Cochrane Editors and editorial staff can author Cochrane Reviews ("Cochrane Reviews" includes protocols, reviews, and updates) published in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. This includes when the Cochrane Review is part of the editor's Cochrane Review Group's (CRG's) portfolio. In line with the Best Practice Guidelines on Publishing Ethics: A Publisher's Perspective (second edition), the Editor or editorial staff member who is an author of the Cochrane Review submitted for publication via their CRG must:

• exclude themselves entirely from the editorial process to ensure separation of the author and the editorial processes. This includes but is not limited to all editorial decisions and related activities (including selection of and contact with peer reviewers, liaison with editors, sign-off for publication); and

• ensure that another Editor or member of the editorial staff takes on these roles. Practically this process should be administered by another member of the same CRG editorial team. If this is not possible, contact the Associate Editor.

If the Contact or Sign-off Editor(s) are selected from within the same CRG editorial team, it is essential they are independent; for example, it is not appropriate for someone to be a Contact or Sign-off Editor if an author of the review is their line manager. If in doubt, the Sign-off Editor for the review should be someone from another editorial team as agreed with the Associate Editor.

A statement that they were not involved in the editorial process should be included in the ‘Declarations of Interest' section of the Cochrane Review, and a summary of the process followed should be included in the Acknowledgements' section of the Cochrane Review using the following template: 

Editorial and peer-reviewer contributions:

Cochrane [NAME] supported the authors in the development of this [ARTICLE TYPE].

The following people conducted the editorial process for this article:

• • Sign-off Editor (final editorial decision): [NAME, AFFILIATION];
  • Managing Editor (selected peer reviewers, collated peer-reviewer comments, provided editorial guidance to authors, edited the article): [NAME, AFFILIATION];
  • Editorial Assistant (conducted editorial policy checks and supported editorial team): [NAME, AFFILIATION];
  • Copy Editor (copy editing and production): [NAME, AFFILIATION];
  • Peer-reviewers (provided comments and recommended an editorial decision): [NAME, AFFILIATION] (clinical/content review)*, [NAME, AFFILIATION] (consumer review), [NAME, AFFILIATION] (methods review), [NAME, AFFILIATION] (search review). [NUMBER] of additional peer reviewers provided [CLINICAL/CONTENT/CONSUMER/METHODS/SEARCH] peer review, but chose not to be publicly acknowledged.

*[PEER REVIEWER] is a member of Cochrane [NAME], and provided peer-review comments on this article, but [PEER REVIEWER] was not otherwise involved in the editorial process or decision making for this article.