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Welcome to the Covidence Research Guide
Carleton University now has an institutional subscription to Covidence, a web-based software platform that streamlines the production of knowledge syntheses. While Covidence specifically mentions systematic reviews, it can also be used for comprehensive literature reviews, scoping reviews, meta-syntheses, meta-narratives, and other types of literature reviews. It can be used in any discipline including health sciences, social sciences, environmental sciences, biology, management, education, and others.
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Streamline your review with Covidence.docx
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- What is Covidence?
- Covidence is a web-based software platform that streamlines the production of evidence theses including systematic and scoping reviews. It supports citation screening, full-text review, risk of bias assessment, extraction of study characteristics and outcomes, and the export of data and references.
- Who can use Covidence? Why would I want to use it?
- Anyone with a Carleton University email account can have an institutional account to Covidence. It should be noted that, while Covidence specifically mentions systematic reviews, it can also be used for comprehensive literature reviews, scoping reviews, meta-syntheses, meta-narratives, and other types of literature reviews.
- How can I get an institutional account with Covidence?
- Carleton University affiliated users can sign up for the institutional subscription at the Carleton University's Covidence account, logging in with your Carleton University email (example: johnsmith@cunet.carleton.ca, johnsmith@cmail.carleton.ca, john.smith@carleton.ca)
- How do I set up a new review with an unlimited account?
- Once you have set up your Carleton University account, you will see the option to use the organizational access to create a new review. There are step-by-step instructions on creating new reviews and using Covidence through Carleton University's institutional subscription on the Carleton University page in the Covidence Knowledge Base. More information on Covidence can be found on their general knowledge base page.
- What if I already have a review currently using Covidence?
- Reviews linked to existing Carleton University members (who have accounts using their carleton.ca email) will automatically be migrated to the institutional full access subscription in the near future. There will be no loss of data or access. In fact, users with trial accounts will gain access to the functions of the full version of Covidence, including the ability to invite unlimited reviewers and bulk imports of PDFs. The migration hasn't begun yet, but will be done on the back end by Covidence, to ensure a seamless transition. This will occur after consultation with existing Carleton University account users.
- What if I used a different email (gmail, etc.) to sign up with Covidence? Can these reviews still use the institutional license?
- All Carleton University affiliated individuals are covered with this license. If you have a review that is linked to an email that is not carleton.ca, contact cuess@library.carleton.ca. An invitation will be sent for institutional access.
- All new accounts with Covidence should be set up using your carleton.ca email.
- I am starting a review with colleagues from other institutions. Can we use the Carleton University institutional account for this inter-organizational review?
- Yes, any Carleton University user connected with a Carleton University institutional account may create new reviews and invite unlimited reviewers from anywhere in the world. However, due to copyright laws and licensing restrictions, there are restrictions on sharing full-text articles with individuals who are not associated with the Carleton University. Please contact cuess@library.carleton.ca, if you have any questions.
- NOTE: Carleton University reviewers are cautioned to not upload the full-text of articles obtained through the Carleton University Library subscriptions or document delivery to Covidence due to licensing and copyright restrictions. Full text of publicly available articles may be uploaded. Please contact copyright@library.carleton.ca with any questions regarding sharing licensed intellectual property.
- Creating a Covidence review
- To create a new review in Covidence:
- You need to first sign in to the Carleton University's Covidence account.
- Select 'Create a New Review' and follow the prompts.
- When asked 'Which account...", select "Carleton University". (This will enable you to invite multiple co-reviewers.)
- Video: Creating a new review in Covidence
- To create a new review in Covidence:
- Establishing settings
- Once you have created a review, it's time to visit the Settings.
- Here you can:
- Invite others (including co-reviewers) to your review.
- Enter keywords, which will then be highlighted in your the title or abstract.
- Determine team roles for screening.
- Establish exclusion criteria for the second level of screening.
- Video: Title and Abstract - Screening and Settings
- Importing to Covidence
- You're now ready to import your references from your citation manager:
- Select Import studies > Import to Screen.
- 'Browse' and select the file exported from your citation manager/database. Covidence supports three formats:
- EndNote XML
- PubMed text format
- RIS text format
- Select 'Import'.
- You can save your references in your citation manager before uploading them into Covidence. Our citation management guide can help you decide which citation manager to use.
- Video: Importing References
- You're now ready to import your references from your citation manager:
- Checking duplicates
- After completing your reference import, Covidence will search for duplicates. If any are identified, these will automatically be suppressed and a 'Duplicates' button will appear.
- You can check that Covidence De-duplicated correctly by:
- Selecting the Duplicates button.
- Compare Side-by-Side entries.
- If you identify a false duplicate, select 'Not a Duplicate' next to that record.
- Actual duplicates require no further action.
- Video: Viewing duplicates in Covidence
- Title/Abstract screening
- The next step is Title/Abstract screening:
- You will apply your inclusion/exclusion criteria to decide which results to include in your review by reading the title and abstract only
- You can vote:
- Yes
- Maybe
- No
- Video: Screening references in Covidence
- The next step is Title/Abstract screening:
- Full-text screening
- In full-text screening you will read through the full text articles to see if they meet your inclusion/exclusion criteria
- You can vote to:
- Include
- Exclude
- Video: Full-text Screening
- Adding PDFs
- When you are ready to do your full-text screening, you will need to add the full-text articles to your records.
- Video: Uploading a PDF
- Data Extraction
- Once you have finished screening, you are ready to commence Data Extraction. You can either:
- Continue using Covidence, or
- Export your included / excluded resources to begin data extraction in another program, such as Excel.
- Video: Introduction to Covidence Extraction 2.0
- For more information on data extraction in Covidence you can refer to the Covidence Knowledge Base for Extraction 2.0 and Extraction 1.0
- Once you have finished screening, you are ready to commence Data Extraction. You can either:
- Data Export
- You can export your data at any point in the review process including:
- references
- interrater reliability
- data extraction
- Video: Exporting extracted data to Excel
- More information is available about data export in the Covidence Knowledge Base.
- You can export your data at any point in the review process including:
