I Letter to readers

How this journal works

Dear Crlleague,

For readers who have recently joined us, our primary aim in this 'secondary journal' is to assist those who make decisions in health care to access the information they need quickly and effectively. How?

First, every week we scan over 70 medical, nursing, management, economic and policy journals used commonly by decision-makers around the world. Then selections are made on the best quality articles from each one, based not on teams of 'experts,' but rather, on statistically-based evaluation criteria that determine the validity, reliability and relevance of each piece. A list of the journals scanned, and quality criteria used for selection is available on our Web site (below), so that you can see the basis upon which we have made our selection. We always invite your comments on these criteria and the resulting selection, and in this way hope to refine the process in this new, 'evidence-based' field. This filtering process eventually narrows down about 1200 studies every 3 months to about 50.

Second, we write plain English 'structured abstracts' of each of the 50 studies selected. Structured abstracts are designed to give you enough information to evaluate the original piece, both for quality and relevance to your work. Of these, a few more abstracts are filtered out (in the process of abstracting, some studies are revealed to

have more structural problems than was first realized), so that 25-30 finally make it to the Journal.

Third, we invite practitioners in relevant fields to write a short comment on each study, regarding how they think it is, or is

not, of quality, timely, and of relevance to their work. Experienced practitioners have the advantage of being familiar with the field, so can view a new study in perspective of previous work. Sometimes, previous studies are much better than the new one. In this case, we either do not publish the abstract, or, we publish the abstract and commentary pair with the reference to the previous, superior study, so you can trace it if you need to.

Why does the selection process whittle down only 25-30 articles from an initial number of over 1000? Partly because: (1) many studies are based on very local studies that may not work in other contexts (that is, their relevance is low); partly because (2) many studies investigate slightly up-stream questions about causation rather than h~tervention (they are interesting, but not of close relevance to policy decisions), and often because (3) studies do not meet minimum methods criteria, (for instance, the authors used a poor quality study design), such that we cannot be sure that their results are reliable or likely to be repeated if others used them. This last quality filter is what makes the journal 'evidence-based,' that is, its contents are (or at least try hard to be)

© llarcourt Brace and Company Lid 1998

based on statistically robust information, rather than on anecdote or low-power assertions.

Finally, the other sections: concepts, skills and resources section, as well as the glossary, are designed as a user-friendly guide to themes and terms often used in health care.

Our web site: htlp://www,ihs.ox.ac.uk/ jebhpm/index.hlml contains appraisal methods, a list of scanned journals, correspondence and debate page, policy, purpose and standards of the journal, other useful linked web pages, and will soon contain a glossary index for not-completely- normal-English terms used throughout the abstracts.

Please send any comments or letters to us about any aspect of the Journal, a selection of which we will publish, both in the Journal and on the web site. The idea of applying evidence-based criteria to policy and management is a novel idea, and, as with any new project, we will need to alter aspects of the Journal over time. We will need your assistance to do this. Addresses for correspondence are:

Email: a.donald@ucl.ac.uk Fax" 44+(0) 171-813-0242 Post: Journal of Evidence-based Health

Policy and Management Institute of Health Sciences Oxford OX3 7LF UK

Anna Donald, Mui r Gray

Evidence-based HEALTH POLICY & MANAGEMENT

is n o w on the W o r l d W i d e W e b Please visit our Webs i te :

http ://www.ihs.ox.ac.uk/j ebhpm

JUNE 1998 EVIDENCE-BASED t tEALTH POLICY AND MANAGEMENT 29