The purpose of article screening is to remove studies that are clearly not related to your topic. Use your inclusion and exclusion criteria to first screen the titles and abstracts of your studies and determine whether they are relevant to your research question. Once titles and abstracts have been screened, the full text of the remaining articles must be retrieved and screened to decide whether the study fits the eligibility criteria of your synthesis.
It is likely that the the library will not have the full text of all of your articles available in our databases. This does not mean you should exclude those articles from your evidence synthesis. Instead, you can search for the full text outside the library website (e.g., on Google Scholar) and/or request the full text via interlibrary loan.
It is highly recommended that two independent reviewers screen all studies, resolving areas of disagreement by consensus or by a third party who is an expert in the field. Some popular evidence synthesis tools that can be used for article screening are listed below.
Covidence is an online systematic review management tool that allows for independent title/abstract screening, full text screening, data extraction, and risk of bias assessment. Although it is designed for use with systematic reviews, its utility translates fairly well to some other evidence synthesis methods, like scoping reviews.
Pricing: Other than a free trial with a limited number of records, Covidence does not offer student or educator discounts. Users pay an annual fee for access for 1–3 reviews.
Rayyan is an online tool that can be used for independent screening and coding of studies in an evidence synthesis. Rayyan will pre-populate inclusion and exclusion criteria, but you can customize these criteria. It also uses tagging and filtering to code and organize references. Title and abstract screening can be conducted in one project, while full-text screening can be conducted in a second project.
Pricing: The free version provides Rayyan's basic features for up to 3 projects. A student version includes some extra features, such as auto-resolving de-duplication and a PRISMA flow diagram generator, for about half the price of the professional version. The professional version includes all features for a monthly or annual fee.
Microsoft Excel is the most basic tool for the management of article screening. Lists of references can be exported from citation managers into Excel format for screening. Because it is easy to accidentally overwrite cells in Excel, it is recommended that you keep a clean original copy of your exported articles and work only on a second copy.