This workshop and the accompanying activities are based on UVic's Introduction to Covidence Workshop, which are licensed under a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC license.
You will create an account with Covidence in preparation for the Covidence workshop.
Go to the Covidence sign up page (this link is unique for UNBC users):
Enter your name and @unbc email address
Click Request invitation
Navigate to your email account
Accept the invitation in your email.
You will create a review with Covidence.
This review can be a review that you wish to create, or you can create a dummy review for learning purposes. You will need to name it something unique in the system.
1. If you have set up an account with Covidence, sign into Covidence. If you did not set up an account with Covidence, do so now by following the directions from the “Pre-Workshop Activity.”
2. From the Covidence homepage, you can open a new review by clicking Start a new review.
3. Fill in the form:
Note: You are given the option to use a personal account license (limited to one review) or the institutional license. Use the UNBC institutional account with unlimited reviews. Selecting the University of Northern BC Libraries does not make your review public. It is private only to you.
4.a. If you wish to add co-reviewers to this review, please continue. If you do not wish to add co-reviewers, STOP and proceed to Activity #2.
Covidence is ideal for collaboration, but it is not required to invite co-reviewers to your review.
1. From the Review summary page, click Settings.
2. On the Settings page under Reviewers, click on Invite another reviewer and enter the reviewer's first name and email address. An invitation email will be sent to that address. The reviewer can accept and join the review.
Note: You may invite co-reviewers at any stage in the review process, and you may invite co-reviewers using a non UNBC email address.
You will adjust review settings.
1. From the Review Summary page, click on the Settings button.
2. On the Settings page, navigate to Review Settings and add any desired information including:
Note: The Review Settings can be configured at any point during the review process.
3. Click Save.
If you are working alone, STOP and proceed to Activity #3.
If you are working alone, these settings are not relevant, as you are the sole reviewer. Proceed to Activity #3.
You can configure team settings now or at any stage of the review process. Team settings give you control of reviewers’ responsibilities. If you are collaborating with others, these settings are important to define the roles of your team members within the review. These can be changed at any point during the review process. Adding any information at this stage is optional.
1. From the Review Summary page, click on the Settings button.
2. On the Settings page, navigate to Team Settings to adjust the rules for:
3. Under the Title and abstract screening tab, select Manage rules.
4. The ALL STUDIES MUST BE SCREENED BY EITHER option allows you to define which team member must screen each study in the stage. You could use this functionality to ensure that an experienced reviewer(s) will screen all studies. Choose a reviewer by name or leave the option as Select a reviewer.
5. The CONFLICTS CAN BE RESOLVED BY option allows you to control who can resolve conflicts during the screening process. If no one is assigned to this role, then every member of the team will be able to resolve conflicts.
Choose a reviewer by name or leave the option as Select a reviewer.
6. Repeat these steps for Full text review if applicable.
Note: By default, a new review within Covidence is set up in dual screening mode. If you are working on the review alone, you can change to single reviewer mode. This will be explained in Activity #5.
After the review is created, you can customize criteria and exclusion reasons.
1.From the Review Summary page, click on the Settings button.
2. On the Settings page, click Eligibility criteria.
On this page you can:
3. Click Save
You can add or remove review study tags. Covidence comes pre-populated with two tags: Ongoing Study, and Awaiting Classification. They cannot be deleted. Once created and applied to studies, you can also filter by these tags. This can be especially useful to get a quick count of how many studies received each tag.
1. From the Review Summary page, click on the Settings button.
2. On the Settings page, click Study tags
3. Type in your study tag and click Add
You will import a reference file into Covidence for the purpose of title and abstract screening.
References can be imported using the EndNote XML format, the PubMed format, or the RIS text format.
1. From the Review Summary page and within the Import references tab, click the Import button.
2. Select Screen from the drop down list for Import in to
3. Download one or both of these sample .ris files.
4. Click Choose File and locate the reference file on your computer (likely in the Downloads folder). Click Open
5. Click import
6. Once your file is uploaded, you'll be redirected to the Review Summary page
7. Check your import by clicking the Import references tab. Here you can see how many references were imported and if any duplicates were removed. Click on View Details.
Covidence automatically detects duplicate references and flags them for removal.
Check the duplicates. Click on the blue text Duplicates to view the duplicate records.
If Covidence incorrectly detected a duplicate, you can choose Not a duplicate. In this case, the DOIs are the same. This is a duplicate.
Note: To identify duplicate references, Covidence checks the title, year, and volume - all of which must match exactly, and the authors must be similar.
You will screen title and abstracts to determine if they should be included in your review.
1. From the Review Summary page and within the Title and abstract screening tab, click the Continue button.
2. If you are using the sample references file, imagine you are conducting a literature review on knee pain and running.
Ask yourself the question: Does this reference relate to knee pain and running?
Use the NO MAYBE YES voting buttons to answer that question.
References for which all reviewers cast “Yes” or “Maybe” will be moved to “Full text screening.” References with all reviewers cast “No” will be moved to “Irrelevant.” References without consensus (in dual reviewer mode) will be moved to “Resolve Conflicts.”
3. If you have multiple reviewers working on this review and you are the first person casting a vote on a reference, then the reference will move to your Awaiting other reviewer list.
By default, a new review within Covidence is set up in dual screening mode, so that each reference requires two votes in order to move forward in your review. These votes must be cast by two different reviewers. 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 working on the review alone or only want one vote to be required to move a reference forward, then change to single reviewer mode.
1. From the Review Summary page, click Settings. Scroll to Review Settings. For Reviewers required for screen, select 1 from the drop-down menu. Screening and Full Text Review each have independent reviewer mode settings.
2. If you want one vote to be required to move a reference forward for full text review, you can also select 1 for Reviewers required for full text review.
3. Click Save
If you are using the dual reviewer mode, you may have conflicts if one reviewer chooses "yes" and the other chooses "no."
If you designated one person to Resolve conflicts in Team settings, they will be the only person able to use the Resolve conflicts button. Otherwise, all team members will have the ability to resolve conflicts.
1. Select Resolve conflicts button from Title and abstract screening.
2. Make your final decision about the reference by choosing Yes or No.
3. Continue until there are no more conflicts.
You will import the full text of articles in preparation for full text screening.
1. From the Review Summary page and within the Full text review tab, click the Continue button.
NOTE: If the Continue button is not visible, ensure you are working in single reviewer mode - see Activity #4
2. Before you can start Full text review, you want to import the full text of the articles into Covidence. This means that you will need to import the full text of articles (PDFs) for every reference. If you are using your own references, you must obtain the PDFs of the articles. If you are using the sample references file, download the PDF for the article whose full text you wish to review. Click the hyperlinks to download the PDFs.
3. Click Upload Full Text under the article you wish to add.
4. Click Choose a File and navigate to the previously saved PDF file from your computer.
Note: Covidence now supports bulk upload of PDFs when used alongside Zotero or EndNote. This workshop will not go over that process in detail, as it requires use of a citation manager, but you should employ this new functionality when you are doing a review consisting of 15 or more references. You can read more about this feature here.
You will screen the full text of the articles to determine if they should be included in your review.
1. From the Review Summary page and within the Full text review tab, click the Continue button.
2. Review the articles by opening the PDF of the references. Vote either INCLUDE or EXCLUDE for each article.
If you are using the sample references file, imagine you are conducting a literature review on knee pain and running.
Ask yourself the question: Does this reference relate to knee pain and running?
Use the INCLUDE or EXCLUDE voting buttons to answer that question
3. . If you vote to EXCLUDE an article, you will be asked to Select a reason from a drop down menu of exclusion reasons provided by Covidence.
Note: If you are the first person casting a vote on an article, then the article 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 depends on its previous votes.
You have complete control over your exclusion list. Edit the list while performing full text review.
1. 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. Select Edit this list option at the end of the exclusion list.
2. 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.
3. Once you've added all of your exclusion reasons, click Done to save your work.
You will use Covidence to collect data from selected references and complete quality assessment forms.
1. From the Review Summary page and within the Data Extraction tab, click x studies to extract.
2. Click Create data extraction template.
3. Customize the existing template to include relevant fields by editing existing fields or adding new ones. You can click on the fields to edit or delete, click on the plus sign to add a field, and drag and drop to re-order. Changes update in the Preview screen on the right.
4. Click Save as Draft if you have more edits to make, or Publish if your form is ready for use.
5. Repeat the same process for Quality Assessment if applicable.
1. From the Review Summary page and within the Data Extraction tab, click Continue.
2. Choose a reference and click Begin extraction.
2. You are now able to select text from the pdf on the left and paste into the data extraction form on the right.
3. You are able to toggle between Data extraction and Quality Assessment if you published both forms. You can save as you go. Click Complete when you are finished the forms for this reference.
1. From the Review Summary page, click Export.
2. To download form data, select the appropriate choice from the drop down menu under Extraction and click Prepare file.
3. When ready, the file will appear below. Click Download to download the data file.
Done!
UNBC Covidence Guide - Basic info about getting started in Covidence.
UNBC Knowledge Synthesis Guide - An overview of the knowledge synthesis process in a step-by-step guide.
Covidence 101 - Do you have questions about how to get started on your first project or review? Then please join this monthly training webinar by Covidence which includes a live demo
Covidence Support Knowledge Base - Covidence provides pages of useful information including short video tutorials