About The Cochrane Library

Cochrane Reviews are published in The Cochrane Library – an online collection of databases that brings together in one place rigorous and up-to-date research on the effectiveness of healthcare treatments and interventions, as well as methodology and diagnostic tests.

There are over 4,600 Cochrane Reviews currently available in The Cochrane Library.

This is an incredible figure since each review takes hundreds of hours and a whole team of people to produce. Over 2,000 protocols for Cochrane Reviews are also available, providing an explicit description of the research methods and objectives for Cochrane Reviews in progress. 

'ISI Impact Factor' is an internationally recognised tool for ranking, evaluating and comparing journals in all subject areas. The Impact Factor for the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR), the database of Cochrane Reviews in The Cochrane Library, is 6.186.

An Impact Factor of 6.186 places our database 10th out of the 151 journals included in the Medicine, General and Internal journal list and 2010 marks the fourth consecutive year that its Impact Factor has increased."
Nick Royle, CEO

The total number of times the CDSR was cited in publications increased from 23,102 in 2009 to 27,366 in 2010, meaning the CDSR receives the 7th highest number of citations in its category. Read more about how Impact Factor is calculated, and what it means, here.

Hundreds of newly completed Cochrane Reviews and protocols are added to The Cochrane Library every year. Access The Cochrane Library, here.

Existing Cochrane Reviews are updated regularly as new information becomes available.This is particularly important in the rapidly changing healthcare environment.

Thinking about our future

The Cochrane Collaboration is striving to ensure that its work is sustainable. Even with thousands of Cochrane Reviews either published or under way, there is still a large amount of work to be done.

The latest estimate is that at least 10,000 Cochrane Reviews are needed to cover all healthcare interventions that have already been investigated in controlled trials, and these reviews will need to be updated at the rate of 5000 per year.

If the growth in The Cochrane Collaboration continues at the pace of the last few years, this target will be reached within the next decade or so. However, this will require continuing and evolving partnership and collaboration. We need to continue to attract and support the wide variety of people who contribute to our work.  

“Just as that idealistic organization - the United Nations - views every citizen of the world as a member - I view each person as a member of an equally idealistic organization: The Cochrane Collaboration.”

- Robert Dellavalle, Review author and editor for the Cochrane Skin Group, Colorado, USA

We need to work together with funders and providers of health care to ensure growth in the resources needed for the work, and accessibility of the output of the work to people throughout the world making decisions about health care.

Find out how you can become a contributor to The Cochrane Collaboration, here.