A scoping review published in BMC Medicine has identified a range of potential competencies to enable scientific editors of biomedical journals to do their jobs effectively and support high quality in the publication of research. James Galipeau and colleagues at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute in Canada, in part funded by Cochrane, conducted the review as part of a major project to identify consensus on a core set of competencies and establish a training program to support editors in attaining these competencies. A number of Cochrane Editors are contributing to this project during 2016, and Cochrane will be exploring ways to introduce effective training to support our editors as the project continues.