Become a contributor or peer reviewer
Introduction
Although Clinical Evidence is commission based, we would like to hear from people who are interested in contributing as authors or peer reviewers.
Clinicians and epidemiologists with experience in evidence-based medicine are required. You must have the ability to write in a concise and structured way. We need new authors for existing reviews and future reviews.
Take a look at the profiles below to see more about what is required to become a contributor or peer reviewer.
Clinical Evidence has over 500 peer reviewers and 500 authors who regularly contribute by writing and reviewing content, ensuring optimum clinical relevance and clarity is maintained. We would like to thank our existing body of authors, peer reviewers, and advisory board for their continued commitment and hard work in contributing to Clinical Evidence. We also encourage new reviewers to join our team by filling out the peer review questionnaire.
Become a Contributor
A range of systematic reviews, new and existing, need authors. We seek clinicians and epidemiologists with experience in evidence based medicine, with the ability to write in a concise and structured way.
Profile
Contributors should fulfil certain requirements including:
- Having relevant clinical experience, or at least being paired with a clinical co-author.
- Having fairly advanced experience in epidemiology or statistics. For example, understanding the difference between different kinds of study designs (for example, cohort designs versus case control designs versus RCTs); how to document and interpret confidence intervals and P-values; and the difference between a systematic review and non-systematic review. Contributors also need to be able to manipulate different measures of risk, such as turning absolute risks into absolute risk reductions, relative risks, numbers needed to treat, and so forth.
- Having good access to the literature in order to obtain full text copies of articles identified by the Clinical Evidence search.
- Being able to deliver drafts reliably to schedule, as we face very tight publication schedules.
- Being able to assign copyright to Clinical Evidence.
- To declare any competing interests.
- To standardise our commissioning process, we perform a literature search on all potential contributors; therefore having published papers in evidence based medicine would be desirable.
Role
Being a contributor involves:
- Selecting from a validated, screened search (performed by in-house Information Specialists) epidemiologically sound studies for inclusion.
- Documenting your decisions about which studies to include on an inclusion and exclusion form, which we keep on file.
- Writing the text to a highly structured template (about 1500-3000 words), using evidence from the final studies chosen, within 8-10 weeks of receiving the literature search.
- Working with Clinical Evidence editors to ensure that the final text meets epidemiological and style standards.
- Updating the text regularly using any new, sound evidence that becomes available. The Clinical Evidence in-house team will conduct the searches for contributors; your task is simply to filter out high quality studies and incorporate them in the existing text.
- To expand the review to include a new question about once every 24 months.
What to do next
If you would like to become a contributor for Clinical Evidence you may view sample contributions here on the website, and choose a systematic review from our current list. Alternatively you may wish to propose a systematic review not currently on the list.
Please then contact us , enclosing a copy of your CV (highlighting your experience in evidence based medicine/epidemiology) and clearly stating the review you would like to cover. We will then contact you in due course if we wish to discuss your interest further.
Thank you again for your interest in Clinical Evidence.
Become a Peer Reviewer
We are always looking for peer reviewers in all specialties to add to our database.
Profile
You will be health care professionals or epidemiologists with experience in evidence based medicine. As a peer reviewer you would be asked for your views on the clinical relevance, validity and accessibility of specific systematic reviews within Clinical Evidence, and their usefulness to the intended audience (international generalists and health care professionals, possibly with limited statistical knowledge). Reviews are usually 2000-3000 words in length. The peer review process takes place throughout the year, and our turnaround time for each review is ideally 10-14 days.
Important note
A suitable peer reviewer would need to understand the following:
- That authors have been asked to summarise the type of evidence and what it finds.
- That this is not a traditional textbook chapter or narrative style review.
- That in order to undertake this work, you will be confident about:
- The difference between a randomised controlled trial, a cohort study, and a case control study
- What makes a systematic review systematic
- What is meant by relative risk, absolute risk, number needed to treat, and confidence interval, and how these are calculated
- What is meant by a power calculation and how this relates to clinically important differences between interventions
What to do next
If you are interested in becoming a peer reviewer for Clinical Evidence, please complete the peer review questionnaire for our consideration.
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