Registered title: Official record of an author's intent to prepare a Cochrane review on a specific topic, with oversight of a specific Cochrane Review Group. Registered title: Official record of an author's intent to prepare a Cochrane review on a specific topic, with oversight of a specific Cochrane Review Group.
Protocol: Detailed roadmap or plan for the preparation of a Cochrane review. This is found only in the full-text (subscribed) view of The Cochrane Library, and includes details of the research question and data extraction methods.
Review: The published review with methods, results, conclusions. The plain language summary (a short synopsis) and the abstract (a page or so) are found free-of-charge on Cochrane.org and TheCochraneLibrary.com, while the full-text version (including meta-analyses) is available only to subscribers of The Cochrane Library.
New: A new protocol or review appearing for the first time in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (the core database of The Cochrane Library). The database is published quarterly, and this 'new' flag disappears with the release of the following issue.
New search: A new search for studies has been conducted for an existing review as published in the most recent issue (quarter).
Conclusions changed: There has been an important change to the conclusions of the review as published in the most recent issue (quarter).
Major change: The protocol has been amended to reflect a change in scope as published in the most recent issue (quarter).
Withdrawn: The review or protocol has been withdrawn, which may be because it was considered to be out of date. Reasons for withdrawal are specified in the document.
Comment: The review includes comments. Readers can submit comments, which are incorporated into the review together with answers and feedback from the review authors.
The Update flag no longer exists; instead the flags New search, Conclusions changed and Major change are used to provide a more precise indication on the type of update and improve searching. You can still browse by New Reviews and Updated Reviews to view a list of new and/or updated reviews published in the latest issue of The Cochrane Library but the new flags provide a more accurate picture of the review or protocol status.
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