Direct pathways to publication

The new model centres on creating evidence synthesis units but we will also consider a new pathway for author teams to submit their reviews directly to the Central Editorial Service.

The research landscape has changed significantly since Cochrane’s inception, and there are now many more experienced evidence synthesis researchers producing high-quality systematic reviews outside of Cochrane. These researchers do not necessarily require the same level of guidance and support that will be built into the evidence synthesis units.

We envisage a simple, direct, ‘journal-like’ pathway for submitting manuscripts directly to the Central Editorial Service to attract authors of high-quality evidence syntheses that would not otherwise have been published in the Cochrane Library. This direct pathway to publication can also be used by Cochrane Review Groups during the transition to a new model for producing reviews in Cochrane. 

Key elements of the new pathway: 

• Evidence syntheses may be submitted by authors (or groups) directly to the Central Editorial Service via Editorial Manager, independent of the Evidence Synthesis Units - similar to how articles are submitted to other academic journals.

• This aims to provide a simple route for authors outside of Cochrane to publish in the Cochrane Library, and will hopefully attract new contributors from the wider evidence synthesis community.

• Direct submissions will be held to the same high-quality standards as submissions from the Evidence Synthesis Units and undergo the same rigorous methods, search, clinical/content, and consumer peer review. Reviews that do not meet Cochrane standards will be rejected.

• The editorial process will be efficient and keep to standardised timelines.

• Evidence syntheses would need to have a prospectively registered protocol that meets set quality criteria, although it would not have to be a Cochrane protocol.

• Evidence syntheses would complement (i.e., not directly overlap) up-to-date content published on the Cochrane Library.