The Cochrane Peer Review Policy 2018 is currently being implemented across all Cochrane groups, and will be fully integrated by January 2019.

You can find the peer review policy here, and the peer review policy guidance document here.

If you kindly agreed to referee one of our portocols or reviews, you will be asked to complete and return the checklist that we will send to you.  The checklist provides a structured series of questions to guide you through the review process . Our review process is open, which means your comments will not be anonymised before sending to authors. We send the final version of the protocol or review to all peer reviewers along with the authors' responses to the comments before the publication of the review itself.

The following checklists are available, and will be updated from time to time:

    •    External peer review of protocols
    •    External peer review of reviews
    •    External peer review of overviews of reviews [protocols]
    •    External peer review of overviews of reviews [review]
    •    Consumer review of reviews
    •    Consumer review of protocols
    •    Guidance on using the consumer reviewer checklist

We are grateful to all who gave peer review feedback on protocols and reviews during 2021.