Creating a review and the protocol
A review is a team’s workspace: the protocol, the references, the decisions and the exports. Everything starts by defining the question.
Creating the review
- On the dashboard, press New review.
- Enter the title, the type (systematic or scoping) and the question framework: PICO for interventions or PCC (population, concept, context) for scoping reviews.
- Choose the screening mode: single reviewer, double-blind, double-blind with third reviewer, or pilot. It can be changed later as long as there are no decisions.
- Save. You can now invite the team (chapter 11) or go on with the protocol.
The protocol
The Protocol tab holds the question, inclusion and exclusion criteria, the exclusion reasons used during screening, the per-database search strategy and methodological notes. The criteria feed the keyword highlighting during screening.
Upload the protocol as PDF or Word and the AI fills the empty fields. It also detects documents with several sub-studies and offers to create them.
Record the search run in each database (PubMed, Embase, Scopus…) with the date and the number of results.
Export the form to register the review in PROSPERO or OSF with the fields already filled.
Exclusion reasons
Define them before screening starts: every full-text exclusion needs one, and they are what appears in the PRISMA diagram. Defaults can be changed under Admin → Reviews.
The review dashboard
Each review’s home page shows the status of every phase (references, screening, full text, extraction, risk of bias, exports) with counters, who has work pending and recent activity. The phase bar at the top is the path: each step lights up when done.
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