Chapter 3: Maintaining reviews: updates, amendments and feedback

Authors: Julian PT Higgins, Sally Green and Rob JPM Scholten.

Key points

Systematic reviews that are not maintained may become out of date or misleading;
The Cochrane Collaboration policy is that Cochrane Intervention reviews should either be updated within two years or include a commentary to explain why this is not the case;
Any change to a Cochrane review is either an update or an amendment. Updates involve a search for new studies, any other change is an amendment;
Cochrane reviews have a citation version. This Chapter includes a list of criteria for determining when a new citation version is appropriate;
In addition to a search for new studies, updating a Cochrane review may involve revision of the review question and incorporation of new methods;
Feedback on Cochrane reviews informs the updating and maintaining process;
The ‘Date review assessed as up to date’ is entered by review authors and is published at the beginning of a review. The criteria for assessing a review as up to date are given in this Chapter.