Manage your Cochrane RevMan portfolio

Welcome to your Cochrane portfolio!

Find out what it means to have the Unit Lead role in Cochrane RevMan.

What is a RevMan unit?

Your RevMan unit includes all protocols, reviews and updates that you are managing. This corresponds to the portfolio of reviews linked to a Cochrane Thematic Group, a Cochrane Review Group, Cochrane Geographic Group that produces Cochrane Reviews, or a Cochrane Evidence Synthesis Unit. Authors will be actively working on some reviews while others will be complete or awaiting update.

What is a RevMan Unit Lead?

Unit Lead is a system role that grants a high level of permissions in RevMan. The Unit Lead is responsible for day-to-day management of the portfolio and can take actions such as starting projects and deciding when reviews are due for updating. As Unit Lead, you can play an important role in Cochrane’s work by helping us to monitor reviews in progress. This is important because:

  • As a provider of trusted, relevant evidence we need to be sure authors work on reviews that answer high-priority questions and submit them to timely deadlines
  • To target our author support we need to identify pain-points and blockers in the review development process

How can I organise my portfolio in RevMan?

Every review in RevMan can have a linked project. The project represents current or future work on the article. As Unit Lead, you can access the Portfolio View of your unit and organise your work. Reviews can be:

  • In progress – you or authors are actively working on a project
  • Not started – you or authors are due to start work on a project
  • Assessment due – you need to assess whether a project should be started (e.g. an update)
  • Completed – there is no current project, and the review is not due for assessment

Please organise your portfolio into these categories to track protocols, reviews and updates in progress; and reviews due for updating. If you need help organising your portfolio, please contact support@cochrane.org.

Why keep RevMan projects up to date?

Each 'In progress' review has an active project that includes tasks and milestones for you and authors. These break down the steps needed to deliver reviews to publication on time. The milestone timelines align to Central Editorial Service submission deadlines.

This means that RevMan’s project and portfolio management features allow us to monitor author progress for the first time. 

A well-organised portfolio is good news for both you and Cochrane!

You can manage your workload more easily. For example: as authors mark tasks as completed, you can see which reviews are coming up for internal feedback and plan your time accordingly.

Ensuring that authors make progress is also important for publication output.

Effective project and portfolio management helps you and your authors:

  • ‘In progress’ projects show you which reviews need your input
  • Easily organise your own and your authors’ work using tasks and milestones
  • Quickly identify author teams who might need extra support by visualising overdue tasks
  • Set dates to assess reviews for updating and RevMan will remind you when assessment is due
  • Monitor progress across a suite of reviews in a related area, tracking progress and blockers 

Effective project and portfolio management helps Cochrane:

  • Forecast the volume of submissions likely to come into Central Editorial Service and plan capacity
  • Publish relevant evidence on time
  • Target support to author teams who are struggling

Does my group need a RevMan Unit Lead? 

Yes. If your group has committed to produce reviews for submission to Cochrane, someone in your group will need the Unit Lead role in RevMan.

How else can I help?

Please let us know if:

  • You are no longer a unit lead
  • A review will no longer progress and the authors’ invitation to submit to Central Editorial Service should be closed

Support our independent authors

We have a large number of author teams working independently in a RevMan unit without group support. If you would like to check the list of reviews in this unit, to confirm if you can offer support to any author teams working on relevant topic areas, please contact support@cochrane.org.

Any reviews that you can support will be moved into your unit.