Screening is the processing of sifting through results to obtain those that will answer the research question. Think of this like a funnel where you start with many results but go down to a few.
Once a search is completed a reviewer has several options to screen and select studies. Studies should be selected that best fit and support the research topic. It is common practice to scan the title and abstract to select those studies that are most relevant.
While it is common and possible to select within a database from your list of results, there are other approaches.
To assist in the scanning of title and abstracts, the following tools and software are available:
Once a search query has been conducted, it is now possible to export search results. This means that all bibliographic information (i.e. your article information from the search), are moved from the database into a file that can be used in many other software or as a list to be viewed.
The file will vary from database to database but the following formats are most common:
Rayyan is marketed for systematic reviews but it's a free and easy to use system for any kind of article screening. This is a faster and more streamlined tool for screening compared to a spreadsheet or other methods.
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