Cochrane has invested significant amounts of time and money into improving the author experience. We have also been raising methodological expectations, which makes it increasingly challenging to be an author of a Cochrane review. In 2019 an author survey focusing on author experience in three key areas was sent out: editorial experience; learning experience, and technology experience. Whilst there are other elements that are part of the experience of being a Cochrane author, we felt these were the most important factors for the organisation to explore. View the results from the 2019 Author Experience Survey.
In 2021 we contacted authors who had published a Cochrane review in the last 2 years, so that we capture the views of authors since our last survey. View the 2021 Author Experience Survey results. Overall, the 2021 survey presents a positive picture for author satisfaction in Cochrane with many authors considering themselves highly satisfied or satisfied with the experience, and also considering the experience better than that of working with other journals. This is useful for us to know, but there is also a rich source of feedback that has accompanied the quantitative results and we will be working our way through that to understand how we can do better in future.
If you have any questions about this survey or wish to know more about any particular point, please contact Chris Champion, Head of People Services: cchampion@cochrane.org