About the Campbell Collaboration
The Campbell Collaboration was founded on the principle that systematic reviews on the effects of interventions will inform and help improve policy and services. Through its reviews and annual Colloquiums, the Collaboration strives to make the best social science research available and accessible. Campbell reviews provide high quality evidence of "what works" to meet the needs of service providers, policy makers, educators and their students, professional researchers, and the general public.
Campbell's systematic reviews are published electronically so that they can be updated promptly as relevant additional evidence emerges, and amended in the light of criticisms and advances in methodology. In addition to producing reviews, C2 provides three additional methods of support through evidence-based practice:
- Campbell's proven peer-review system
- C2's Register of Interventions and Policy Evaluations (C2-RIPE), a unique database of evidence-based reviews in social sciences
- A strategic network of renown scholars and practitioners worldwide, culminating each year with the Campbell Colloquium.
The Campbell Legacy 
The Campbell Collaboration is named in honor of Dr. Donald T. Campbell. A member of the National Academy of Sciences in the US, Campbell was an intellectual leader for the idea that governmental reforms can be construed as societal experiments to which scientific rules of evidence could be applied. He was an advocate of the idea that better scientific evidence could be generated to estimate the effects of governmental reforms so as to inform policy and practice and to improve people's well being.
The idea of developing an international network of social scientists that would produce, maintain and disseminate systematic reviews of research evidence on the effectiveness of social interventions was initially discussed at a meeting in London, England in July 1999. The positive support for this idea from a large number of social and behavioural scientists, and some social practitioners, led tothe creation of the Campbell Collaboration (C2). With partnerships developing in a number of countries, Campbell began its exceptional tradition of annual Colloquia in Philadelphia, PA (USA) in February of 2000.
The Campbell Collaboration works closely with its sibling organization in healthcare, the Cochrane Collaboration, keeping C2's methods group at the forefront in the development of research synthesis models. Joint Cochrane-Campbell Methods Groups are being established with the intent to stimulate empirical research and methodological innovation necessary to improve the validity, relevance and precision of systematic reviews and the primary studies upon which reviews are based. A Nordic Campbell Centre was added to the Collaboration in 2001, supported by the Danish Government and the Nordic Council of Ministers. The Campbell Collaboration collaborates with a number of other international organizations, including the Norwegian and Danish governments and the American Institutes for Research (AIR).
The Campbell Collaboration Bases its Work on Nine Key Principles:
- Collaboration, by internally and externally fostering good communications, open decision-making and teamwork.
- Building on the enthusiasm of individuals, by involving and supporting people of different skills and backgrounds.
- Avoiding unnecessary duplication, by good management and co-ordination to ensure economy of the effort.
- Minimizing bias, through a variety of approaches such as abiding by high standards of scientific evidence, ensuring broad participation, and avoiding conflicts of interest.
- Keeping up to date, by a commitment to ensure that Campbell Reviews are maintained through identification and incorporation of new evidence.
- Striving for relevance, by promoting the assessment of policies and practices using outcomes that matter to people.
- Promoting access, by wide dissemination of the outputs of the Collaboration, taking advantage of strategic alliances, and by promoting appropriate prices, content and media to meet the needs of users worldwide.
- Ensuring quality, by being open and responsive to criticism, applying advances in methodology, and developing systems for quality improvement.
- Continuity, by ensuring that responsibility for reviews, editorial processes and key functions is maintained and renewed.