Editorial checks

From 1 September 2023 all new draft submissions should be transferred directly to the Central Editorial Service. Please continue the editorial process for revised submissions only. If you have any queries about the best action to take for a particular submission, please contact Cochrane Support.

The editorial process in Editorial Manager has built-in ME Checks for different stages of the review production process, to allow you to evaluate the quality of new submissions.

You will see new manuscripts requiring checks under Direct to Editor New Submissions or Direct to Editor Revised Submissions in your Editor 'To-Do' List

Completing these checks represents good editorial practice, and is mandatory in Editorial Manager.

There are specific checklists for different review stages:

ME Submission check - for new first drafts. (If authors are submitting a draft to EM for the first time, you may wish to complete this check even if the authors have revised their review in response to previous editor feedback. This will ensure you check the authors' first Declarations of Interest in Convey. See Convey guidance.)
ME Revision check - for drafts returned by authors responding to editor or peer reviewer comments.
ME Acceptance check - sign-off of final version before copy edit

Task	Purpose	Checklist questions	When?	Assign to
ME Submission Check	Quality assessment of new first drafts	The authors have submitted the correct files (the PDF of latest RevMan file in RevMan Web). Declaration of interests forms have been submitted for each author, and the author group is in compliance with the relevant conflict of interest or commercial sponsorship policy. The plagiarism check does not identify serious issues. All authors meet criteria for authorship according to the ‘Contributions of authors’ section in the article. All relevant sections of the article are complete (in particular, protocols have a search strategy for a single database in the appendix, and reviews and updates have search strategies for all databases in the appendix). The duplicate submission check does not highlight a duplicate submission unrelated to this protocol/review/update. All tables in the PDF are legible (no text has been omitted). If the review includes risk of bias 2 tables that are not legible, the instructions to Add Risk of Bias 2 tables and rebuild PDF have been followed. If the article is a full review and uses risk of bias 2, the review either includes a link to an open repository containing the detailed risk of bias assessments, or the authors have submitted the detailed risk of bias assessments as an external file that can be accessed from the submission PDF (see Check links to external files or datasets work correctly).	New draft protocol, review or update submitted	ME or editorial team member
ME Revision Check	Quality assessment of drafts returned by authors responding to editor or peer reviewer comments	The authors have submitted the correct files (the PDF of latest RevMan file in RevMan Web). The authors have provided a point-by-point response to the editor and reviewer comments, detailing the revisions they have made to the article. The authorship has not changed since the last version was submitted, or if the authorship has changed, the authors have provided evidence from all previous authors that they agree to the change The authors have indicated that they would like gold open access If the authors have indicated they would like to publish with a Gold Open Access licence, the following instructions at Licence for Publication forms have been checked and the authors have been asked to choose a licence type (CC-BY; CC-BY-NC; CC-BY-NC-ND).	Revised protocol, review or update submitted	ME or editorial team member
ME Acceptance Check	Quality assessment of sign-off of final version before copy edit	The “Contributions of authors” section is complete and all authors are included. The Declarations of Interest have been refreshed in Editorial Manager, and if any new interests have been declared, they are not prohibitive, and the author group is in compliance with the policy. The statements in the “Declarations of interest” section in the article match the statements in the declaration of interest forms, and if not, an updated statement has been added to the ‘Production notes’ in Editorial Manager for the copy-editor to add during copy-editing. Any peer-reviewers who have requested to be acknowledged have been added to the “Acknowledgements” section, and their names and institutions have been correctly spelled. Any other person acknowledged by name in the “Acknowledgements” section has given permission to be acknowledged (evidence supplied), and their names have been correctly spelled. We provide a suggested template email for author use. Where an author is a member of the editorial team, a statement has been added to the ‘Declarations of Interest' section stating that the author was not involved in the editorial process. Where an author is a member of the editorial team, the steps taken to ensure the independence of the editorial process has been stated. Recommended text for the “Acknowledgments” section of all articles, clarifying the role of editors and peer-reviewers, is available in RevMan protocol templates and in Editors or editorial staff as authors page of the Editorial and Publishing Policy Resource (EPPR). Any figures that are not original (reproduced from elsewhere) have the appropriate permissions to reproduce submitted by the authors. Any standard statements from Cochrane Review Group funders have been included in the “Sources of support” section. Any funding for the article noted in the Declarations of interest forms has been included in the “Sources of support” section. All highlighting and Track Changes have been removed. The Licence for Publication type on the Manuscript details is correct. If you change the licence type after you initiate production, the authors may need to resubmit their Licence for Publication forms.	Final version of protocol, review or update submitted	ME or editorial team member (Sign-off editor)