TY - JOUR T1 - ERS guidelines, statements and technical standards published in the <em>ERJ</em> in 2014: a year in review JF - European Respiratory Journal JO - Eur Respir J SP - 863 LP - 866 DO - 10.1183/09031936.00238514 VL - 45 IS - 4 AU - Guy G. Brusselle AU - Mina Gaga Y1 - 2015/04/01 UR - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/45/4/863.abstract N2 - The number of scientific journals and the number of publications regarding biomedical research is rapidly increasing at an almost exponential rate. Therefore, there is a huge need for physicians, allied healthcare professionals, researchers and patients to have access to clear and valid syntheses of the available evidence on the management of specific diseases or research topics within respiratory medicine and science. There are at least two different approaches to provide a synopsis on the diagnosis, prevention or treatment of a respiratory disease or health problem. In the first approach, one author or a few authors provide a narrative review of the management of the respiratory disease of interest, without performing a comprehensive systematic review of the literature and without providing explicit recommendations for clinical practice. Although the authors are often experts in their field, they do not aim to search, grasp and cite all available evidence, implicating that this approach is prone to systematic errors or biases (encompassing publication bias and reporting bias). In the second approach, a multidisciplinary panel of experts (e.g. a European Respiratory Society (ERS) Task Force) searches in a systematic and transparent manner for all available evidence on the respiratory disease, the diagnostic test or the treatment of interest. Within ERS Task Forces, the Chairs and members are assisted in the methodological processes required for the development of statements and guidelines by experts (i.e. methodologists). Whereas the comprehensive scientific review of the literature by an ERS Task Force forms the basis of an official ERS statement or technical standard, the development of an ERS clinical practice guideline requires several crucial additional steps. The aims of this editorial are three-fold: 1) to explain the differences between the three possible outcomes of an ERS Task Force; a guideline, a statement or a technical standard; 2) to provide a concise overview of several important ERS Task Force documents published in the European Respiratory Journal (ERJ) in the past year [1–6]; and 3) to give some insights into the development and publication processes of ERS guidelines, statements and technical standards.2014: a year in review of ERS guidelines, statements and technical standards http://ow.ly/HnGDs ER -