Literature & clinical references
Cochrane Library
Systematic reviews & controlled trials register
"The gold standard for evidence-synthesised answers."
About the resource
The Cochrane Library hosts the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR) — the canonical collection of high-quality systematic reviews produced by the global Cochrane network of researchers, methodologists and clinicians — and CENTRAL, a register of more than 2 million controlled trials assembled from PubMed, Embase, hand-searching and trial registries.
Cochrane reviews follow strict methodological standards (the Cochrane Handbook), use GRADE for certainty assessment, and are updated as new evidence emerges. The Library also publishes Cochrane Clinical Answers — short, point-of-care summaries derived from reviews — and the Methodology Register. Access is free in many countries via national licences; otherwise institutional.
What you'd use it for
- 01Find the current best evidence on a treatment for a specific disease
- 02Identify gaps where no systematic review yet exists
- 03Pull controlled-trial references from CENTRAL into a new review
- 04Build evidence-based guidelines and clinical summaries
How you access it
Web UIRIS/citation exportsRSS feeds for new and updated reviews