Once you have imported your references into Covidence you're ready to start screening.

To screen by title and abstract click 'Continue' under title and abstract screening, from your Review Summary page. Make your decision by voting on the Yes, Maybe or No buttons for each reference.

By default, a new review within Covidence is set up in dual screening mode (more information here), so that each citation requires two votes in order to move forward in your review.

These votes must be cast by a different two people each time. All voting is blinded, meaning your colleagues will be unable to see your votes until they've cast their own, and vice versa. 

If you are the first person casting a vote on a reference, then the citation will move to your 'Awaiting other reviewer' list.

If you are the second person casting a vote on a reference, then it will move forward. Where the reference is moved forward to depends on its previous votes; please see the article and flowchart here for more details. 

Sorting options

You can use the option menus at the top right of the screening list to adjust how your references display during screening. The default setting for display is 25 references, but this can be increased to 50 or 100. The default setting for order is 'Most relevant', but this can be changed by each author independently to display references by 'Author', 'Title', or 'Most recent'.

You can start Full text review as soon as there are studies available in the Full text review tool.

Covidence automatically adds the full text of open access articles when a study moves into Full text review.

Customizing exclusion reasons

It is required at the full text screening level to indicate why a reference is being excluded.

You have complete control over your list of exclusion reasons. Covidence currently has two ways to customize the list of exclusion reasons.

1. Edit the list from the Settings area
   Click the Settings tool from your review dashboard, then click Criteria & exclusion reasons.  Click the Manage exclusion reasons button, located second in this list.
    
2. Edit the list whilst performing full text review
   When you vote to exclude a study you will have to select the reason why you feel this study should be excluded. To do this, first click the Exclude button for the study you want to exclude. This action will reveal a dropdown menu asking you to specify your reason for excluding the study. Select the Edit this list option from the dropdown. You'll then see a pop-up prompting you to add an exclusion reason. Enter your exclusion reason in the text box provided and click the Add button. Your new exclusion reason will appear at the top of the list below. Once you've added all of your exclusion reasons, click Done to save your work, dismiss the pop-up and return to Covidence full text review.