What Cochrane’s authorship policy actually covers
Cochrane Reviews are governed by a formal, published authorship policy administered through the Cochrane Editorial and Publishing Policy Resource and reflected in Cochrane Library editorial policy and the RevMan (Review Manager) production system. This is separate from the question of how rotating contributor teams are credited on a living systematic review (an LSR that is updated continuously as new evidence emerges) — that scenario is covered in CASRAI’s Living Systematic Review Authorship guide. This guide instead covers the baseline rules that apply to any Cochrane Review, living or not: who qualifies as an author, who decides byline order, and what has to happen procedurally when the author list changes on an updated version.
Cochrane’s four criteria for authorship
Cochrane requires that everyone listed as an author on a Cochrane Review meet all four of its authorship criteria, which mirror the ICMJE authorship test used across biomedical publishing: substantial contribution to the conception or design of the work, or to the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; final approval of the version to be published; and agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work. Cochrane’s editorial policy is explicit on both directions of this test — everyone who meets all four criteria should be listed as an author, and no one should be listed who does not. See CASRAI’s ICMJE Authorship Criteria guide for the full four-part test as ICMJE itself defines it.
Cochrane’s guidance also names methodological specialists, such as statisticians and information specialists, as a group whose contribution is often substantial enough to meet the criteria but historically under-credited. Where a statistician or information specialist has been substantively involved in designing or executing the review’s methods — not simply consulted briefly — Cochrane’s position is that they should be evaluated against the same four criteria as any other contributor, and included as an author if they meet them, rather than defaulted into an acknowledgment.
Who decides byline order
Cochrane does not impose a fixed formula for author order (it does not, for example, mandate that the most senior author appear last). Instead, its policy treats author order as the collective responsibility of the author team itself: the authors decide among themselves who meets the criteria and in what order they should be listed. Practically, this happens in RevMan, where the review’s “About this review > Authors” section lets the corresponding or lead author reorder the byline by drag-and-drop or with move-up/move-down controls. The documented expectation is that order should never be changed without informing the whole author team first — a transparency requirement that sits alongside, not instead of, the formal sign-off described below.
For the role of the person coordinating this process on a given review, see CASRAI’s Corresponding Author term and Corresponding Author Responsibilities guide, and, for how this compares with a publisher that names an explicit accountability role, BMJ’s Authorship Guidelines, which layer a named guarantor and transparency declaration on top of the same ICMJE baseline.
Byline changes on an updated review: the Changes in Authorship form
This is the part of Cochrane’s policy that most directly answers “what happens to the byline when a review is updated.” Cochrane Reviews are periodically updated as new trials are published, and the author team on an update is frequently not identical to the author team on the original review or the previous update — people join, people leave, and roles shift as new methodological work (updated searches, new risk-of-bias assessments, new analyses) is done. Cochrane’s policy requires a formal, signed Changes in Authorship form whenever the author byline changes on a Cochrane Review, published or unpublished. The form has to be signed by everyone affected by the change — every author being added, every author being removed, and every author whose position in the byline is being reordered — to confirm they agree with it. This applies to any authorship change, not only ones tied to a scheduled update, and it is checked editorially before the revised version proceeds.
In practice, this means byline order on a Cochrane update is not simply re-derived by applying the four criteria fresh each time (though that assessment still has to happen first, per the section above) — it is finalized only once every current and former author named in the change has signed off in writing. That combination of (1) a substantive ICMJE-style criteria check and (2) a procedural, signed consent step for any resulting byline change is the specific mechanism Cochrane uses that goes beyond the general “reassess against ICMJE criteria” approach many journals rely on.
How this differs from living systematic review crediting
The mechanics above apply to Cochrane Reviews generally, including the periodic (non-continuous) updates that most standard Cochrane Reviews go through. Living systematic reviews are a specific, more demanding case within that same framework: because an LSR is updated on a rolling basis, often every few months, as new evidence surfaces, LSR teams typically split into a persistent core/maintaining team and rotating contributors who join for specific update cycles. CASRAI’s Living Systematic Review Authorship guide covers that team-structure question, including the guarantor role and how contribution is reassessed version-by-version, in depth. The Changes in Authorship form described above is the procedural layer underneath that reassessment: whenever an LSR update team’s actual author list changes, the same signed-consent requirement applies as it would on any other Cochrane update.
Practical checklist for author teams
- Confirm every named author, on the original review and on each update, meets all four Cochrane/ICMJE criteria — substantial contribution, drafting or critical revision, final approval, and accountability.
- Evaluate statisticians and information specialists against the same four criteria rather than defaulting them to an acknowledgment.
- Reach author-team consensus on order before submitting an update; do not reorder unilaterally.
- Complete and collect signatures on a Changes in Authorship form for any addition, removal, or reordering, from every author affected by the change, before the updated version is submitted.
- For living systematic reviews specifically, track which named individuals contributed to which version, since someone can legitimately be an author on one update and not the next.
Frequently asked questions
Does Cochrane use the ICMJE criteria exactly, or its own version?
Cochrane’s authorship policy is built on the same four-part ICMJE test used across biomedical publishing: substantial contribution, drafting/critical revision, final approval, and accountability. Cochrane applies this test directly rather than substituting a different standard.
Who has to sign the Changes in Authorship form?
Every author affected by the change — anyone being added, anyone being removed, and anyone whose position in the byline is being reordered — has to sign to confirm they agree with it.
Can the corresponding author change byline order without asking the rest of the team?
No. Cochrane’s guidance treats author order as a collective decision, and its documentation is explicit that order should not be changed without informing the whole author team, on top of the formal sign-off requirement above.
Does this apply only to living systematic reviews?
No. The four-criteria test and the Changes in Authorship form apply to any Cochrane Review that gets updated, not only living systematic reviews. LSRs simply update more frequently and often use a rotating-contributor team structure, which is why CASRAI covers that scenario in a separate, more detailed guide.
Are statisticians and information specialists usually named as authors on Cochrane Reviews?
They should be, whenever their involvement in the review’s methods is substantial enough to meet all four authorship criteria. Cochrane’s guidance treats this the same way it treats any other contributor role: authorship is based on meeting the criteria, not on job title.
Sources
This guide is based on Cochrane’s own published policy documentation: the Cochrane Editorial and Publishing Policy Resource’s authorship criteria page and Cochrane Library editorial policy on authorship, and the RevMan Knowledge Base documentation on adding, removing, and reordering authors, both maintained at documentation.cochrane.org, together with the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions.
