Research

Cochrane

Research summary, last reviewed May 2026. UK Charity Commission no. 1045921; company limited by guarantee no. 03044323 (England & Wales). Official site.

Headline outcome: More than 12,150 systematic reviews published, cited 731 times across 106 NICE clinical guidelines

What does Cochrane do?

Cochrane is a global, independent network of more than 30,000 contributors, volunteer clinicians, methodologists and patient representatives, across over 130 countries. Its work is the production, peer review and publication of systematic reviews: structured, exhaustive syntheses of all the available trial evidence on a single clinical question, telling readers not only what the evidence shows but how confident to be in it.

These reviews are published in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews and underpinned by the Cochrane Handbook, the de facto global standard for evidence synthesis. Plain-language summaries make the findings free to anyone, and a long-running partnership embeds Cochrane evidence into Wikipedia’s medical articles. Cochrane’s Industry Funding Policy forbids accepting commercial funding from drug or device manufacturers for review production, giving it more structural independence than most medical research bodies.

Founded in 1993, the organisation is named after the Scottish epidemiologist Archie Cochrane, whose 1972 work argued that healthcare should be guided by the systematic review of randomised trials. By May 2024 it had published more than 12,150 systematic reviews.

Why did EveryDrop choose it?

Cochrane passed our four-stage vetting assessment, mapped primarily to the advancement of education and strongly to the advancement of health. It is a registered charity in England and Wales (no. 1045921) and a company limited by guarantee, with audited accounts, a substantive committee structure and a governing board the majority of whom are elected by Cochrane’s members, an unusually democratic arrangement for a charity of its scale.

Cochrane is a deliberate exception to our usual reliance on independent charity evaluators. Bodies such as GiveWell and Charity Navigator do not rate it, because their methods assess direct per-pound impact and Cochrane sits upstream of that, producing the evidence those evaluators themselves draw on. In its place we leaned on the published academic literature about Cochrane’s reach and influence.

How effective is it?

Cochrane’s effect is felt through the clinical guidelines its reviews inform. A peer-reviewed analysis found 731 citations of Cochrane reviews across 106 NICE clinical guidelines in the UK, and since a 2021 NICE-Cochrane agreement, two completed NICE guidelines have been informed entirely by Cochrane reviews. Cochrane reviews are also systematically referenced in World Health Organization guidance. The Cochrane Database carried a 2024 journal impact factor of 9.4.

What are the open questions?

We publish what we are monitoring as well as what we like. Cochrane went through a serious governance crisis in 2018, when its board voted by a narrow margin to expel a senior founding figure, prompting protest resignations and significant critical coverage. On the available evidence that episode is now historical and governance has stabilised: the organisation has adopted the Charity Governance Code, retained its member-elected board, maintained leadership continuity, and attracted no new regulatory inquiry or mass resignations.

A live pressure is funding. In 2023 and 2024, UK government NIHR funding for Cochrane’s UK review groups ended and Cochrane UK closed, though Cochrane has stated this did not affect its central core income. A related, openly acknowledged programme challenge is keeping reviews current: a large share of older reviews had not been updated at the time of a recent lifecycle study. We were also unable to pull Cochrane’s most recent audited Trustees’ Report directly in this pass, so figures such as chief-executive pay should be read from that filing before any final decision.

Sources

This summary is derived from EveryDrop's internal vetting dossier, prepared under our four-stage assessment framework using public, verifiable sources. Assessments are re-checked every twelve months. If you spot something we should know, email [email protected].