The Cochrane editorial team warmly encourages Thematic Group members to submit proposals for new Cochrane systematic reviews. The Cochrane Planetary Health Thematic Group (CPHTG) can provide support and advice on this process as well as feedback on drafts to support successful peer review, and the CPHTG network can assist if you need specific expertise or extra hands to get the review done.
Cochrane is particularly interested in proposals that establish strong methodological standards or demonstrate innovation in methods, and those aligned with the priorities identified in the Scientific Strategy:
- Reviews of interventions to help people cope with the effects of climate change, including strategies to improve water quality, food security, and disaster resilience and response.
- Reviews of interventions to increase sustainability of health care, including strategies to reduce low value care, over-diagnosis and overuse of health care.
- Reviews of public health interventions to reduce carbon emissions, promote clearer air and reduce plastic waste, including consideration of barriers and facilitators to implementation.
- Reviews of interventions to reduce the planetary impact of health systems by reducing energy use, plastic waste and carbon emissions of medical supplies, practices and drugs.
- Reviews of interventions to address the climate-related emergence of bacterial and viral infections, their transmission, and antimicrobial resistance.
Processes
Options for submitting reviews
- Pre-approved proposals. This implies that the Planetary Health Group has reviewed your proposal, supports its relevance, has made comments, assured that the team has covered the most important roles (clinical/public health expertise, methodological expertise and search expertise), and asked that all potential authors are aware of Cochrane's conflict of interest policy and authorship policy.
- You can submit your proposal directly to the Cochrane Central Editorial Service (CES) via Editorial Manager (they might then contact us to comment on this proposal in our role as “Proposal Editors”).
- You can contact Cochrane´s Commissioning Editor, Roses Parker (rparker @ cochrane dot org) to explore if she would be willing to commission this review topic.
If you are looking for co-authors and need to cover specific roles there are two options (and you can pursue both)
- Cochrane Planetary Health is a large but loose network of people. We could share your idea with our network to find out if anyone is working in this specific field and whether anyone would be available/interested to collaborate. To do so, we'd need to be clear about the context (i.e. whether funding is available or other support, expected timelines, roles, etc.). If you could write up a short text detailing what you are looking for, we can share it in our next newsletter.
- Cochrane Engage is Cochrane´s platform to identify people who are available for contributing to specific tasks in a Cochrane Review. You can search for people regarding specific tasks, language skills, expertise, etc.
If you would like to embark on the "Pre-approved proposals from Cochrane groups" route, we would need the following from you:
- Fill out the proposal form and send it back to us. We will review it, make comments and get back to you.
- As soon as we have approved, we will submit a "Cochrane Group Proposal (pre-approved) > Planetary Health" to Editorial Manager. If the proposal is accepted by the CES, a protocol will be created for you to start working on the draft with a clear submission deadline.