This post is also available in: Deutsch

The literature search has been completed, the references have been imported into a literature management programme, and duplicates may already have been removed. The next steps in the realisation of a systematic literature review are screening of titles and abstracts, screening of full texts, selection of articles to be included, data extraction, evaluation of the studies and compilation and presentation of the results. Ideally, the individual steps are performed independently by several researchers. Here, specific tools can be helpful.

Survey

Recently, we conducted a survey among researchers who had used our search service. We asked whether and which tools they used and which advantages and disadvantages they perceived.

19 out of 42 respondents, or almost half, used a tool. The most frequently mentioned tools were RevMan (7 answers), Covidence (5), Rayyan (5), EPPI-Reviewer (3) and Cadima (3).

The main reasons given for using a tool were: collaboration within a research group (15) and increased productivity (14). In most cases the tools were chosen based on recommendations from colleagues (14), but some people also informed themselves about different options and subsequently selected one (6). The average rating of the tools was 4.2 out of 5, with the EPPI-Reviewer tending to score slightly better and Cadima slightly worse.

Tool	Cost	Advantages*	Disadvantages/ missing features*
Covidence	paid	collaboration, screening well comprehensible
DistillerSR	paid	high flexibility and adaptability, user-friendliness
EPPI-Reviewer	paid	well-structured, easy and intuitive to use, collaboration, multiple risk of bias assessment tools can be imported	only beta version for Mac users, pdfs must be uploaded manually
Cadima	free	easy to use for teamwork, sufficient for simple reviews
Rayyan	free	mobile app, multiple blinded reviewers possible	full-text screening no longer blinded
RevMan	free	creation of graphs, overview, collaboration	limited possibilities for statistics and export of graphs in various formats, not compatible with Mac

Comparison of functions

If you are not sure which tool is suitable for your own research project, you will find some comparisons in the literature [1-4]. van der Mierden et al. described that paid tools supported all functions they considered necessary in contrast to free tools, and that programmes like EndNote, Excel and Word were insufficient [2]. Among the free tools, Rayyan was most convincing [2,3]. RevMan seemed to offer more support in compiling the results [4].

Conclusions

Performing screening, data extraction and further steps only with EndNote, Excel or Word is considered suboptimal (except for small projects). The use of a tool is therefore recommended. Paid tools such as the EPPI-Reviewer or DistillerSR seem to have more functionalities, but the respondents in our survey also used free tools such as RevMan, Rayyan or Cadima and rated them positively.

References

1. Hirt J, Nordhausen T. Digitale Anwendungen für die Studienauswahl im Rahmen von systematischen Evidenzsynthesen. Pflege 2019;32(5):277-278.
2. van der Mierden S, Tsaioun K, Bleich A, Leenaars, CHC. Software tools for literature screening in systematic reviews in biomedical research. ALTEX 36(3);2019:508-517.
3. Harrison H, Griffin SJ, Kuhn I, Usher-Smith JA. Software tools to support title abstract screening for systematic reviews in healthcare: an evaluation. BMC Med Res Methodol 2020;20(1):7.
4. Kohl C, McIntosh EJ, Unger S, Haddaway NR, Kecke S, Schiemann J, Wilhelm R. Online tools supporting the conduct and reporting of systematic reviews and systematic maps: a case study on CADIMA and review of existing tools. Environ Evid 7;2018:8.