Covidence

The first step in the review is to do what you can to weed out the results that you can quickly determine are or are not connected to your study. This is done by screening the titles and abstracts.  This step should have at least two members of the team to review all title and abstracts of the articles to determine its relevance to the research question and the review parameters. If there is a disagreement between the two reviewers a third person should be in charge of resolving the conflict.

On the review home page you will see an overview of the status of the screening. Progress is shown for things like how many studies you have screened, the number of studies left, and the number of conflicts that exist. 

1. In the “Title and abstract screening” box on the left hand side you can see how many articles have been screened. On the right hand side you can see what you have done in this stage. 

2. When screening you can either click on either spot in the picture below to see what references you can still screen.

3. In this window you  and other team members will vote No, Maybe, or Yes for any study. Studies receiving a "Yes" and "Maybe" votes will move on to the next stage of the review. Studies with a "No" vote will remain in the current stage. Any studies that has a conflict (one person votes yes and another votes no) will have to be resolved before moving to the next review stage. You can add notes to the resource telling your team why you made that choice.

• No - means the article does not meet the inclusion criteria and should be excluded from the review.
• Maybe- means that there is not enough information at this stage to make a finial decision.
• Yes - means that the article meets the inclusion criteria and should be moved to the full text screening stage. 

For more information about how articles are moved through the review process please see "How do references move through a review?"

This video provides an overview of the title and abstract screening process.