Introducing Covidence: The Library’s Tool for Faster Reviews
Posted: October 6, 2025
For this quarterly newsletter, we wanted to highlight a database the library offers: Covidence, a powerful online platform designed to accelerate the systematic and scoping review processes, offering tools to save you significant time and facilitate seamless teamwork.
Key Benefits: Save Time and Collaborate Effortlessly
Systematic and scoping reviews are crucial in research, but they are often time-consuming. Covidence is engineered to minimize manual effort and maximize efficiency:
- Faster Reviews: Users report an average 35% reduction in time spent per review, translating to an average saving of 71 hours! This efficiency is achieved through a fast interface and integrated tools.
- Seamless Collaboration: The platform enables your entire review team to work together efficiently from anywhere, making it easy to track progress and resolve disagreements.
The platform is trusted by a massive community, supporting over 600,000 researchers and students globally, and has been used to start over 265,000 reviews.
What Can You Do in Covidence? A Step-by-Step Guide
Covidence supports every critical stage of your systematic review, integrating key tools right into the workflow:
1. Manage Citations and Screening
- Import Citations: Covidence works seamlessly with popular reference managers (like EndNote, Zotero, Refworks, Mendeley) or any tool supporting RIS or PubMed formats.
- Screen Titles & Abstracts: Breeze through screening with a quick interface that features keyword highlighting. It maintains full records of who voted and supports both single and dual screeners.
- Upload References: Transfer the full PDFs stored in your reference manager to Covidence with just a few clicks.
2. Full-Text Review and Exclusion
- Screen Full Text: Quickly make decisions on studies by highlighting key words or phrases directly in the document. You can easily capture reasons for exclusion and notes to resolve disagreements instantly.
- Automatic Open Access Upload: Covidence automatically uploads open access studies to assist with your full-text review.
3. Data Extraction and Risk of Bias
- Data Extraction: You have the flexibility to create custom templates to suit your specific data needs, ensuring everyone on the team is aligned during the process.
- Risk of Bias: You can automatically populate your risk of bias tables by highlighting and commenting on text directly in the PDF, eliminating the need for tedious cut-and-paste.
4. Final Export
- Export: Generate a single, machine-readable file that easily integrates into all common statistics packages, allowing you to seamlessly continue your analysis in your preferred software.
Phew, that’s a lot. Covidence is truly a great tool that makes performing a systematic or scoping review slightly less daunting. The library has a Covidence Guide that goes hand-in-hand with our Systematic Review and Scoping Review Guides. Contact your liaison librarian if you are interested in research or fill out our Request Form for Research Assistance and Review Consultation.