Cochrane Methods 
Welcome to the second issue of Cochrane Methods, the official annual newsletter for methodological issues within The Cochrane Collaboration. Many of you will have seen and contributed to previous issues of the Cochrane Methods Groups Newsletter which was in circulation since 1997. Last year, we redesigned and renamed the newsletter with the aim of giving greater prominence to the work of Cochrane Methods Groups within the Collaboration, and to help raise their profile more widely.We hope you enjoyed the new look.
The Cochrane Collaboration is an international, independent, not-for-profit organization of more than 25,000 contributors from more than 100 countries, dedicated tomaking up-to-date, accurate information about the effects of health care readily available worldwide. Its contributors work together to produce Cochrane reviews of healthcare interventions, diagnostic tests and methodology, published online in The Cochrane Library. These help providers, practitioners, patients and the public make informed decisions about their own health care and that of others. The role of the Cochrane Methods Groups is primarily to provide policy advice to The Cochrane Collaboration on how the validity and precision of Cochrane reviews can be improved. In addition, Methods Groups may also carry out additional tasks such as providing training, peer review and specialist advice, contributing to software developments, or conducting research aimed at improving the quality of Cochrane reviews. You can readmore about individual Methods Groups on pages 27 to 38.
This issue of Cochrane Methods focuses on some challenging issues facing the methodology of Cochrane reviews and other types of systematic review. We describe the ongoing work of the MECIR (Methodological expectations of Cochrane Intervention Reviews) project which aims to develop minimum standards for review methodology. We report on the launch of PROSPERO, the international prospective register of systematic reviews which aims to capture key information about the design of a systematic review at the protocol stage. We also welcome Jackie Chandler, the new Cochrane Methods Co-ordinator.
This year we have also introduced a new section which presents a collection of full length feature articles highlighting some of the methodological research currently being carried out within The Cochrane Collaboration. These include a study describing the development and evaluation of the ‘Summary of findings’ tables in Cochrane reviews, a study presenting the results of an evaluation of the ‘Risk of bias’ tool and an examination of review production within The Cochrane Collaboration. If you would like to publish findings from a study you have done in the next issue of Cochrane Methods, then please contact us.
As in previous issues, we include a series of structured abstracts and commentaries on topical methodological issues. For example, this year we highlight research into the bias that may arise when changes are made to specified outcomes during the systematic review process and a study looking at the reporting and methodological quality of systematic reviews containing data from indirect comparisons. We also include a commentary looking at the interpretation of random-effects meta-analysis in systematic reviews and another examining a new method for calculating confidence intervals for random-effects meta-analysis that seeks to minimize the
effects of publication bias.
We are, as ever, very grateful to the many people who have contributed to Cochrane Methods. We should also like to thank The Cochrane Collaboration and the UK Cochrane Centre (part of the National Institute for Health Research) for providing resources to produce it. Finally, we should very much welcome your comments on the new look newsletter and your suggestions for future content.
Sally Hopewell, Julian PT Higgins and Mike Clarke (Editors of Cochrane Methods)
