Best Research Paper at MOSAIC 2016 conference awarded to paper which contributed to more randomized control trials being made available to Cochrane authors

The paper ‘Improving Access to Reports of Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) in Embase: Innovative Methods Enhance the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL)’ was presented at the Medical Library Association/Canadian Medical Library Association conference in Toronto, Canada during a session on expert searching. Cochrane Systematic Reviews rely on the efficient identification of research evidence, specifically evidence from RCTs. The largest single source of reports of RCTs is CENTRAL in the Cochrane Library. CENTRAL is mainly populated with records from MEDLINE, but also contains a substantial and growing number of records from Embase. The paper reported on the development, validation and refinement of a sensitive search filter to identify reports of RCTs in Embase for inclusion in CENTRAL. The high volume of records identified by the filter were processed by Cochrane Crowd, which is crowdsource effort to help categorise and summarise healthcare evidence at a high level of precision. This effort has made many thousands of reports of RCTs that might otherwise be inaccessible to Cochrane authors available in CENTRAL.

Authors have recently found out that this paper was chosen by a judging committee for the Best Research Paper at the conference. Sharing this honour are: Julie Glanville, Associate Director, York Health Economics Consortium, UK and Co-Convenor, Cochrane Information Retrieval Methods Group; Anna Noel Storr, Information Specialist, Cochrane Dementia and Cognitive Improvement Group; Gordon Dooley, Director, Metaxis, UK; and Ruth Foxlee, Information Specialist, Cochrane Editorial Unit.

“It’s a great honour to have this piece of work contribute to increasing the availability of RCT evidence and for it to recognized by the Medical Library Association, especially given the high calibre of work being shared at their conference,” says author Foxlee. “Most of the author team are librarians and all of us are committed to promoting literacy and the enjoyment of reading. We will be donating our prize money to Firstbook, which is charity that encourages children to read by supplying books.”