Issue 11, November 2021

Contents

1. Publication moving from Archie to Editorial Manager

2. Declarations of interest / Convey

a. Guidance for authors on submitting a declaration of interest form via Convey

b. Editorial Manager-Convey integration for managing Declarations of Interest

c. Blank version of Convey Additional Questions

d. Referrals to the Research Integrity Editors and CoI Panel

3. Withdrawal policy: interim change in policy for protocols

4. RevMan Web

a. RevMan Web: improvements in reference handling

b. RevMan Web-GRADEPro integration

5. Christmas and New Year closures

a. Copy Edit Support - a message from Elizabeth Royle

b. ME Support

6. News

1. Publication moving from Archie to Editorial Manager

Do you have protocols or reviews that are nearing publication and are managed in Editorial Manager? If so, please get in touch with Support and we guide you through the copy edit and publication process in EM.

All Network sites are now ready for publishing from EM.

The Editorial Manager project team have taken into account Christmas closures of the Cochrane Support Helpdesk and Copy Edit Support; as well as well-deserved annual leave for CRG staff.

We are making slight adjustments to the end of publication from Archie.

Please read the following guidance carefully and contact Support if you have any queries:

- 1 December: if you are awaiting a final draft from authors before sign-off and copy-editing, please Initiate Proposal and ask authors to submit the revision to EM for publication from EM 

- 13 December: last day for Copy Edit Support to accept copy-editing assignments from Archie

- 5 January: if you are waiting for authors to respond to copy-editing comments, please Initiate Proposal and ask authors to submit the revision to EM for publication from EM

- 10 January: last day to mark for publication in Archie (the Publish button will be deactivated after this date)

- 17 January: last day to publish from Archie

To make these deadlines, you may also wish to schedule publication from Archie to release Licence for Publication forms in advance. Once the forms are in, you can re-mark a corrected version for publication (you do not need to Unmark for publication, as this will remove completed LfP forms) and/or choose to edit the scheduled date.

A reminder of upcoming demos on publishing from EM:

Copy edit and publication tasks will be demoed at the weekly Editorial Manager drop-in:

Thursday 2 December (10am UK) – sign up now

Archie without workflows (how to access your workflows archive) will be demoed at the weekly Editorial Manager drop-ins:

Thursday 9 December (4:15pm UK) – sign up now

Thursday 16 December (10am UK) – sign up now

2. Declarations of interest / Convey

a. Guidance for authors on submitting a declaration of interest form via Convey

A new page ‘Submitting a Declaration of Interest form in Convey: instructions for authors’ has been created on the Conflict of Interest (CoI) portal. Links to this page have been added to the template emails sent to authors by Convey.

b. Editorial Manager-Convey integration for managing Declarations of Interest

The EM tech team have now released a fix to ensure that co-authors added after submission will receive automatic notifications from Convey, asking them to complete their Declarations of Interest (DoI). When you receive a new submission, please check the author details in EM before assigning an editor. If the full byline is not listed, use action Send Back to Author to return the submission to the Corresponding Author to add co-author details. You may also choose to Edit Submission to add authors. Details must match Archie exactly, to ensure that co-author accounts are linked correctly. When authors have completed their DoIs, all details will be visible within EM, in submission Details > View CoI Disclosure.

A reminder that editorial teams only need to create manual lists in Convey on two occasions:

1. A new author joins a team for a review already in progress, with no previous submission in EM (manual list to include new author only)

2. Work is beginning on a review update (manual list for full team)

In all other circumstances, DoI information is visible within EM. See also Guidance for MEs on using Convey.

c. Blank version of Convey Additional Questions

A blank example version of the questions that authors are asked at the ‘additional questions’ stage of their Convey Declaration of Interests has been added to the CoI portal so that you are able to see the questions that authors will be asked. This is also linked to from the Background section of the Guidance for Managing Editors – Editorial Manager/Convey.

d. Referrals to the Research Integrity Editors and CoI Panel

The form for making referrals to the Research Integrity Editors and CoI Panel has been updated so that it is now only for queries related to author CoI for a specific Cochrane protocol, review or update. All other CoI queries (e.g. queries about funding for a Cochrane review, funding for Cochrane groups, Editor CoI, peer reviewer CoI or general queries about the policy) should be sent by email to coiarbiter@cochrane.org.

3. Withdrawal policy: interim change in policy for protocols

The process for withdrawal of Cochrane Reviews and protocols will need to be adjusted in early 2022 to accommodate organisational changes, and we also plan to review the withdrawal policy with the aim of redefining withdrawn reviews as ‘retractions’, the more standard publishing term for what we mean by a review withdrawal. 

We will also review our policy in relation to protocols (which can be withdrawn for other reasons that are not equivalent to a retraction).

In preparation for this work, and also because we have recently identified some technical delays with processing withdrawn protocols, we are asking that with immediate effect, Review Groups do not withdraw any protocols for reasons other than serious error. If you do wish to withdraw a protocol for any reason, or if you have any questions about this, please contact emd@cochrane.org. There will be a further update on the withdrawals process and policies in the new year.

4. RevMan Web

a. RevMan Web: improvements in reference handling

The Reorder links button will now order mixed reference lists of study links and other references into one alphabetically-ordered list. No need for manual sorting of lists of different citation types.

References exported from CRS, or from Covidence in CRS format, will now import into RevMan Web with all information, including the full journal name.

b. RevMan Web-GRADEPro integration

As you may know, GRADEPro have recently made some improvements to align Summary of Findings tables linked in RMW, with Cochrane style and formatting. Changes include:

- PICO headings in table on separate lines

- Consistent use of sentence case throughout, including after colons

- Superscript footnote markers

- Abbreviations organised alphabetically

The Cochrane Support team have also improved the documentation in the RMW Knowledge Base related to editing GRADEPro tables. One of the most challenging aspects of this integration is understanding what to edit where. Much of the content of GRADEPro tables pulls automatically from the relevant analyses in RevMan; and changes must be made in RevMan. If changes are made in GRADEPro, these will revert when the SoF table is synced with RevMan.

Please review the Knowledge Base page Editing 'Summary of findings' tables linked with GRADEpro GDT and let us know any suggestions for improvement.

If you have any feedback on the RMW-GRADEPro integration, please pass this on to Cochrane Support and we will work with EvidencePrime (GRADEPro Support) to implement further changes.

5. Christmas and New Year Closures

a. Copy Edit Support - a message from Elizabeth Royle

The CES closure over Christmas 2021 and New Year will be longer than usual; here are the details:·

- 3 pm GMT Monday 20 December 2021: final assignments to CES copy-editors

- 5 pm GMT Monday 20 December 2021: CES shuts

- 9 am GMT Wednesday 5 January 2022: CES reopens

The last day on which I will be assigning copy-editing over this period will be Monday 20 December: assigning will probably be completed by 3 pm, so please ensure that I know about any urgent submissions well before then (see below). If you are not going to be available to put permissions in place on Monday 20 December, please highlight this in your submission, and I will ask the Support Team to do them. Please note: assignments allocated in the run-up to the CES break will have at least 14 days allowed for completion.

URGENT submissions with publication deadlines before 14 January 2022
If you have a review that needs to be published before 14 January 2022, please make sure that I know it is required urgently now, and why it is urgent, so I can put it on my ‘expected’ list. Reviews with funding-related deadlines, or that are contributing to guidelines will take priority, but please do alert me if your search is due to pass the 12 months point too. I am happy for you to use capital letters, colours, sound effects etc. to draw my attention to the urgency – polite messages tucked away in the text are easily missed. Please mention the urgency clearly and obviously in EVERY message concerning that submission.

CES availability

At present the availability of the CES team is excellent, and there is a very short waiting list. As we approach Christmas the availability of the team will reduce and some delays may develop, so I would encourage you to send in submissions as early as possible, as this will give us the best chance of returning them to you in a timely manner. If you have any questions about the above, please do not hesitate to contact Elizabeth Royle and Denise Mitchell at ces@cochrane.org.

b. ME Support

The last day for ME Support will be 22^nd December 2021. We will be back on 4^th January 2022.

6. News

All change at Cochrane Cystic Fibrosis and Genetic Disorders (CFGD)

Tracey Remmington, long-standing Managing Editor (ME) for CFGD has now stepped down as lead ME for the Group. Tracey joined the group in 1998 as an Assistant ME and then took on the ME role in 2000. Tracey will remain working with the Group (but doing fewer hours) until March 2023.

Nikki Jahnke, Tracey’s not-so-silent partner in crime for all these years (she started as AME in 2002) has now taken up the ME role. We wish Nikki all the best in her new role.

Contact us

If you have any questions about any of the above items, or about any aspect of your ME role, regardless of your location, please contact us at mesupport@cochrane.org

The Cochrane Managing Editor Support Team:

Anupa Shah | Liz Dooley | Ruth Turley