Launched in 2011, PROSPERO was the first registry dedicated to systematic review registration. Today, marks the registration of the 10,000th review, and Lesley Stewart, Director of the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination (CRD) at University of York, discusses this landmark achievement in a BioMed Central blog, which can be accessed here.

PROSPERO was developed and is produced by the CRD, and is funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). PROSPERO is the only open access prospective register of systematic reviews with a health related outcome. Registration is web-based, completely free to use and open to all researchers planning to conduct a systematic review.

From October 2014 new protocols published in the Cochrane Library have been automatically loaded into PROSPERO to provide a single point of access to information about on-going systematic reviews. Cochrane reviews make up around 10% of the content of PROSPERO.

Future growth of the register is set to continue with a new public interface imminent, and work on the inclusion of protocols of systematic reviews of pre-clinical studies progresses well. PROSPERO will continue to play an increasing part of the drive to reduce waste and promote high standards in health research.