• Khalid Khan, Peter O'Donovan, and Chief Editors of Journals participating in The CROWN Initiative.
• BMC Series, 236 Gray's Inn Road, London WC1X 8HB, UK. peter.odonovan@biomedcentral.com.
• Bmc Pregnancy Childb. 2014 Jun 23; 14: 199.

AbstractClinical trials, systematic reviews and guidelines compare beneficial and non-beneficial outcomes following interventions. Often, however, various studies on a particular topic do not address the same outcomes, making it difficult to draw clinically useful conclusions when a group of studies is looked at as a whole. This problem was recently thrown into sharp focus by a systematic review of interventions for preterm birth prevention, which found that among 103 randomised trials, no fewer than 72 different outcomes were reported. There is a growing recognition among clinical researchers that this variability undermines consistent synthesis of the evidence, and that what is needed is an agreed standardised collection of outcomes--a "core outcomes set"--for all trials in a specific clinical area. Recognising that the current inconsistency is a serious hindrance to progress in our specialty, the editors of over 50 journals related to women's health have come together to support The CROWN (CoRe Outcomes in WomeN's health) Initiative.

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