Background:

The Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH) consistently employs a rigorous, multifaceted editorial process to ensure the quality and uniformity of its information materials. CADTH uses different types of editing expertise, internal and external resources, a corporate style guide, and ongoing interaction with researchers to ensure information products produced across five directorates are consistent, audience-specific and of high quality.

Objectives:

To provide an efficient, robust editorial process for documents written by more than 100 CADTH staff and numerous external authors, thereby ensuring consistent, high quality publications.

Methods:

CADTH produces a range of documents including comprehensive health technology assessments, health technology
overviews, newsletters, presentations, business plans and other corporate material, all of which benefit from a systematic, multi-phased editing process. The process encompasses structural (pre-production), copy, and content review editing. CADTH engages a variety of resources including both in-house and contract editors to meet its editorial needs. For major research publications, CADTH's editorial involvement begins early in the process with a senior editor who provides input to authors on ways to structure a document recognizing audience needs. Authors benefit from the organization's writing style guide that serves as a grammar, style and spelling resource. Once written and submitted for production, a document is formally tracked through the editorial process. Authors and editors maintain close communications throughout the editing process.

Results:

CADTH, a producer of high quality clinical reviews and economic assessments since 1989, has published more than 1,000 documents. CADTH's structured, multi-phased editorial process, which includes author involvement and support, ensures consistency and quality across its publications.

Conclusions:

Documents with consistent structure and tone aid target audiences in receiving and digesting information. CADTH's structured editorial process ensures the information it publishes is academically sound as well as comprehensible for its key end-users, Canada's healthcare decision makers.