Two vital tenets of the systematic review process are transparency and reproducibility. I have long argued that both should apply at every stage of the review process, including title and abstract screening. There are two schools of thought on title and abstract...
Systematic reviewers are prone to experiencing “déjà vu”, that indescribable gut feeling that you’ve done the exact same thing (or screened the same abstract) at some point in the past. Particularly if you specialize in a certain research topic, you may encounter the...
Have you heard the one about the systematic review group with too much time on their hands? Neither have we! Time is in short supply for most of us these days, and systematic reviewers are no exception. The good news is that review tools and methodologies are...
*Updated January 7, 2020* Systematic review processes are continuously being refined, and updated. What was considered "best practice" for a systematic review in the 2010's is a lot different than what we see in 2020. In this updated systematic review lifecycle...
At this time of the year many of us reflect on the past twelve months and make plans for how we can may next year even better. Here's a light hearted but evidence-based list of resolutions you may want to consider in order to make 2017 your best systematic review year...
When conducting a review, there are a number of different approaches to reference screening. While the basics are solo screening and dual screening, there are many variations on these that you can configure to best suit your needs. DistillerSR gives you the freedom to...
How many times have you stumbled upon an interesting article or website while going about your day, but weren't able to read it right away? Did you go looking for it later, wondering why on earth you hadn't saved the link? The same thing often happens when conducting...
As you likely know, collecting data during a systematic review and working with that data after it has been extracted are two very different things. If you don’t consider how you will use the data as you’re designing your screening and data extraction...
Efficiency and rigour are often competing priorities in the systematic review process, and achieving both without sacrificing either is a challenge. When it comes to the data extraction step of a systematic review, most of the groups we work with use one of three...
DistillerSR users often cite the “human factor” in systematic reviews as one of the major challenges that the software helps them mitigate. And when you have multiple humans with differing experience and knowledge screening references, the potential for conflict - and...