Background:

The Cochrane Collaboration has an efficient system in place, such that almost anyone interested, can write a Cochrane systematic review. The Cochrane Handbook of Systematic Reviews is so detailed that an author can find the answer to any question encountered. However undertaking a review is a complex and laborious task, and requires constant support. In countries like India, the few existing authors are dispersed geographically and do not have sufficient networking to form this support system to mentor new authors. Hence reviews with specific regional importance may be lacking.

Intervention: In India, a group of medical professionals and students from around India, with support from the Cochrane South Asian Center and Network, have formed a network of authors. We call it “Credence: Creation of Reliable evidence in developing Countries by continuous Enabling” a training and support system for authors. The contact author is an interested novice student, so that he/she will get the maximum experience from writing the review. The main mode of communication is by email and Facebook. By writing the review, the novice authors learns and graduates to an expert by an activity-based learning approach. The new experienced author will serve to mentor more students.

Result:

In two months, we formed five teams with four to five members each, one with a registered title, one in the process of title registration and remaining three working towards a title. Between the authors we have six reviews in various stages of publication.

Conclusion:

We hope to kindle the mentor-student relationship, by bringing together experts and novices to a common platform using Internet networking technologies. This will generate the critical mass of experienced authors who will be able to write reviews which are more relevant to their setting.