I’m coming late to this discussion.

Several years ago, there was an article that tried to determine how *quickly* SRs went out of date:

Shojania KG, Sampson M, Ansari MT, Ji J, Doucette S, Moher D. How quickly do systematic reviews go out of date? A survival analysis. Ann Intern Med. 2007;147:224-233.

You might want to take a look at it.

A look at Scopus found it has been cited 123 times, including this:

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0048894

A Comparison of Statistical Methods for Identifying Out-of-Date Systematic Reviews

Porjai Pattanittum, Malinee Laopaiboon mail, David Moher, Pisake Lumbiganon, Chetta Ngamjarus

Volume 7, Issue 11, 2012, Article numbere48894

And this:

Two methods provide similar signals for the need to update systematic reviews  ( Review )

Chung, M.a , Newberry, S.J.b, Ansari, M.T.d, Yu, W.W.a, Wu, H.b, Lee, J.a, Suttorp, M.b, Gaylor, J.M.a, Motala, A.b, Moher, D.d, Balk, E.M.a, Shekelle, P.G.bc 

Journal of Clinical Epidemiology

Volume 65, Issue 6, June 2012, Pages 660-668

Helena

Dear Hilda and all

This is very fascinating and helpful - I have long wondered how currency is determined. The CDSR itself has not really helped me. I note there are 7694 reviews - but for a start this includes Protocols (another black box for me).
I note that there are various interesting classifications that can be assigned to a Review , eg:

CC (conclusion changed)
NS (New search - Can we assume all Reviews without a NS are no longer up-to-date?
Up (this is an update but I have no idea what this means and what the editorial/indexing policy is that requires Up to be assigned to a record
Wd (withdrawn)
Cm (comment)
Mc (Major change)

There are also ( for me equally baffling)  options to search :
New Reviews
Updated Reviews

I did a simple search for Crohn's disease . I had 48 Reviews (10 turn out to be protocols and only 6 of the 38 reviews
have Ns assigned to the record.


Record no 6 (I have sorted on 'date' ) is:

Cyclosporine for induction of remission in Crohn 's disease

John WD McDonald , Brian G Feagan , Derek P Jewell , Jorn Brynskov , Eduard F Stange and John K MacDonald

April 2005

1. Ns
2. Review

So here I have a Review from April 2005 indexed with Ns (New Search) .

But when I go to the record itself I note:

Published Online: 8 OCT 2008

Assessed as up-to-date: 17 JUN 2008

When I go to 'other versions' I note there is actually a more recent version than then one that showed up in my search results, it says:

Published Online: 8 OCT 2008

Assessed as up-to-date: 17 JUN 2008

DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD000297.pub2

Boy ...I could not agree more with you Hilda ...this is a very complex matter ..and I cannot quite escape the thought that there is some (disagreeable) logic in the way the search interface hides rather than helps transparency .

What I would like to know is how many of these 7694 Reviews are
'systematic reviews' (exclude protocols) where the literature search is not older than 2 years .

I ask myself if there would be a way a simple way of finding this out  ?

Kind regards from France
Justus Krabshuis
Highland Data - Tourtoirac, France.

Hi Julie – no, that won't work. You need to go to studies and analyses (some of which I've done myself). It's not at fingertips, because for example the "date last updated" was changed for every single Cochrane review when a particular issue of RevMan was released. So establishing the currency of Cochrane reviews is not simple.

Less than half are up-to-date. How low the proportion is, depends on how much effort you've put into accurately dating the reviews. When I and some colleagues established a cohort of Cochrane reviews published in the early years, to follow through on their history, identifying when there had been a search for new evidence was a laborious and complex project, requiring triangulation between multiple sources (both PubMed and the CDSR) - you cannot reliably establish the currency of a large proportion of Cochrane reviews from the data in the CDSR. This is partly to do with recording practices at different Cochrane groups, partly to do with changeovers of software and partly to do with changeover of commercial publisher. Bottom line though, if you go to a Cochrane review as your source of evidence, more likely than not it will be out-of-date. And which source you go to find the Cochrane review will determine what proportion are up-to-date as well.

Hilda

From: Julie Glanville <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>

Reply-To: Julie Glanville <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>

Date: Friday, February 8, 2013 11:44 AM

To: "[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>" <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>

Subject: Re: Cochrane - number of up to date SRs

Hi Jon, why don't you contact the Cochrane editorial unit - they will have all this at their finger tips I expect?

http://www.editorial-unit.cochrane.org/

Regards

Julie

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On 8 February 2013 11:29, Jon Brassey <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:

Hi All,

Does anyone have a reasonable estimate of the number of Cochrane systematic reviews that are considered up-to-date?

I appreciate that problematic as how do you define up-to-date?  On one hand you could say any looked at in the last one or two years (seems fairly reasonable).  One could also make the case that none are up-to-date due to the time it takes to publish after the initial search (which must be at least 12 months).

But if you have a view, post it and we can see if any consensus figure is arrived at.

Also, Cochrane finances, I'm trying to get a figure for their annual budget.  I think it's around £20 million (23.5 million Euros or 31.5 million US dollars) - can anyone please confirm this or give me an accurate figure.

Ta

jon

--

Jon Brassey

Trip Database

http://www.tripdatabase.com

Find evidence fast