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Quo Vadis, Cochrane Collaboration?

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The Cochrane Collaboration became a registered British charity in 1995; hence a few years after the first Cochrane centre opened in November 1992 in U.K. (U.K. Charity Commission, 2019a). Public… Click to show full abstract

The Cochrane Collaboration became a registered British charity in 1995; hence a few years after the first Cochrane centre opened in November 1992 in U.K. (U.K. Charity Commission, 2019a). Public information reveals that the charity maintains a staff of 64 employees and that the annual income and endowments to the central organization in 2017 total 8.7 million GBP and it retains assets over 7 million GBP (U.K. Charity Commission, 2019b). The significant bulk of the income is publication royalties from John Wiley and sons. A further 15.6 million GBP funded a global network of more than 38 thousand collaborators in 120 countries received from national governments, international governmental and non‐governmental organizations, universities, hospitals, private foundations, and personal donations (https://www.cochrane.org/about‐us/our‐funders‐and‐partners). It is perplexing and sad to read that this once idealistic organization is currently undergoing a crisis and tormented by multiple escalating controversies (Newman, 2019). Upon scrutiny of recent articles, letters and multiple blogs, the issues that are being raised are about centralization, corporatization, governance and perceived conflicts of interest. Several allegations have been claimed of a near‐Orwellian‐like organizational culture introduced in 2015 to bolster the new brand “Cochrane” (http://fabrikbrands.com/ portfolio/cochrane‐branding). The central office of the charity mandated all to stop referring to the full name of the charity, i.e., Cochrane Collaboration, with the notion that by only referring to “Cochrane” “.. make things clear and consistent and maximize impact” (Cochrane brand, 2019a). The latest brand guidelines is a 144‐page document that details what to do and say and what not, and with suggestions on how to describe the charity, its history and its current efforts and visions with many beautiful words (Cochrane brand, 2019b). It seems to undersigned that this initially idealistic charity has contracted some form of Icarus syndrome prompted by seduction to generate substantial revenues rather than strengthening the actual value of the offered products, i.e., the access to the databases of RCTs and systematic reviews (SR) and quality assurance of the latter category. Moreover, from a research ethics perspective, one may question why the Cochrane Collaboration has still not established a policy not to include in SRs primary studies that fail to report an approval by an ethics committee or institutional review board (Jokstad, 2017). The charity has repeatedly stated that one of the main goals is to make evidence accessible and useful to everybody, everywhere in the

Keywords: cochrane collaboration; million gbp; brand; cochrane; charity

Journal Title: Clinical and Experimental Dental Research
Year Published: 2019

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