Medical Sciences Library
Reviews generally follow the same workflow, regardless of the type of review:
Step 1 is the title and abstract screening phase (seen as "Screening" in the diagram below). Here, reviewers will screen the titles and abstracts of the articles that have been found and decide if the article will move forward or be eliminated.
Step 2 is the full text screening phase. Here, reviewers will read the full text of the articles that have made it past the title and abstract screening phase and decide whether or not they will be included. If they are to be discarded, a reason must be given. For example, the study design is wrong, the patient population does not meet the pre-established criteria, etc.
Step 3 is data extraction. Once the full text of the article has been assessed and the reviewers decide to keep the article, it will move to the data extraction phase. Data extraction is different for every project. Some basic information is collected such as the setting, methodology, interventions, etc. Covidence does have data extraction templates (more information in this guide under Data Extraction) that are customizable to the review project.
Below is a graphic representation of the screening process.
As your team makes decisions on articles, they move through the review process. Articles will either move on to the next section in the screening process, be eliminated, or be put into the resolve conflicts section where a member of the team will make the final decision on the inclusion or exclusion of that article.
https://support.covidence.org/help/how-references-move-through-a-review
In the Title & Abstract screening section, your choices are Yes, No, and Maybe. All reviewing is blinded, so you won't be able to see a teammates vote until you have voted. This helps reduce bias in the voting process. If you are the first person casting a vote, the article moves to the "Awaiting another Reviewer" section. Once the second vote is cast, the article will move on according to those votes:
Any conflicts that arise will go to the Resolve Conflicts box where a designated reviewer will cast a deciding vote. This designated reviewer can be part of the larger review team, or an outside expert who is brought in only in the case of a conflict.
You do not need to wait for all the articles to be screened from Title & Abstract to begin the Full text screening process. Once there are articles there, you can begin.
Covidence will pull available open access articles automatically. Any missing articles can be added individually or in bulk. Don't forget add the LibKey extension to your browser to make downloading from TAMU sources easier!
If you are needing to bulk import missing full texts, see How to bulk import PDFs instructions from Covidence.