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Library Subject Guides

Systematic Reviews: Tools

Conducting a SR

PredicTER if you want to know how long a review might take to complete 

Systematic Review Screening Tools

A number of tools are available to assist with the process of screening search results, assessing the risk of bias and extracting study characteristics and outcomes.

Covidence a screening and data extraction tool for systematic reviews (used by Cochrane reviewers)

Rayyan a free tool to help with the process of screening and selecting studies for systematic reviews

DistillerSR tool for screening studies and extracting data

SysRev 

OpenMeta[Analyst] free software for meta analysis

SR-Accelerator free software for writing systematic reviews

JBI SUMARI subscription service from the Joanna Briggs Institute

EPPI Reviewer developed by University College London, a tool to support authors of systematic reviews from study screening through data collection, analysis and synthesis

EndNote can also be used for systematic reviews. See, Peters, M. D. (2017). Managing and coding references for systematic reviews and scoping reviews in EndNote. Medical Reference Services Quarterly, 36(1), 19–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/02763869.2017.1259891

Van der Mierden, S., Tsaioun, K., Bleich, A., & Leenaars, C. H. (2019). Software tools for literature screening in systematic reviews in biomedical research. Altex, 36(3), 508–517. https://doi.org/10.14573/altex.1902131

Kohl, C., McIntosh, E. J., Unger, S., Haddaway, N. R., Kecke, S., Schiemann, J., & Wilhelm, R. (2018). Online tools supporting the conduct and reporting of systematic reviews and systematic maps: A case study on cadima and review of existing tools. Environmental Evidence, 7, Article 8. https://doi.org/10.1186/ s13750-018-0115-5

Page, M. J., McKenzie, J. E., & Higgins, J. P. T. (2018). Tools for assessing risk of reporting biases in studies and syntheses of studies: A systematic review. BMJ Open, 8(3), Article e019703. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2017-019703

Zhang, Q., & Neitzel, A. J. (2021). Methodological review: A systematic narrative review of screening tools for conducting systematic reviews in educational research. OSFPreprints. https://osf.io/efs2n/download 

Additional tools

Forest Plot Generator a free tool for creating forest plots

SR Toolbox database of tools to assist with the various stages of writing a systematic review