For PaPaS Editors

***The Cochrane PaPaS Group closes on 31 March 2023 and this website will be archived; please contact support@cochrane.org with any questions***

Resources for PaPaS Editors

This page is designed for members of the PaPaS Editorial Board, to provide useful resources and information to support your role.

Our scope covers a broad range of health topics: acute and chronic pain; headache and migraine; and palliative and supportive care. Our portfolio covers a variety of interventions, such as pharmacological, psychological, and physical, and we aim to produce reviews for both adults and children. We also produce Network Meta-analysis reviews and several Overview reviews. Therefore, our editorial board is comprised of experts with a broad range of skills and experience to ensure we are fully able to support our author teams to produce the highest quality reviews.

We invite our editorial board to join us for at least one meeting per year.

Role of the Contact Editor

Every PaPaS review is assigned a Contact Editor who provides feedback during the development of the review from title registration through to publication of the full review.

The Contact Editor will have methodological expertise, and a familiarity with Cochrane Reviews and our expectations; they may also have specific topic knowledge.

The editorial process is overseen by the Managing Editor or Assistant Managing Editor as the 'workflow manager'. The workflow manager is the main point of contact between the author team and editors, and is responsible for facilitating all editorial comments and managing deadlines. The Contact Editor assesses each submitted draft and provides feedback at every stage in the editorial process (see the Step by Step pages for protocols, reviews and updates).

The Contact Editor's key responsibilities include:

  • checking the quality of each submitted version and that it meets Cochrane and PaPaS minimum standards;
  • responding to any specific queries and providing editorial feedback;
  • assessing other editor feedback and peer review comments; confirming whether they are appropriate and suitable for sending to the authors;
  • checking the declarations of interest section is compliant with the Cochrane Commercial Sponsorship Policy;
  • checking whether the authors have adequately responded to feedback;
  • approving the final version post-peer review, to be sent to the Sign Off Editor;
  • recommending peer reviewers;
  • helping to make decisions about withdrawing or rejecting reviews that fail to meet the minimum standards.

Specific tasks are requested via our database Archie and will require the Contact Editor to follow the link to confirm when the task is complete; this ensures our system is up to date and all information is attached to the review record.

Role of the Clinical Editor

The Clinical Editor will have specific expertise in a particular health topic within our scope. They will be asked for their input on the clinical content of protocols, reviews and updates, at least once during the editorial process.

Role of the Sign Off Editor

The Sign Off Editor is responsible for providing final approval of a protocol, review or update to be sent for copy editing and publication. They will be sent the latest version of the review, along with the authors' responses to peer review comments and any other relevant information to support their assessment. 

The role of Sign Off Editor is usually assigned to one of the Co-ordinating Editors. When the Co-ordinating Editor is also a review author, we request the role to be performed by another senior PaPaS editor or Network editor.

Role of the Feedback Editor

We welcome post-publication comments on any of our publications. The Feedback Editor will facilitate these comments, and liaise with the person submitting feedback, the author team, Managing Editor, Co-ordinating Editors, and any other relevant parties. The Feedback Editor will assist the authors to respond appropriately to the comments, and will inform the person submitting the feedback of the outcome with a link to the republished review if applicable.

Other Editor tasks

The role of the Editor is not limited to the tasks listed above; we may also invite contributions and collaboration for the following:

  • assessing new Review Proposals
  • providing expert peer review
  • recommending peer reviewers, authors
  • priority setting
  • assessing reviews for updating
  • improving and adapting our editorial processes and guidance
  • implementing new Cochrane methods
  • PaPaS future strategy planning

PaPaS-specific guidance

  • Abstract guidance (pdf - due to be updated in 2021)

Cochrane training

Editorial Essentials (home)

  • Methodology: GRADE collection (link)

  • Methodology: Common errors (home)

  • Methodology: Network Meta-analyses (NMA) modules (link)