You can start Full text review as soon as there are studies available in the Full text review tool.
Covidence automatically adds the full text of open access articles when a study moves into Full text review. The rest can be added either individually or in bulk.
Once you have imported your references into Covidence you're ready to start screening.
To screen by title and abstract click 'Continue' under title and abstract screening, from your Review Summary page. Make your decision by voting on the Yes, Maybe or No buttons for each reference.
By default, a new review within Covidence is set up in dual screening mode (more information here), so that each citation requires two votes in order to move forward in your review.
These votes must be cast by a different two people each time. 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 the first person casting a vote on a reference, then the citation 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 to depends on its previous votes; please see the article and flowchart here for more details.
Sorting options
You can use the option menus at the top right of the screening list to adjust how your references display during screening. The default setting for display is 25 references, but this can be increased to 50 or 100. The default setting for order is 'Most relevant', but this can be changed by each author independently to display references by 'Author', 'Title', or 'Most recent'.
The 'Most relevant' sort uses machine learning (active learning) relevancy predictions to show the studies predicted to be most relevant.
The other display options are relevant to each review's specific list of references and ongoing work. 'Most recent' displays the references most recently acted upon within the review project, rather than most recently published.
If you'd like to change a vote after you've voted but before it's received a second vote, you can change your own vote from within the 'Awaiting other reviewer' list. Just click on 'change vote to _____'; your current vote shows in dark grey.
If a reference has been moved forward and you would like to move it back to be voted on again, click the "Move to _____" button below the reference. If in included/excluded studies, this will return it to full text review. If in full text review, this will return it to title/abstract screening.
Tip! Use the "Most recent" sorting option to bring the most recently moved articles to the top of your list.
Note: this undoes all of the votes associated with the reference from that stage (i.e. not only one reviewer's judgements!).