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.
Areas for which we are currently seeking contributors:
- Secondary prevention of ischaemic cardiac events
- Acute myocardial infarction
- Primary prevention: hypertension
- Polycystic ovary syndrome
- Bacterial conjunctivitis
However, we are always looking for contributors, so do not let this list discourage you.
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.
- Being able to use email for correspondence and file attachments.
- 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 every 12 months 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 12-24 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.