Welcome to the Author Digest, April 2025

We hope you find it helpful.

This digest goes out to all active Cochrane authors and will continue to be sent to authors who are opted in. Please review your communication preferences in your Cochrane Account and ensure you are opted in to communications.

Contents

Reminder of upcoming changes to Cochrane’s Conflict of Interest Policies and Declarations of Interest
Have you got a methodological question about producing a Cochrane Protocol or Review?
Cochrane Netherlands hosts online course on systematic reviews of diagnostic test accuracy studies
Covidence: Building Templates with Covidence’s Data Extraction 1 tool
Top tips

1. Reminder of upcoming changes to Cochrane's Conflict of Interest policies and declarations of interest

As announced in our last digest, Cochrane is making important updates to our conflict of interest processes. Full details about the changes are on the Cochrane community website. As a reminder, as part of these changes:

• Submitting your manuscript before June 2nd? You will continue to use the Convey system to submit your declarations of interest after submission.
• Submitting your manuscript on or after June 2nd? Please ensure every author has completed a Word declarations of interest form, that these are included with your submission to Editorial Manager, and that the "Declarations of interest" section in the manuscript is drafted and reflects the forms at submission.

Please note, the author guidance and editorial policies will be updated just before June 2nd with the new process and policy. If you have questions, Cochrane’s Research Integrity Team is happy to help! Please contact researchintegrity@cochrane.org.

2. Have you got a methodological question about producing a Cochrane Protocol or Review?

We are introducing a new question and answer format for our Methods Support Unit web clinics! We will be choosing broad topics around methods or statistics, then these sessions will be open for your questions. You don't have to submit a question in advance to attend – the sessions will be open to anyone. We’d love your help to plan these, fill in our 2-minute survey and tell us what you want to learn more about.

3. Cochrane Netherlands hosts online course on systematic reviews of diagnostic test accuracy studies

Cochrane Netherlands is organizing a 2- or 3-day online course, ‘Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis of Diagnostic Test Accuracy Studies’. The course will take place on May 26, 27, and 28, 2025, and is designed for anyone involved in diagnostic research who wants to conduct evidence synthesis, including meta-analysis and GRADE. More information on this and other courses can be found here.

4. Covidence

Join our upcoming webinar! Building Templates with Covidence’s Data Extraction 1 tool.

In this live session, we’ll walk you through how to create a template —guided by a real protocol.

✅ Learn a practical, step-by-step approach

✅ See the finished template in action

✅ Discover how to support quantitative and qualitative designs

Whether you're new or experienced, this session is designed to sharpen your skills and boost your confidence using Data Extraction 1 in Covidence.

📅 Can’t make it live? Register anyway—we’ll send you the recording within 24 hours. Register here.

5. Top tips for Cochrane authors

Did you know that editing the automatically-generated filename on either of the submission files from RevMan can cause delays to your manuscript being processed?

Each file name includes unique identifiers for the submission and any changes create technical errors processing the submission. The guidance on submitting a version is available through the following Knowledge Base webpage: Submit your manuscript.

Contact us

If you have any questions about any of the above items, please contact us at support@cochrane.org