Tools for de-duplication

When systematically searching several databases, some of the references will be found in several of the databases, resulting in duplicates. These can be removed using a de-duplication process via a reference management program such as Endnote. There are different methods for removing duplicates in Endnote.

Find out more about Endnote

De-duplication Alfasoft

Relevance screening from inclusion and/or exclusion critera

If you use PICO, SPICE or similar, you also decide which inclusion and exclusion criteria you should have. Some of the criteria are included in the search strategy, but others are sorted out during the relevance screening. How you structure your question thus affects what will be your inclusion and exclusion criteria.

Inclusion criteria will be those studies that meet the PICO or SPICE, while exclusion criteria will consequently be those studies that do not meet PICO or SPICE. Inclusion criteria can be:

Population
Language
Geography
Age
Gender/sex
Time/date limitations
Study Design (qualitative or Quantitative, RCTs)

Tools and software to help your selection process

You can use a program or tool to speed up the selection process. You put all the references you want to review into the program, usually as a RIS file from Endnote, in some cases you can import files directly from the database. You then choose which studies you want to include or exclude, and the program will, using machine learning, mark words in the title and abstract of the studies that it thinks are important for you to want to include or exclude, which speeds up the process.

Covidence

Covidence is a web-based tool that streamlines the systematic literature review process. It supports de-duplication, title, abstract and full-text review, risk of bias assessment, extraction of study characteristics and results, and export of data and references.

Malmö University Library has a license for a maximum of 40 reviews in total per year for the entire university. We offer Covidence to doctoral students and researchers at Malmö university, but you can invite others to participate in the project.

Covidence

Rayyan

Rayyan is offered free of charge with some functionality, there is also a possibility to pay for more features. In Rayyan, you can have three literature reviews active at the same time, for free.

Rayyan

There are also other programs with the same functionality, such as AS Review, SR Accelerator and Pico Portal.

Assess the risk of bias in the included studies

To Assess risk of bias in the included studies you can use a template. which one you choose depends on the study design of the included studies.

CASP checklists

Joanna Briggs Institute Critical Appraisal Tools

Risk of bias tools