Hi Roberta,
Thanks for getting in touch!
Qualitative data extraction is one of the areas where EPPI-Reviewer flexibility shows all its strength.

The key concept is that users can design and tailor their own data-extraction codesets to represent a structure that closely follows the key questions addressed by a particular review. Thus, a common pattern is to organise a code-tree in a "question and answers" pattern, such as:

(parent node - non selectable) Study type
(children codes - selectable) Randomised study, Non randomised intervention, Observational (long term), Observational (short term), Other(please specify).

This kind of small pattern can then be organised in larger areas, so you could have a code-set divided in sections (first level nodes) such as "Population" "study kind", and so forth. The above is a general description, but the fact that EPPI-Reviewer lets you organise a code-tree in virtually any possible way should allow to represent and capture any arbitrary hierarchy of concepts.
Additionally, one can assign additional text to further specify why or how a given code applies to a study via the info-box. It is also possible to link text from the reference PDF directly to a given code.
Sometimes adding new codes while data-extracting is also useful, as it allows to capture concepts that weren't anticipated at the protocol stage. However, naturally I can't really say whether this possibility applies to your particular review or not.

In short: if the templates for data-extraction provided by the "configure review" wizard do not suit your need, it is always possible to either modify them or create your own custom data-extraction codeset. Once a codeset is designed appropriately, you will be able to copy it into other reviews whenever suitable.

Codes of outcome, intervention, comparison and Outcome Classification types are specifically designed to aid extracting numeric data and then conducting Meta Analyses, if your review only concerns qualitative data, you can safely ignore them (more details are in the user manual, of course).

The RIS Export currently supports only two specific CSV file formats, thus it's probably not going to work for your file (I assume you've tried already). We are always happy to try extending the range of supported formats, so please send us an example file to eppisupport@ioe.ac.uk. We will look at it and see whether it can be used to produce a new export filter. Please note that this normally requires a few days of work, and we probably won't be able to start working on your file before next Tuesday. Also: not all file formats can effectively be "digested" by a machine, we can only make an assessment after seeing your particular file.

Best wishes,
Sergio

Hi Roberta,
Apologies for the late reply.

1) Uploading full text documents. Short answer is yes, one by one, I'm afraid.
The way EPPI-Reviewer handles full-text documents follows the typical review flow: after searching, people would normally upload their citations lists to EPPI-Reviewer, de-duplicate and then proceed of a first round of title and abstract screening. After that, people will start trying to find the full texts, upload them as they are located and proceed with a second screening round, based on full text. Since storage space is something that has a visible impact on our costs, we thought that the kind of process above didn't require an "upload in bulk" functionality. EndNote then started being able to locate and download PDFs automatically, which is a really great feature, and something that underlies your question. I've looked into the possibility of leveraging on the EndNote repository, but couldn't find a route that seemed feasible, so the end result is that PDFs (or in general, the full-text of a reference) still need to be uploaded manually.
One interesting possibility is trying to replicate what EndNote does and let EPPI-Reviewer try to automatically download the PDFs from known sources. I haven't explored this option so there is no way I can promise we'll implement it, but it does look like a promising idea.

2) EPPI-Reviewer allows more people to (concurrently) work on a single review. This is normally done via the online shop (part of the account manager), as sharing a review is something you need to explicitly pay for. Please have a look at the how-to videos, the one on purchasing and the one about inviting people into your (shareable) review. The standard fees are explained here.

I hope this helps,

Sergio

Hello Roberta,

If you have a shared review then multiple people can work together in it. Was this a review purchased online? If you want to send us the details (when you made the purchase, what was purchased)  to eppisupport@ioe.ac.uk (rather than posting them on the public forum) we can have a look.

To enter textual information you will want to use the 'Selectable (show checkbox)' code type. If you are using the 'Screening' codeset type the 'Exclude' and 'Include' code types will allow you to enter text. To enter text you just need to click on the 'Info' button. 

Best regards,

Jeff

Hi Roberta,
sorry to hear you're experiencing this difficulty.

It's hard to tell what isn't working for you, I've just tested the function myself and it works as expected which isn't a surprise, since this is the first time someone reports a problem with deleting items. I assume you have:

- Selected some items from the main list in the "Documents" tab.
- In the main toolbar, clicked the 8th icon (trash bin).
- In the following dialog, clicked the "Yes [...]" button.

The result would be that the selected items will still be shown in the current list, but have a "D" flag in the second column (presumably replacing the "I" for "Included"). Reloading the current list would normally make the deleted items disappear (unless you are listing items by source).

If you did all the above, and didn't get the expected result, I do not know why it didn't work for you as it works perfectly for me. You may want to try again, just to rule out any temporary glitch. To try resolve this, it would help if you could send us more details, specifically: the review ID and an indication of a few of the items you wish to delete. With this we can try the deletion ourselves and see if something unusual happens. If you wish, we can continue this conversation via email, of course.

Note that it's also possible to delete all documents within a source, this is done from the sources tab, (bottom right, main screen).