Date	Event	Description
27 March 2020	New citation required and conclusions have changed	Operative vaginal birth now shows little or no difference with a policy of induction (moderate‐certainty evidence). The four new trials have nearly doubled the number of participants to over 21,000, with a concomitant increase in GRADE certainty for perinatal mortality and neonatal intensive care unit admission from moderate to high.
17 July 2019	New search has been performed	Search updated. Four new included trials added, two new ongoing trials added.
28 December 2017	New search has been performed	Search updated and eight additional trials included (Brane 2014; Cohn 1992; Keulen 2019; Martin 1978; Miller 2015; Sande 1983; Tylleskar 1979; Walker 2016). We have updated the methods in line with the standard methods used by Cochrane Pregnancy and Childbirth and we now use GRADE to assess the quality of the body of evidence. For this update, the overall conclusions have not changed. However, there is moderate certainty evidence to suggest that induction was associated with fewer stillbirths and fewer babies with low Apgar scores.
9 October 2017	New citation required but conclusions have not changed	Conclusions not changed.
31 March 2012	New search has been performed	Search updated ‐ no new trials identified. Trial reports that were previously awaiting classification have now been incorporated into the review. We have added three new included trials (Heimstad 2007; Nielsen 2005; Sahraoui 2005), three new excluded trials (Hernandez‐Castro 2008; Imsuwan 1999; Nicholson 2008) and one ongoing trial (Rijnders 2007). This updated review is now comprised of 22 included studies (reporting on 9383 women); 64 excluded studies and one ongoing study. Results are now presented as 37‐39 weeks; 39‐40 weeks; < 41 weeks, 41 weeks and > 41 weeks. A new author joined the team to help prepare this update.
31 March 2012	New citation required and conclusions have changed	Whilst the overall conclusions have not changed, there is now evidence to show that induction of labour at or beyond term is associated with a lower rate of caesarean section.
6 July 2011	Amended	Error corrected in response to feedback from Amy Marowitz (Feedback).
6 July 2011	Feedback has been incorporated	Feedback from Amy Marowitz added.
14 July 2009	Amended	Search updated. Eight reports of five trials added to Studies awaiting classification (Heimstad 2007a; Hernandez‐Castro 2008a; Imsuwan 1999a; Nicholson 2008a; Rijnders 2007a).
3 September 2008	Amended	Converted to new review format.
28 February 2007	Amended	The Implications for research section has been amended to include the uncertainty about timing of labour induction beyond term, which was unintentionally left out during the revision process.
21 August 2006	New citation required but conclusions have not changed	This version has been re‐written, including a new protocol which now limits the scope to labour induction
30 June 2006	New search has been performed	The previous version of this review included studies up to 1997 and included 21 labour induction trials (Gülmezoglu 2006). This version has been re‐written, including a new protocol which now limits the scope to labour induction, and includes 19 trials. Thirteen of the 21 trials included in the previous version are included in this version. The remaining eight trials were excluded because of alternate allocation (Cardozo 1986; Heden 1991; Katz 1983), a high proportion of postrandomization exclusion (greater than 30% in Martin 1978a and greater than 24% in Tylleskar 1979a), cervical ripening with breast stimulation (Elliott 1984; Kadar 1990), and analysis by intervention received (i.e. groups switched, Sande 1983a). Six trials published since the publication of the previous version have been included in this update (Chakravarti 2000; Chanrachkul 2003; Gelisen 2005; James 2001; Ocon 1997; Roach 1997).