Bill Silverman

William (Bill) Silverman (1924-2004) was one of the founders of American neonatal medicine. He was honoured repeatedly as one of the pioneers in his specialty; however, he often evoked somewhaschizophrenic responses amongst his colleagues because he was in the habit of raising troubling questions about the scientific basis and ethics of his and their practices. Like many of the people who have helped to establish The Cochrane Collaboration, Bill Silverman could be regarded as a ’troublemaker’. As he reiterated frequently, however, criticism is a form of troublemaking that can help to drive progress. Furthermore, criticism should not be limited to examining the work of others, but should also include self-criticism.

The Bill Silverman Prize acknowledges explicitly the value of criticism of The Cochrane Collaboration, with a view to helping to improve its work, and thus achieve its aim of helping people make well-informed decisions about health care by providing the best possible evidence on the effects of healthcare interventions. The establishment of the Prize was approved by the Cochrane Collaboration Steering Group in 2007.

The Prize will be offered annually and the authors of a piece of research published or presented in the preceding twelve months (July 1 to June 30) will be eligible. However, the inaugural prize in 2007 is different, in that all publications and presentations from before June 30 2007 are eligible. The criteria for the Prize are that the publication or presentation evaluated any aspect of the preparation, maintenance or dissemination of Cochrane reviews or the work of The Cochrane Collaboration more generally, and:

• was of high quality,
• was accompanied by constructive suggestions on how the relevant aspects of the work of The Cochrane Collaboration could be improved,
• has had, or is likely to have, a positive impact on the scientific quality, relevance and use of Cochrane reviews.

The Prize recipients will be announced at the Cochrane Colloquium each year. The prize will comprise a cash award of 1000 US dollars and a certificate. (Additional funds will not be available from the Prize fund for the recipients to attend the Cochrane Colloquium.) The cash award will go to the corresponding author of the selected publication or presentation, and it will be this person’s responsibility to distribute the award in a fair way to her/his colleagues. A list of Prize recipients and details of the relevant publication or presentation will be published on The Cochrane Collaboration website. The Prize committee will provide details of all nominations that relate to evaluations of any aspect of the preparation, maintenance or dissemination of Cochrane reviews or the work of The Cochrane Collaboration more generally, to The Cochrane Collaboration’s Quality Advisory Group, so that suggestions for improvements can be considered. The committee will also provide details to the Cochrane Methodology Review Group, so that relevant records can be incorporated into the Cochrane Methodology Register.

Nominations

In the inaugural year, 2007, the Prize committee will call for nominations for the Prize in early September. The deadline for nominations will be October 1. (In future years, the Prize committee will advertise for nominations in May, and issue a reminder in early July. The deadline for nominations will be July 31.) Nominations can be made by anyone, including the authors of the publication or presentation being nominated. Nominations must be sent to the administrator for the Prize committee by email, with ‘Bill Silverman Prize’ in the subject heading, the citation for the publication or presentation and a brief explanation of how it meets the criteria for the Prize. The administrator for the Committee in 2007 is Mike Clarke (mclarke@cochrane.co.uk).

Bill Silverman Prize committee

The Prize committee will comprise 5 or 7 members, at least three of whom do not have an active role within any Cochrane entity (other than, possibly, as an author or referee of one or more Cochrane reviews). One of these people will be a co-chair of the committee. The other co-chair will be someone with an active role within a Cochrane entity. In 2007, the co-chairs are Paul Garner and Rod Jackson. Each year, one of the co-chairs will stand down from the committee, to be replaced as co-chair by an existing member. The resulting vacancy on the committee will be filled by the recipient of the most recent Prize (or a person chosen by the recipients).

Funding for the Prize

Bill Silverman’s family have agreed to the establishment of this Prize, and Iain and Jan Chalmers have contributed 5000 GBP of start-up funding. This money will be administered by the Cochrane Collaboration Secretariat. The Cochrane Collaboration Steering Group will determine the future of the Prize when this initial contribution has been exhausted and, if relevant, will seek to identify future funding.