Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods: Adding to our relevance

Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods

Cochrane’s first open access journal, Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods, recently opened for submissions! See our announcement for full details.  

Why is Cochrane launching a new journal? And why now? We’re discussing Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods in relation to Cochrane’s four key values: Collaboration, relevance, integrity and quality. 

Today is Relevance.

Relevance is about having the right evidence at the right time in the right format. 

In the last post, we discussed how Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods strengthens Cochrane’s ability to meet our stakeholders’ needs and publish different types of evidence synthesis beyond systematic reviews. 

For all submissions, the editors also expect a clearly stated question and evidence of stakeholder need or research that informed the question, as well as encouraging patient important outcomes and/or standardized outcomes, as defined by COMET. 

In terms of the format, Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods aims to make this as easy as possible for authors. The journal supports free format submissions so authors don’t have to spend hours updating manuscripts to specific formatting requirements before submission.  

In addition, the editors encourages accessible language to be used in all submissions. This is hugely beneficial for researchers from across disciplines, non-native English speakers and consumers who will not be familiar with overly technical or difficult to read language. In addition, plain language summaries will be expected for all submissions that include health-related outcomes to ensure the research has as broad a reach as possible.  

Authors are also able to include graphical or visual abstracts alongside submissions to help readers identify and visualise the important messages quickly and easily. We have guidance on creating visual abstracts available to help authors.    

And then we have evidence at the right time. To ensure articles are shared and made discoverable as early as possible, Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods considers articles previously published on preprint servers, or, during submission you can opt-in to Under Review, a preprint server that aims to open up the peer review process. Once submissions are accepted, Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods shares the accepted draft article online immediately to prevent any delays in getting the research to the community. This happens before the article is copyedited and the final version is shared. 

Embedding relevance will facilitate our impact globally, which the journal will showcase with a variety of journal and article metrics. 

Please join us on 9 March 2023 for a webinar with Michael Brown, Editor of Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods.

 

Please join us on 9 March 2023 for a webinar with Michael Brown, Editor of Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods.

For more information on Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods: 

6 February 2023