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 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. For details on how to add or edit an Editorial note, see the RevMan knowledge base. Editorial notes are published as part of a standard amendment or update workflow, using the 'amended' what's new event (no new citation). During the publication process, the Editorial note is extracted from the published notes and displayed separately.
Editorial notes must be a single paragraph of text, with no lists, subheadings, figures or tables, as short as possible and no more than 200 characters in total. They can include links in the form of full URLs.
To publish an Editorial note that directs readers to a more recent review, the text needs to be 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.
Some examples:
There is a more recent Cochrane review on this topic: https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD00XXXX.pub2
This review question is now being addressed according to a new protocol: https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD00XXXX
See https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD00XXXX for a more recent review that covers this topic.
Screenshot example:
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.