Cochrane invites anyone who is interested in healthcare evidence to become a virtual citizen scientist! Anyone can join and no previous experience is necessary. We also have special 12-hour screening challenge happening on 20 October for World Evidence-Based Healthcare Day! See more details on how to join the 12-hour challenge at the bottom of the page.
Cochrane Crowd is a global community of volunteers who are helping to classify the research needed to support informed decision-making about health care. Everyone is welcome to join!
The job of the Cochrane Crowd community is to review descriptions of research studies to identify and classify randomized controlled trials (RCTs), a type of study that is considered the gold standard for clinical trials. Reports of RCTs are then fed into Cochrane’s Central Register of Controlled Trials, helping Cochrane authors and other systematic reviewers around the world quickly find the evidence they need to determine whether a treatment works, or whether a diagnostic test is accurate.
Anyone can join Cochrane Crowd and no previous experience is necessary. Members find the experience helps build skills in evidence assessment, and by focusing their effort to a health topic of interest they can keep abreast of the latest research. Brief (and fun!) online training is provided, and any contribution is welcome, whether it be five minutes here and there or more focused periods of time.
Want to get involved? Watch the tour of the platform below and then head over to Cochrane Crowd to sign up and start screening! And don’t forget to tell your colleagues, friends, and families – the more the merrier!
World Evidence-Based Healthcare Day Screening Challenge - On 20 October, World Evidence-based Healthcare Day, we will be celebrating with a 12-hour screening challenge. Every week thousands of new articles about COVID-19 are published and hundreds of new trials are registered. This makes it a real challenge for researchers and clinicians to keep up. We want to help by identifying new COVID-19 studies and then tagging those studies by the type of study they are and by the aims of the study (for example treatment, or diagnosis).
Watch the webinar below for an introduction to COVID Quest!
To get started on the special screening challenge on 20th October, just log into Cochrane Crowd anytime during the challenge (starting at 08:00 BST and finishing at 20:00 BST Check in your time zone). Once logged in, head to the tasks page and you'll see the challenge task. For this challenge, we're going to be looking for COVID-related studies (shown in the video above). Don't worry if all this is new to you, there is a short training module that will give you the information you need to do the task well. And note: there will be prizes and certificates up for grabs!
In the meantime, head over to Cochrane Crowd and be a citizen scientist today - there are always studies waiting for you to screen and classify!
- Cochrane Crowd website
- Follow Cochrane Crowd on Twitter
- Email crowd@cochrane.org with question or for further information