A draft protocol will be submitted within three months of the proposal acceptance, for editorial review. 

It is at this stage that CIS’ are likely to work with authors to draft a search strategy for one of the databases, to be included in the published protocol. It is also the CIS’ job to check the “Search methods for identification of studies” section of the protocol and advise on resources to search.

After all editorial comments have been addressed by the authors; the final protocol will be published.