. Feedback on the handsearching training materials has lead to improvements in the handsearching process. All trials and systematic reviews identified were forwarded for inclusion in the Fields register.
Conclusions: Due to the wide dispersion of published and unpublished HP&PH literature handsearching will always have an important role in the systematic review process. The lessons learned from the pilot study for locating trials in indexed journals are instrumental to developing effective handsearching strategies for locating studies in non-indexed journals and grey literature. Expansion of the FieldÂs register to include a wider array of study designs will also necessitate the further development of the handsearching training materials.