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Scoping & Systematic Reviews

In this guide you will find information about how to conduct a scoping and systematic review plus information on how librarians can support your in the process.

About Step 4: Manage Citations

Average time (hours) to complete
                  11                                      

In Step 4, you will use a citation manager to keep track of all the articles you have found through your literature search. This involves:

  1. Exporting all the search results.
  2. Uploading search results to your citation manager.
  3. Removing duplicate articles that were in more than one database.
  4. Moving articles from your citation manager to your review software for screening.

This page has information about the different citation managers available at APU. Librarians can recommend citation managers, help you troubleshoot if you run into problems, and provide instructions for using citation managers.

Click tabs to see how it applies to Step 4: Manage Citations

For your PRISMA flow diagram, you will need to record the number of results from each database and remove duplicate citations, then report the number of duplicates removed.

For information on how to document deduplication on your PRISMA flow diagram, visit our guide on Deduplication.

Please see Systematic & Scoping Review Service for more
detailed information and to submit a request form

A librarian can advise you on citation management for your review, including:

  • Which citation manager to choose for a review 
  • How to export citations from a literature database to a citation manager
  • How to remove/combine duplicate citations
  • How to export citations from your citation manager for screening 

Select a tool for citation management

Choose Review Tools

Prepare for Screening (deduplicating search if necessary)
  • Zotero is a free, open-source, web-based tool for managing citations, organizing pdfs, and creating bibliographies. Self-guided instruction in the form of tutorials, FAQs, and help are available through Zotero. The University of Otowwa has a detailed Guide on Zotero. To increase success with Zotero's in getting full text, go to Edit, Preferences, then Advanced. Then under "Open URL" select North America, then Azusa Pacific University.
  • Endnote is citation management software produced by Clarivate. A free 30-day trial is available through EndNote. Self-guided instruction in the form of tutorials, FAQs, & videos are available through Endnote APU has a guide on how to use Endnote. To increase success with Endnote’s “Find Full Text” feature, add APU’s OpenURL in preferences: https://apu.on.worldcat.org/atoztitles/link
  • Mendeley iis a free, web-based tool from Elsevier for managing references, creating bibliographies, and pdf organizer. Self-guided instruction in the form of tutorials, FAQs, & videos are available through Mendeley help guides. Fulltext can be added through the libraries subscription to Elsevier and Open Access articles are are added automatically. Check out our tutorial on Managing Citations in Mendeley for more help with this tool.
  • Other Deduplication techniques can be found here: https://apu.libguides.com/deduplicate
Screening Tools
  • The Systematic Review Accelerator (SRA)  is a suite of automation tools, purpose-built to speed up multiple steps in the systematic review (SR) process. Includes screening, deduplication, searching, and methods wizard. This is a free resource.
  • Covidence is an online systematic review program developed by, and for, systematic reviewers. It can import citations from reference managers like EndNote, facilitate the screening of abstracts and full-text, populate risk of bias tables, assist with data extraction, and export to all common formats. Offers free trials. We recommend this service.
  • CADIMA is a free, online, open-access review management tool developed to facilitate research synthesis and structure documentation of the outcomes. The software supports and guides users through the entire systematic review process, including protocol development, literature searching, study selection, critical appraisal, and documentation of the outcomes. The flexibility in choosing the steps also makes CADIMA suitable for conducting systematic mapping and rapid reviews. Does not handle duplicate removal (deduplicate in Zotero then, upload into CADIMA). We recommend this service.
  • Rayyan is a web based collaborative application that facilitates team screening, including the upload of citations and recording of the decisions behind the screening process. A mobile app allows you to screen articles any place. The basic account is free. Training material, including how-to videos on Rayyan can be found here. 
  • SysRev is a platform for the collaborative extraction of data from academic articles and abstracts, PDF documents, and other entities. The basic account is free.
  • Abstrackr is a software for semi-automated abstract screening for systematic reviews. At present, Abstrackr is a free, open-source tool for facilitating the citation screening process. Upload your abstracts, invite reviewers, and get to screening!
  • DistillerSR: DistillerSR is web-based software that primarily focuses on screening and data extraction. It is developed by Evidence Partners in Canada. Pricing is based on a subscription model.
  • More AI Tools for Evidence Synthesis

Here is a comparison chart of some of the Review Tools

The Systematic Review Toolbox (also includes information on Scoping Reviews) is a community-driven, searchable, web-based catalog of tools that support the systematic review process across multiple domains. The resource aims to help reviewers find appropriate tools based on how they provide support for the systematic review process. Users can perform a simple keyword search (i.e. Quick Search) to locate tools, a more detailed search (i.e. Advanced Search) allowing users to select various criteria to find specific types of tools and submit new tools to the database.

  • In searching for research articles, we often want to obtain lists of references from across studies, and also obtain lists of articles that cite a particular study. In systematic/scoping reviews, this supplementary search technique is known as "citation chasing": forward citation chasing looks for all records citing one or more articles of known relevance; backward citation chasing looks for all records referenced in one or more articles.
  • Traditionally, this process would be done manually, and the resulting records would need to be checked one-by-one against included studies in a review to identify potentially relevant records that should be included in a review.
  • This tool automates this process by making use of the Lens.org API. An input article list can be used to return a list of all referenced records, and/or all citing records in the Lens.org database (consisting of PubMed, PubMed Central, CrossRef, Microsoft Academic Graph and CORE); read more here.
More information on Citation tools including tutorials on how use them can be found here: https://apu.libguides.com/citations

Import and export articles

Exporting from Library Databases into a Citation Manager:

  • Option 1: We recommend that you do the article/abstract screening within the library database (if all reviewers have access to APU resources). On the Ebsco platform, create a shared folder. Each person would complete the title/abstract screening by adding the included articles to the folder. Then, you can easily download and save the fulltext for the next screening phase. Finally, for the fulltext screening you will want to export from the folder into Mendeley, Zotero, or Endnote. To do this you will select Export, then select the first option RIS format for all citation managers mentioned above. See Step 5 for more details on Screening.
  • Option 2: You can also export the entire list into the citation manager and then complete all screening phases within the citation manager. See Step 5 for more details on Screening.

For both options above, if importing and exporting from the Ebsco or Proquest platforms, be sure you note how many duplicates you have before you do this, since once you export it will export the deduplicated results. 

To import into the citation manager, we recommend using the resources for each tool mentioned in the box above "Choose Review Tools".

If you plan to use Covidence,

  • You will want to export your articles into a citation manager, deduplicate your articles, and then import the articles into Covidence.
  • To import references from a citation manager into Covidence, you must create and export a document containing your citations and save it as an XMLCRS, or RIS text file. These files will have a .txt.xml, or .ris file name.
  • Note: You can technically export from the databases into Covidence, but this is not recommended as Covidence misses some duplicate articles.​​​​​​​