A lot has happened as Cochrane prepares for the future
The last twelve months have been a busy time for Cochrane. In recent years, evolving funder expectations, changing user needs and a shift towards open-access publishing have all reshaped the health publishing landscape. We’ve started making some major changes to keep our place as a global leader in health evidence and to ensure we’re able to meet the health evidence needs of a changing world.
Here, we’ve pulled together some of the key achievements in 2023 delivered through our Future of Evidence Synthesis programme.
Our new Central Editorial Service is now up and running.
Cochrane's Central Editorial Service has expanded significantly in the past twelve months to help strengthen Cochrane’s editorial independence by clearly separating manuscript development from evaluation. The Service is now handling a substantial number of review submissions, with 588 new entries received between January and November 2023, compared to just 179 submissions throughout the whole of 2022. Our aim is that the editorial processes for all Cochrane review manuscripts will soon be managed centrally.
This change is paving the way for a simpler and more consistent editorial experience for our authors, editors, and peer reviewers. Our processes and terminology also now align more closely with other academic journals. Importantly, this change also ensures that people meeting authorship criteria can submit directly to Cochrane, increasing opportunities for more people to submit.
“I hope that the changes being made will mean that authors have a more consistent, efficient experience of submitting and publishing Cochrane reviews; and that we will end up with more reviews that better meet the needs of the people who use them… there’s a lot of change happening at once, which can be quite unsettling, but I do think that the changes are moving us in the right direction.”
- Tari Turner, Cochrane Editorial Board
We’ve improved our platforms and how we manage data.
Cochrane has now fully upgraded to RevMan Web. This has improved and simplified the author experience while ensuring that the people using Cochrane evidence are getting simple-to-read information in a format they can use.
The new platform supports the introduction of new methods and the new focused review format. As a result, all Cochrane authors now also have access to a new data management feature called study centric data. It is designed to foster collaboration, minimise research waste, and ensure the quality of the information gathered. Hundreds of reviews are already using the study centric data approach.
Since April, the data associated with Cochrane Reviews can be downloaded in standard formats such as CSV and RIS. This data package includes not just analysis data but also all other data related to the included studies, risk of bias assessments, and references. This increased shift towards transparency and openness is an essential step towards Open Science.
The availability of data from Cochrane reviews now gives people the ability to access and use Cochrane evidence more easily. But it's not just about making things easier, it's about making a bigger impact. By opening up our reviews in this way, we're hoping more people will benefit from the insights they provide
"I am confident that improving how we share data will appeal to our community of rigorous, passionate researchers. By embracing these new changes, we can maximise the benefits in developing Cochrane Reviews, for both authors and users of our evidence.”
-Ella Flemyng, Head of Editorial Policy and Research Integrity
We’ve updated our reporting standards.
We have also successfully transitioned to using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines for new systematic reviews of interventions, and all submissions to our Central Editorial Service will need to use it from April 2024. This change began in August 2023 as part of our strategy to align with evolving evidence synthesis standards, with the aim of producing more consistent, user-friendly reviews. Whilst not a radical change, this transition has been designed to bring about simplicity, efficiency, and accessibility. Going forward, authors should use the Methodological Expectations for Cochrane Intervention Reviews (MECIR) for conduct and PRISMA 2020 for reporting, which will ensure that we maintain our quality.
The reporting guidelines have now been embedded into a protocol and review template in RevMan, Cochrane’s authoring tool, making adherence simpler for authors and streamlining quality checks. Members of Cochrane’s Methods Groups have led on the development of these consensus-based reporting standards, so adopting them will eliminate duplication of effort and improve efficiency. By aligning with other publishers, Cochrane now produces content in a standard journal article format, enhancing the accessibility of our research. This all plays into our commitment to deliver clear, useful health information in an efficient and user-friendly manner.
“Cochrane reviews are still the gold standard for their high-quality and independence. However, Cochrane needed to become more agile and streamline review production to provide timely reviews to the people who use them. Moreover, a new review format will make Cochrane reviews more accessible to readers and will increase their impact.”
- Juan Franco, Cochrane Governing Board
We’ve introduced new roles at Cochrane specifically to support people in review development.
Roses Parker has been appointed as Cochrane's new Commissioning Editor. Her role involves extensive collaboration with the Evidence Synthesis Development Editors and the Methods Support Unit By working together, they ensure that reviews meet stringent peer review requirements, maintaining the quality and credibility of the evidence produced.
Roses also collaborates closely with authors, Thematic Groups, Review Groups, consumers, guideline developers, policymakers, clinicians, academics, and others. This wide network enables her to collaborate on priority-setting processes, ensuring that the most pressing issues are addressed.
We have also appointed two Evidence Synthesis Development Editors, Leslie Choi, and Lindsay Robertson, to provide support to authors before review submission. They offer advice on areas like maintaining the scope of the review, applying correct methods, interpreting results, assessing the certainty of evidence using GRADE, and crafting a compelling discussion.
They will soon be offering short tutorials for authors that will focus on the key issues in each section of a review ahead of submission, helping Authors to produce high-quality reviews with impact.
“It is my role to identify high-priority updates and new reviews and help completion go as smoothly as possible. It is important that we direct our resources towards projects which will matter to our stakeholders and my role exists to support that happening.”
– Roses Parker, Commissioning Editor
We have started creating Evidence Synthesis Units and Thematic Groups to support our new production model.
We now have seven Thematic Groups up and running, an idea that arose during our community engagement exercise. These Groups will support priority-setting activity in Cochrane and help us to preserve and build on our extraordinary network of content and methods expertise as we evolve. Alongside the Cochrane Review Groups with stable funding, the Thematic Group are the home of Cochrane’s topic expertise.
Another key pillar of Cochrane’s new model is the establishment of our new Evidence Synthesis Units to enable Cochrane to respond quickly to funder needs and strengthen evidence synthesis capacity globally. The aim is that each Unit will function as a dedicated evidence synthesis development team, with the right mix of skills to anticipate stakeholder needs and ensure they get the evidence they need, when they need it.
“The creation of our new Thematic Group stems from our belief that merging the wide-ranging scope of Cochrane entities will enable us to tackle priority topics that aren't confined to specific clinical groups, populations, or settings. By adopting this perspective, we aim to generate evidence that addresses priorities at all levels.”
– Simon Lewin, Co-Lead of People, Health Systems and Public Health Thematic Group.
Change on so many levels can bring challenges, but we are committed to strengthening our editorial independence, meeting the evolving needs of our users, and improving the experience for our authors and other volunteers. We will continue to keep you updated and reach out to the Cochrane community as we move into the implementation phase of some of our other key projects.
In making these changes now, we hope to secure Cochrane’s long-term future and ensure that we continue to play a pivotal role in bringing trustworthy health evidence to everyone who needs it.