Cochrane-style review support, fully independent of Cochrane

Before anything else, the disclosure that shapes this whole service: we are not part of Cochrane. We have no affiliation with, endorsement from, or formal relationship to Cochrane, its review groups, or the Cochrane Library, and we do not author or publish official Cochrane reviews. Cochrane reviews are produced by registered author teams working with a Cochrane group under its editorial process, and no external company can sell you one. Anyone who implies otherwise is misleading you. The word style in this service’s name is deliberate: it describes a methodological standard we build to, never a relationship we hold.

What can legitimately be offered, and what this service is, is methodological work performed to the standard Cochrane has published. The Cochrane Handbook and the MECIR criteria are public documents that define, stage by stage, what the most rigorous form of intervention review looks like. We build reviews to that specification for clients publishing in ordinary peer-reviewed journals, and we carry the methodological workload for author teams whose review genuinely is headed to a Cochrane group, with the client remaining the author of record and dealing with their review group directly. Our plain-language explainer on what a Cochrane review actually is covers the distinction in more depth.

The phrase gold standard gets attached to Cochrane reviews because the standards are concrete and enforced, not because of the brand. Building to that specification means committing to specific practices at every stage, and each one adds real work that lighter reviews skip.

Underneath those four pillars sits the discipline that makes them credible: an audit trail. Every screening decision, every extracted value, every risk-of-bias judgement, and every certainty rating is recorded with its reasoning, so that when an editor, a peer reviewer, or a Cochrane group asks why a study was excluded or a rating downgraded, the answer is a document rather than a memory. That record is delivered to you in full at handover.

1. 1

   Protocol to MECIR

   We draft a pre-specified protocol whose question, eligibility criteria, outcomes, and planned synthesis satisfy the mandatory MECIR items before any searching begins.

2. 2

   Comprehensive, documented searching

   A sensitivity-first search across the required databases and trial registers, independently checked line by line and recorded so it can be reproduced exactly.

3. 3

   Dual screening, extraction, and appraisal

   Two reviewers independently screen, extract, and assess risk of bias with RoB 2 and ROBINS-I, with agreement statistics and a full audit trail of decisions.

4. 4

   Synthesis, GRADE, and reporting

   Meta-analysis where pooling is defensible, GRADE ratings with Summary of Findings tables, and a manuscript reported to PRISMA 2020 with the flow diagram and checklists complete.

The heavy stages are carried by the same specialist services that stand behind the rest of our practice: our literature search service designs and runs the search, our data extraction service builds the dual-extracted dataset, and our GRADE and Summary of Findings service produces the certainty ratings. Where your own team is doing part of the work, our independent second reviewer service supplies the duplicate screening and extraction the standards demand.

Some clients come to this service precisely because their review is destined for the Cochrane Library. Their title is registered with a review group, the editorial expectations are clear, and what they need is capacity: hundreds of hours of screening, extraction, appraisal, and analysis performed to the group’s standard. We carry that workload as methodological support. The arrangement is straightforward and honest: you remain the author of record, you communicate with your review group directly, every methodological decision is put to you for approval, and how any contribution is acknowledged is governed by your group’s authorship policies and your own judgement. We never contact a Cochrane group on your behalf or represent ourselves as part of your team.

The same machinery also serves reviews that will never touch the Cochrane Library but must withstand hostile peer review, such as reviews supporting guideline submissions, health technology assessments, or regulatory dossiers, where assessors increasingly measure submitted evidence against the Cochrane bar regardless of where it was published. And because Cochrane pioneered the living review model, teams that need their evidence kept current after publication can pair this service with our living systematic review service for scheduled updates after publication.

The honest trade-off is effort. A Cochrane-standard review costs more time and money than a lighter review because every safeguard is real work. The table shows what the standard buys you, so you can decide whether your question and destination journal warrant it. If they do not, we will recommend the lighter design rather than sell you rigour you do not need.

Every engagement ends in a complete evidentiary package, reported to the PRISMA 2020 standard, with the appraisal built on the RoB 2 instrument for trials and the ROBINS-I instrument for non-randomised studies. Whether the destination is a Cochrane group or a mainstream journal, the package is assembled so a methodological editor can trace every claim in the manuscript back to a documented decision.

• A pre-specified protocol satisfying the mandatory MECIR conduct items
• A comprehensive, reproducible search record across databases and trial registers
• Dual independent screening and extraction files with the full decision audit trail
• Outcome-level RoB 2 and ROBINS-I assessments with written justifications
• GRADE certainty ratings and Summary of Findings tables for every important outcome
• A PRISMA 2020 manuscript with flow diagram, checklists, and an item-by-item MECIR conformance report

We quote a fixed fee per project, agreed before any work begins, rather than charging by the hour. The number reflects the genuine load of the standard: the breadth of the question, the expected search yield, the number of outcomes carried through appraisal and GRADE, and whether we are delivering the whole review or supporting your author team through defined stages. Send the question, the intended destination, and any protocol or registered title you already have, and a PhD methodologist will return a plan, a timeline, and a fixed quote with no obligation to proceed. Support for author teams is priced by stage, so you pay only for the workload you actually hand over.