Article type
Year
Abstract
Background:
The Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) is a bibliography of controlled trials, as to hand search the biomedical journals worldwide and create an unbiased source of data for systematic reviews. The Center for Evidence-based Chinese Medicine at Beijing University of Chinese Medicine (BUCM) has done much work to contribute to this register through identifying and input abstracts on Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) that were published in Chinese.
Objectives:
To improve the efficiency and accuracy of identifying the references on TCM and optimize the project management.
Methods:
(1)We improved the search strategy and expanded the scope of journals in order to include more published randomized controlled trials with English abstracts, reducing the workload for translation. (2)We sorted all the problems encountered in the past 10 years into Q&A and developed a standard operating procedure (SOP), which lowered the difficulty threshold for volunteers who's lack of knowledge in evidence-based medicine and greatly decreased the workload of training. The SOP was developed by generations of group leaders based on the feedback given by volunteers, which contains software using, judgement of eligibility and details of the work. (3)The results were cross-checked by volunteers to reduce the errors.
Results:
Until April 4th 2020, we have submitted 24,544 records and 2,641 more ongoing. Among them, there were 2,327 abstracts submitted in 2019 and 2,641 abstracts to be submitted in 2020. The amount of available abstract has raised 13.49%. For the 2,327 abstracts in 2019, the total length of searching, screening, training and type-in was 82 days, compared with 67 days in 2020. That was a decrease of 18.29%. The 12 problems in the Q&A were mainly in software:5, judgement of eligibility:3 and others:4. These measures did can improve the accuracy of searching and the efficiency of input.
Conclusions:
In the process of project management, the use of SOP and the possible problems sorted into the form of Q&A can significantly improve the work efficiency. Training for volunteers has also become much easier. The volunteers also significantly reduced the error rate by cross-checking the entries after they were completed. On the one hand, we suggest to continually optimize Procite software. On the other hand, Chinese researchers and clinicians should pay more attention on their English abstract writing skills.
Patient or healthcare consumer involvement:
The work on contributing CENTRAL database is very meaningful for researchers and clinicians worldwide. It gives possibilities for remarkable TCM studies known by more reviewers and enriches the diversity of clinical researches. Experiences on improvinging the project management might have positive influence on the same project all over the world.
The Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) is a bibliography of controlled trials, as to hand search the biomedical journals worldwide and create an unbiased source of data for systematic reviews. The Center for Evidence-based Chinese Medicine at Beijing University of Chinese Medicine (BUCM) has done much work to contribute to this register through identifying and input abstracts on Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) that were published in Chinese.
Objectives:
To improve the efficiency and accuracy of identifying the references on TCM and optimize the project management.
Methods:
(1)We improved the search strategy and expanded the scope of journals in order to include more published randomized controlled trials with English abstracts, reducing the workload for translation. (2)We sorted all the problems encountered in the past 10 years into Q&A and developed a standard operating procedure (SOP), which lowered the difficulty threshold for volunteers who's lack of knowledge in evidence-based medicine and greatly decreased the workload of training. The SOP was developed by generations of group leaders based on the feedback given by volunteers, which contains software using, judgement of eligibility and details of the work. (3)The results were cross-checked by volunteers to reduce the errors.
Results:
Until April 4th 2020, we have submitted 24,544 records and 2,641 more ongoing. Among them, there were 2,327 abstracts submitted in 2019 and 2,641 abstracts to be submitted in 2020. The amount of available abstract has raised 13.49%. For the 2,327 abstracts in 2019, the total length of searching, screening, training and type-in was 82 days, compared with 67 days in 2020. That was a decrease of 18.29%. The 12 problems in the Q&A were mainly in software:5, judgement of eligibility:3 and others:4. These measures did can improve the accuracy of searching and the efficiency of input.
Conclusions:
In the process of project management, the use of SOP and the possible problems sorted into the form of Q&A can significantly improve the work efficiency. Training for volunteers has also become much easier. The volunteers also significantly reduced the error rate by cross-checking the entries after they were completed. On the one hand, we suggest to continually optimize Procite software. On the other hand, Chinese researchers and clinicians should pay more attention on their English abstract writing skills.
Patient or healthcare consumer involvement:
The work on contributing CENTRAL database is very meaningful for researchers and clinicians worldwide. It gives possibilities for remarkable TCM studies known by more reviewers and enriches the diversity of clinical researches. Experiences on improvinging the project management might have positive influence on the same project all over the world.