Identifying reports of controlled trials in the BMJ and the Lancet: Fig 1

In 1994 the European Union BIOMED programme awarded £330 000 to a project, coordinated by the UK Cochrane Centre, to identify reports of randomised controlled trials in general health care journals in Europe. The rationale is that reports of randomised controlled trials are difficult to identify through sources such as Medline.1 For example, a study of the first six months of Medline for 1993 identified over 400 reports of randomised controlled trials which were not coded as such, despite having the word random or randomised in the title or abstract.2 A systematic review in 1993 indicated that, on average, searches of Medline identify only 50% of trials.3 We present here the results of handsearching the BMJ and the Lancet from 1948 onwards to identify reports of trials. Twenty handsearchers were trained …