Untitled Document

Policy on authorship of updates of reviews

Our aim is for all reviews in this group to be updated at least every two years in accordance with Cochrane Collaboration guidelines. A substantive (as opposed to minor) update occurs where new trials have been found which warrant changes to the results, such that users are recommended to reread the review.

Substantive updates will be peer reviewed and a new Permission for Publication form will need to be completed.

Permission for Publication forms should be completed and signed by all authors of a review or update. With updates this can sometimes present a problem if a reviewer has moved out of the area of health care or cannot be contacted for some other reason.

Therefore it has been decided to adopt the following principles with regard to authorship of substantive updates of reviews:

The authors cited on the update should be those who contributed in some way to the update and/or the original review. The ordering of names need not necessarily be the same.

The authors cited on the update should each complete and sign a Permission for Publication form for the update.

The authors of the original review and any previous updates who will not be cited as authors on the update should be mentioned in the acknowledgements section
The original review and any previous updates should be referenced in 'Other published versions of this review' in RevMan

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