After protocol publication, the next stage in the process is to prepare the review. Help and guidance is always available from the editorial office and guidelines on how to write a review are also given in The Cochrane Handbook (Chapter 4) www.cochrane-handbook.com. Authors will need several other chapters from the Cochrane Handbook to complete a review (to start with Chapter 7, 8, 9, 11, 12 and 14) - each chapter is available as a PDF downloadable from Archie by looking in the tree view: Resources/Other/Handbook Editorial Advisory Panel/Files.

In most cases a Cochrane review will be assessed by three peer referees, and usually a consumer referee. Once authors have completed the review and after addressing any suggestions and the revision has been approved by the PaPaS editorial team it will then be published in The Cochrane Library for the next issue. The Cochrane Library is published on a monthly basis and there is a time lag of one month between the publication deadlines and the actual live publication on The Cochrane Library. See 'Workshops, event and deadline dates for your diary' for the publication deadlines.