Systematic Reviews

"This template provides general guidance for those who are undertaking systematic reviews. It is suggested that different team members contribute to the DMP based on the stage of the review process in which they will be involved in creating data."

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What is Covidence 

Covidence (rhymes with Providence) is a web-based tool that will help you through the process of screening your references, data extraction, and keeping track of your work. It is particularly useful for researchers conducting a systematic review, meta-analysis or clinical guideline. 

How to join Jefferson’s Covidence institutional license

You can create your personal sign-in information with Covidence before or after joining the institutional subscription. To request access to the institutional account in Covidence, you must use your current Jefferson email address (@jefferson.edu or @students.jefferson.edu).  

Creating a review using the Jefferson unlimited license

After clicking the link “Create new review” you will have the option to use your personal account license or select the Jefferson account. Reviews created under the institutional license will be visible to the administrators of the Jefferson Covidence account. Your personal account review(s) will only be seen by you.

Once you have created a review or accepted an invitation to another Jefferson account review, the title will appear in a separate section on your account homepage:

Working with review team members from Jefferson or other institutions?

1. Once a review is created, you are able to add co-reviewers.

2. Navigate to Settings > Reviewers.

3. Click on “Invite another reviewer” and enter your reviewers' first names and email addresses to invite them

Happy Reviewing!

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A systematic review requires collaboration of multiple authors who review citations exported from each database into a bibliographic management tool such as RefWorks or EndNote.  Organization of citations in RefWorks can follow the PRISMA Flow Diagram which depicts a natural flow of citations, starting from raw numbers of retrieved results to the final set of articles included in the systematic review.

• The citation manager's labeled folders in this chart organizes references according to the PRISMA 2020 Flow Diagram with minor variations. For simplicity in this example, the reviewer searched two databases: PubMed and Scopus (labeled "1...'), but no registries (e.g., clinicaltrials.gov) and did not consider ineligible records identified by automation tools or "other reasons." These parameters may be customized depending on the research question and objectives. The folder's number prefixes facilitate citation manager organization and denote the records progress through the flow diagrams' workflow. For brevity, the example Table omits these prefixes in the Description and Process column.
• The references from these two database folders are then merged (combined) to the "1 Duplicates Removed" folder where de-duplication is completed. The number of duplicates is presented in the flow diagram. 
• The "2 Records screened" number represents the initially merged database records minus the number of duplicates, which are then screened via title and abstract reflective of the inclusion and exclusion eligibility criteria. 
• The "2 Records screened" citations passing the eligibility criteria are added to the "3 Reports sought" folder. The records which did not pass the eligibility criteria are added to the "2 Records excluded" folder. 
• Full text for the "3 Reports sought" citations which are successfully identified are assigned to the "4 Reports assessed" folder. If full text is unavailable for any citations in the "3 Reports sought" folder, this number is added to the "3 Reports not retrieved" folder. Please note: PRISMA 2020 distinguishes between records (e.g., the database record with title and abstract) and reports (e.g., the full text of the article). 
• Folder "5 Reports included" consists of the final set of citations in the systematic review from the "4 Reports assessed" folder which passed the eligibility criteria. In select cases multiple reports will be published from a single study; provide the total number of studies included in the review, too.  

Create Folders to Follow PRISMA 2020. Include the number prefixes.

Mapping those 8 RefWorks folders to a PRISMA Flow Diagram: 

EndNote 20 can be used to deduplicate article records exported from multiple scholarly literature databases. You can install EndNote 20 through Jefferson at the link below. Then follow the step-by-step walkthrough.