Consumers

As set out in the policy (see details), consumer peer reviewers are exempt from the named peer review process, and may remain anonymous if they wish to do so. (Consumers still follow the policy for Declarations of potential conflicts of interest for peer reviewers).

Exceptions approved by Network Senior Editor or Editor in Chief

If any Cochrane Review Groups believe that their peer review process of a particular Cochrane Review will be significantly negatively impacted by using named peer review, the Managing Editor or Co-ordinating Editor may apply to the Network Senior Editor or Editor in Chief of the Cochrane Library for a policy exception on a review-by-review basis. In each case the Cochrane Review Group must provide details, including the reason for opting to remain anonymous. Any exemptions must be forwarded to the Editorial & Methods Department (emd@cochrane.org) and will be recorded below.

Editor notes

Add in all operational stuff, how to anonymous peer review.

Managing named peer review

From January 2019, and consistent with Cochrane's core principles, including open and transparent communication and decision making, all CRGs will adopt a named peer review process, in which the Cochrane Review author and peer reviewer know each other’s names and affiliations during the peer review process. See section 2 of the Cochrane Peer Review Policy.

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Informing authors

The CRG must inform the author team when this occurs and let the author team know that this is an approved exception.

Informing the Editorial & Methods Department

As noted above, any approved exceptions must be forwarded to the Editorial & Methods Department (emd@cochrane.org) with the following information:

• Review title
• Date
• Number of peer reviewers to remain anonymous

RevMan/Archie Workflows guidance: when peer reviewer remains anonymous to the authors

When peer reviewers return comments to CRGs through whatever format (e.g. checklist or email with a list of comments), the CRG should check that the peer reviewer has agreed to take part in named peer review. If the peer reviewer wishes to remain is remaining anonymous, the CRG should add a note to the peer reviewer’s Properties sheet in Archie as follows:.

• Ensure the peer reviewer has been assigned a Group role of 'Peer reviewer'.
• Create a new Administrative note with the Title ‘2018 closed peer review submitted’.
• Add the name of the protocol/review to the Note text.

CRGs can then search for all peer reviewers that have submitted closed peer review by using the Advanced Search in Archie as follows:.

• The People option should be selected at the top with the Match all rows (AND) option.
• Role in Entity | Peer reviewer |

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• [Insert Cochrane Review Group] | Active
• Note Title | Contains |

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• YEAR closed peer review submitted