Making identifying Oral Health Group (OHG) reviews in the Cochrane Library easier and faster

Article type
Authors
Owaise-Sharif M1
1Dentistry, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
Abstract
Introduction: At present the reviews in the OHG section of the Cochrane Library are organised according to key words in the title. This means that reviews pertaining to endodontic treatment for example could be found under a heading which does not reflect this. Therefore it was felt that reorganising the reviews could make it faster and easier for users to identify relevant reviews. Methods: A group of authors and clinicians accessing the OHG on a regular basis were asked about their views on the ease of use of the current mapping system for the reviews and their opinion on alternative methods for mapping the reviews. Alternative methods included organising reviews in alphabetical order, according to the dental specialities they related to or according to the background of the corresponding author (i.e. field of study). Results: The majority of respondents indicated that identifying reviews could be made easier and mapping them according to the dental specialties they relate to would help achieve this. Conclusion: Over the next few months I will reorganise the reviews in the OHG independently from current topic list according to the dental specialties they relate to, I will then re-evaluate the ease of use of the new system. This information will be presented at the Cochrane Colloquium. The hope is that this restructuring will help make the OHG section more user friendly, increase dissemination of information from reviews and also to identify specialties in which reviews are lacking in order to inform future reviews.