Standards for Cochrane reviews
Cochrane maintains standards for the planning, conduct, reporting, and content of Cochrane reviews, and publishes resources to support editors and authors in meeting these standards. Editors can make authors aware of these resources early in the review process. Editors are also expected to ensure that reviews are compliant with the methodological, reporting, conduct, and writing standards set out in the below resources.
Resources
Online learning collections
- Publishing with Cochrane: author guidelines
Compilation of starting points and guides for planning, writing, and submitting a Cochrane review (primarily reviews of interventions). Includes guidance on reporting search dates in Cochrane reviews. - Cochrane methodology
Learning resources on key areas of Cochrane review methodology, including Risk of Bias, the GRADE approach, common errors in reviews, and methods for Diagnostic test accuracy (DTA) reviews and Network meta-analyses - Guides and handbooks
Contains the Cochrane Handbooks for Systematic Reviews of Interventions and of Diagnostic Test Accuracy; the GRADE Handbook; MECIR standards, Cochrane Style Manual; and the Cochrane Information Specialists’ Handbook - Conflict of Interest portal
Contains a summary document, FAQs, and the full 2020 policy as well as its 2014 predecessor
Individual documents
Methods
- Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions
- Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Diagnostic Test Accuracy
- Cochrane-Campbell Handbook for Qualitative Evidence Synthesis
- Methodological Expectations of Cochrane Intervention Reviews (MECIR)
- Methodological resources and training + tools and recommendations
Living systematic reviews
- Living Systematic Reviews on Cochrane.org
- Living Systematic Reviews published in the Cochrane Library
Writing and formatting
Conduct