Those conducting the screening process must have access to a citation management system for the entirety of the review. It is also recommended to utilize a citation management system that will be accessible to screeners after the review, since reviews are often updated. There are two stages to the screening process as identified in the PRISMA flow diagram.
Check out what Cochrane has to say about the screening and selection process.
This is where after database records have been weeded of duplicates (i.e. deduplication), 2-3 reviewers will screen the records. Reviewers will examine titles and abstracts only to minimize the risk of various biases such as publication bias.
For the second level screeners identify which studies are eligible for the review. This is the stage where the entire article is examined to determine its eligibility. Critical details are examined such as whether the populations in the studies meet age or gender criteria; if the prespecified dose for the intended intervention meets the inclusion criteria; and whatever else was predefined in the inclusion and exclusion criteria.
After the secondary screening stage, use Critical Appraisal tools during the Evaluation process.
The systematic review process can result in thousands of references. We have compiled some resources and tools to help guide and speed up the process. Additionally these tools can also be used for other types of reviews if what you are working on does not meet the specific criteria for a systematic review.
Please note that the Texas Medical Center Library may not have access to all of these tools and may not be able to provide technical support. Reach out to your intuition's IT department to see what software you have access to or what you can get access to through your affiliation organization.
Covidence is an online systematic review program developed by, and for, systematic reviewers. It can import citations from reference managers like EndNote, facilitate the screening of abstracts and full-text, populate risk of bias tables, assist with data extraction, and export to all common formats.
Covidence is a core component of Cochrane's review production toolkit and has recently also been endorsed by JBI.
See what Cochrane has to say about Covidence and the automating the selection process.
Which version of Covidence is best for you?
Rayyan is a free online tool that can be used for screening and coding of studies in a systematic review. It uses tagging and filtering to code and organize references. See what the Journal of Graduate Medical Education has to say about Rayyan.
EndNote
is a reference management tool which helps you to save and manage bibliographic references. Neither the SPH nor the TMC Library supports EndNote, however, we recognize that a number of our users have an EndNote account. In order for EndNote to work properly with TMC Library Resources, users must include ezproxyhost.library.tmc.edu as the OpenID.
For a tutorial on EndNote basics check out this tutorial from the TMC Library below!
RefWorks is a Web-based research management, writing, and collaboration tool designed to help researchers at all levels easily gather, organize, store, and share all types of information and to instantly generate citations and bibliographies. See our Refworks Libguides for instructions and tutorials.