An Editorial note is a short text statement that can be added to a Cochrane Review or protocol. On the Cochrane Library the Editorial note displays in a text box above the abstract.
Before publishing an editorial note, consult the Editorial notes policy and determine the type of Editorial note required and whether you need to contact the Editor in Chief or Network Associate Editor in advance.
After publishing an Editorial note, please always notify the Editorial and Methods Department (emd@cochrane.org), with a link to relevant review or protocol.
Editorial notes are created and managed in RevMan 5 or RevMan Web using the Published notes section. They are published as part of a standard amendment or update workflow. During the publication process, the Editorial note is extracted from the published notes and displayed separately.
Editorial notes must be a single paragraph of plain text, with no lists, subheadings, figures or tables, and no more than 200 characters in total.
It is currently not possible to include links in an Editorial note. You can add a URL as text, but it not be hyperlinked when published. The ability to include links in Editorial notes is in development.
To publish an Editorial note that directs readers to a more recent review, the text needs to be as short as possible and addressed to a general reader who may have found the review by a Google search, for example, and it should include the DOI in URL form for the newer review or protocol.
For example:
There is a more recent Cochrane review on this topic: https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD010056.pub2
For details on how to add or edit an Editorial note, see the RevMan knowledge base.
When published, the Editorial note is not considered to be part of the body of the review text and it is not passed to PubMed or third parties when it is published. It also appears in the PDF version and also above the plain language summary on https://www.cochrane.org/evidence.