Guide for Developing a Cochrane Protocol - Cochrane Public Health ...

you in developing the protocol. A broad acknowledgement of the CPHG team is quite adequate if
you wish to acknowledge the group.
Contributions of authors
Identify who has or will perform each of the following tasks (authors’ initials only):
Draft the protocol
Study selection
Extract data from studies
Enter data into RevMan
Carry out the analysis
Interpret the analysis
Draft the final review
Disagreement resolution
Update the review
Potential conflict of interest
You should report any conflict of interest of any of the authors, which may influence their
judgments in conducting the review, at protocol stage (refer to the summary of the
Collaboration’s policy on conflicts of interest in Chapter 2 (Section 2.6) of the Cochrane Handbook
for Systematic Reviews of Interventions for more information). This will include any present or
past affiliations or other involvement in any organisation or entity with an interest in the review
that might lead to a real or perceived conflict of interest. Areas of uncertainty should always be
discussed with the CPHG. Situations that might be perceived by others as being capable of
influencing a review author’s judgements include personal, political, academic and other possible
conflicts, as well as financial conflicts. Authors must state if they have been involved in a study
that may be included in the review.
This section should reflect the information contained in authors’ ‘Declarations of interest
statement’ within the Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest Forms. You can access these
forms from within your Revman file by clicking File -> Reports -> Declaration of Interest (you will
receive a reminder from the editorial office to fill out electronically during the course of
completing your protocol if you have not done so already).
If there are no known conflicts of interest, this should be stated explicitly, for example, by writing
‘None known’.
References - Other references
Additional references
References cited in the text should be listed here. Other reference categories (such as Included
Studies) are generally not used in a protocol, but will be used in the completed review.
References are referred to throughout the review using a Reference ID, usually comprising the
first author’s surname and year of publication (e.g. Smith 2001), and all references must be linked
Last updated: 24 November 2011 - 18 -