Convey is a platform for managing Declarations of Interest (DoI) for titles, protocols, reviews, and updates that are handled through Editorial Manager, the editorial management system that is being implemented across Cochrane Groups this year. Convey is a system for collecting DoI run by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). Convey integrates with Editorial Manager and allows Cochrane to collect the information required from authors in line with the Conflict of Interest policy for Cochrane Library content (2020), and the Commercial Sponsorship Policy (2014) for protocols, reviews, and updates where this still applies.

Convey is used by a number of different organizations and acts as a central repository for an author’s financial interests, with the aim of reducing the time spent by researchers declaring conflicts of interest to different organizations. People who are new to the platform will have to set up an account with login details, but after that they will have access to all their declarations when working with any organization that uses Convey. When an individual has entered an interest into Convey once, that interest will be available for them to select when making any future declarations to any organization using Convey, removing the need to repeatedly look up details (e.g., dates) when completing each declaration.

Authors of Cochrane titles, protocols, reviews, and updates will receive emails from Convey at various stages in the review process, asking them to make their declaration in Convey. Authors will log onto Convey to declare all relevant financial and non-financial interests related to that particular review, and their answers will be pulled through to the relevant Editorial Manager record for the Managing Editor to view.

The Cochrane COI portal contains a variety of resources related to Cochrane’s Conflict of Interest policies. Guidance for Managing Editors on using Convey and Editorial Manager to manage collection of author DoIs is now available on this portal. Declarations of Interest will continue to be managed in Archie for protocols, reviews, and updates that are due to publish from Archie and are therefore not moving over to Editorial Manager. 

If you have any queries about managing DoIs in Archie or Editorial Manager, please contact support@cochrane.org.