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While Cochrane has adopted the uniform requirements for declaration of conflicts of interests framework produced by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, Cochrane and the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR) differ from many journals in two ways: (1) certain types of sponsorship are forbidden; and (2) we ask for disclosure of conflicts of interests at the beginning of a review process (when submitting a Review Proposal Form (title registration form). Such declarations may be managed within the Cochrane ReviewGroup Review Group processes or be referred to the Funding Arbiter for discussion and decision-making if there are any doubts about how the policy should be applied.
Independence: Cochrane Reviews must be independent of conflicts of interest associated with commercialsponsorship commercial sponsorship and should be conducted by people or organisations that are free of such bias.
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All links between Cochrane authors and commercial sponsorship or sources must be disclosed, so that Cochrane users have confidence in the process for the disclosure and management of potential commercial conflicts of interest.
When completing a Research Review Proposal Form (title registration form), Cochrane authors should declare their conflicts of interest using Cochrane’s disclosure of potential conflicts of interest form.
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Authors of Cochrane Reviews must complete a ‘declarations ‘conflicts of interest’ form before publication of the protocol, review, update, and any amendment resulting in a new citation, and the declarations should be reviewed by the Managing Editor and Co-ordinating Editor as appropriate.
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All potentially important conflicts (as described in the paragraphs above) should be referred to the Funding Arbiter unless it is clear that the conflicts prohibit the author or team from further involvement (e.g. the author is directly employed by a commercial organisation with an interest in the intervention or holds a patent relating to the intervention) or that the conflicts do not prohibit the author or team from further involvement (e.g., employment in a relevant clinical speciality).
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