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Getting Started with Systematic Reviews: Automation and comparisons of software for systematic reviews

Automation of systematic reviews

The quoted material below is from this web site: Automation in systematic reviews. Series Editor: Professor Joseph Lau. Site accessed October 3, 2020.

"Systematic reviews have become the foundation of evidence-based practice. Conducting a systematic review is largely a manual process that requires much expertise, time and money. Major advances have been made in the past two decades to improve the methodologies so that systematic reviews are more reliable, though these rigorous new standards add to the time and costs needed to produce high quality reviews. As the demands for systematic reviews increase, there is a need to lower the costs and reduce the time needed to produce them. Until recently, little has been done to improve the efficiency of the systematic review process and to use the computer in innovative ways to make systematic reviews more efficient to produce and useful.

Computers have been used routinely in various steps of a systematic review, such as searching the literature, collecting data with a spreadsheet, maintaining list of studies in a database program, and drafting the reports with a word processor. However, such uses have not taken advantage of advances in new computer technologies that could automate large parts of the systematic review process to significantly improve the efficiency of the process, and the quality and usefulness of the systematic reviews.

In this series, the Editors invite authors to submit articles about innovative uses of computer technologies in producing systematic reviews. These could include, but are not limited to, discussions on the tools and sciences to automate various aspects of the systematic review processes. We are also interested in papers on making systematic reviews computable."

Comparisons

Wu, W., Akers, K., Hu, E., Sarkozy, A., & Vinson, P. (2018). Digital Tools for Managing Different Steps of the Systematic Review Process. Library Scholarly Publications. Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/libsp/136 .   This poster presents a recent comparison.  This is from the abstract: "Here, we (1) compile a comprehensive list of currently available digital tools for managing steps of the systematic review process, (2) map the functionality of each tool onto various steps of the process with further consideration of their price, training materials, and technical support."

Van der Mierden, S., Tsaioun, K., Bleich, A., & Leenaars, C. H. C. (2019). Software tools for literature screening in systematic reviews in biomedical research. ALTEX. From the abstract: Systematic Reviews (SRs) hold promise for implementing the 3Rs in animal sciences: they can retrieve available alternative models, help refining experiments, and identify insufficiencies, or an excess of, scientific knowledge on a particular topic. Unfortunately, SRs can be labour- and time-intensive, especially the reference screening and data extraction phases. Fortunately, there are several software tools available that help make screening faster and easier. However, it is not always clear which features the tools offer. Therefore, a feature analysis was performed to compare different reference screening tools as objectively as possible. This analysis enables researchers to select the most appropriate tool for their needs. Fifteen different tools were compared: CADIMA, Covidence, DistillerSR, Endnote, Endnote using Bramer's method, EROS, HAWC, Microsoft Excel, Excel using VonVille's method, Microsoft Word, Rayyan, RevMan, SyRF, SysRev.com, and SWIFT Active Screener. Their support of 21 features was tested. Features were categorised as mandatory, desirable, and optional. DistillerSR, Covidence, and SWIFT Active Screener are the tools that support all mandatory features. These tools are preferred for screening references, but none of them are free. The best scoring free tool is Rayyan, which lacks one mandatory function: distinct title/abstract and full-text phases. The lowest scoring tools are those not specifically designed for SRs, like Microsoft Word and Endnote. Their use can only be advised for small and simple SRs. A well-informed selection of SR screening tools will benefit review quality and speed, which can contribute to the advancement of the 3Rs in animal studies.
 
Harrison, H., Griffin, S. J., Kuhn, I., & Usher-Smith, J. A. (2020). Software tools to support title and abstract screening for systematic reviews in healthcare: An evaluation. BMC Medical Research Methodology, 20(1), 7. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12874-020-0897-3. From the abstract:
Systematic reviews are vital to the pursuit of evidence-based medicine within healthcare. Screening titles and abstracts (T&Ab) for inclusion in a systematic review is an intensive, and often collaborative, step. The use of appropriate tools is therefore important. In this study, we identified and evaluated the usability of software tools that support T&Ab screening for systematic reviews within healthcare research.
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