LibGuides: Covidence: Screening References

Title and Abstract Screening

Before you start screening, click:

Show criteria – Reveals list of inclusion and exclusion criteria
Show highlights – Highlights words related to the inclusion (green) and/or exclusion (red) criteria
View abstracts – Makes abstracts visible

References can be sorted by relevance, author, title, or date using the drop down on the upper right. We recommend using "Most recent."

The "Tags" option can be a valuable way to track subsets of articles (e.g., different populations, treatments, or article types), which can then filter you results by. Tags can be added to the list as you go.

You must click the box beside the article to add a tag.
You can have as many tags on one article as you want.

Keep in mind:

The "Maybe" response is essentially a "Yes." Both move the reference to the next phase and having one "Yes" and one "Maybe" on the same study is not considered a conflict.
If using dual screening, the two reviewers will only be able to see their own votes and will not know how the other one voted until the next phase of the review.

What if I need to undo a vote?

How do I resolve conflicts?

Full Text Review

See an overview of this phase.

The full text of each article must be uploaded before the review begins. This can be done:

One study at a time – Click “Add full text” beneath the reference for each article and choose the relevant file.
In bulk from a citation manager – See detailed instructions
Covidence will now automatically add the PDFs for some articles that are open access.
You may want to export the list of reference that you need full text for to a citation manager (which may be able to search for and add PDFs for some articles), Excel (to track the status of finding full text for each paper), or both.

Once full text has been added, you can access it by selecting “View full text” under the reference and then clicking on the PDF. It will open in a new tab or window (depending on your browser and settings).

Keep in mind:

Reviewers can only choose one reason for exclusion.
Reasons for exclusion can be added during screening by choosing “Edit this list” at the bottom of the dropdown.
- However, letting reviewers add reasons during screening is not advisable. This can result in reviewers including reasons that duplicate or overlap with existing answers or whose meaning is unclear.
If using dual screening, both reviewers must choose the same exclusion reason. Otherwise, it will count as a conflict.
- As for the title and abstract screening, the two reviewers will not know how the other voted until the next phase of the project.