Covidence: Create a Review

To begin a new review in Covidence, click on Start a new review on the home page after signing in. 

Covidence will then open a page where you can input the details of your new review. Make sure the radio button for UAB Libraries Institutional Access is selected.   

You will then have the opportunity to create your Review settings and add reviewers to your new review. 

Once you have created your review, you can use the Settingsbutton to change your review title and the number of screeners required, add reviewers, and add inclusion/exclusion criteria and keywords.

Under the “Review settings” tab, you can change the name of your review as well as other details for your records.  You may also want to change the number of reviewers if you are working on this project alone. Keep in mind, systematic review guidelines require two reviewers for a full, published systematic review. 

Once you have made your desired changes, remember to save your settings!

If you would like to control which reviewers will be assigned to screen studies or resolve conflicts, you can do so under the Rules in the Team Settings tab.

Under the Criteria & exclusion reasons tab, you can create a list of inclusion and exclusion criteria for your title and abstract screening level. You can also manage your exclusion reasons, which will give you a customized drop-down list of exclusion criteria for use during the full text review level. 

You can also add keywords, which will tell Covidence to highlight certain words that might indicate inclusion or exclusion. 

Remember to always save any changes!

You can add reviewers when you first create your review, or you can add them later by going to Settings .  You will need the reviewer's first name and email address to send an invitation.  They will need to accept the invitation in their email in order for the review to appear on their Your Reviews dashboard.

Reviewers do not need to be UAB affiliates, but only UAB affiliates can create new reviews under our institutional license. 

If you have been invited to serve as a reviewer on a Covidence project and would like to create new reviews, you will need to follow the steps for Creating a Covidence Account before you can create a new review. 

Covidence, while allowing as many reviewers to participate on a review team as preferred by the team, sets the upper limit of reviewer votes per reference in the screening and full text review phases at 2. According to Covidence Support, "Covidence's aim is to provide a straightforward, streamlined, and standardized framework that our users can sit down and start working on with minimal setup." It is suggested that review teams set up a workflow in advance that divides the references among the review team members so that each reference gets two votes even if not all reviewers vote on all the references. Please contact Lister Hill Library Reference Department for more information or assistance.