Cochrane reviews explore the evidence for and against the effectiveness and appropriateness of treatments (medications, surgery, education, etc) in specific circumstances.

Cochrane reviews have these general features:

• A structured format helps the reader to find their way around the review easily.
• A detailed methods section allows the reader to assess whether the review was done in such a way as to justify its conclusions.
• The quality of clinical studies to be incorporated into a review is carefully considered, using predefined criteria.
• A thorough and systematic search strategy, which includes searches for unpublished and non-English records, aims to provide as complete a picture as possible to try to answer the question considered.
• If the data collected in a review are of sufficient quality and similar enough, they are summarised statistically in a meta-analysis, which generally provides a better overall estimate of a clinical effect than the results from individual studies. A meta-analysis also allows the author to explore the effect of specific characteristics of given studies (for example, study quality) on the reported results (for example, does exclusion of non-randomized studies change the overall result?). It also allows an exploration of the effects of an intervention on sub-groups of patients (for example, does the treatment have a different effect on smokers compared with non-smokers?).
• Reviews aim to be relatively easy to understand for non-experts (although a certain amount of technical detail is always necessary). To achieve this, Cochrane Review Groups like to work with "consumers", for example patients, who also contribute by pointing out issues that are important for people receiving certain interventions. Additionally, the Cochrane Library contains glossaries to explain technical terms.
• Multinational editorial teams try to ensure that a review is applicable in different parts of the world.
• Reviews are updatable. Results from newly completed or identified clinical trials can be incorporated into the review after publication. Additionally, readers can send in comments and criticisms to any review, and reviews may be changed accordingly to improve their quality.