Dear Katie,

thanks for the kind words, it is always very pleasing to hear that our efforts are appreciated.

I'm sorry to hear the automatic duplicates detection has missed some items. This usually happens when one or more source files did not import too well: if fields (such as authors and journal name) happen to be incomplete or to use different standards (for example using abbreviations instead of full names), this may fool the automatic detection, especially when the title is short (giving the system less data to compare).

EPPI-Reviewer offers different ways to cope with this situation, you have already implemented the simplest yourself: adding the duplicates to a dedicated code allows you to retrieve them all at once, you can then decide to delete or exclude them manually and either accept that the review stats will return an incorrect number of duplicates or add the numbers manually when writing your report (if needed).

If you want accurate review stats, you have two additional ways of handling these duplicates.

Option one is the "proper" and safer way, it is explained at page 29 of the user manual. This procedure allows you to create new duplicate groups that are 100% equivalent to the ones created automatically. It also allows you to check if the items you are dealing with should belong to an already existing group. Therefore, this technique guarantees the best possible consistency, but it may be time consuming (if you have many duplicates that should be manually handled). Note that: to create a new group, you should start by selecting both the duplicate item(s) (the one(s) you want to discard) and the one that you wish to keep (will become the "Master" item in the new group).

If your special "Duplicates" code contains both the duplicate(s) and it's to-be-retained copy, you can "List all items with this code" in the main documents window and then select a group of duplicates. Click on the "Manage duplicates icon" button, the items selection will be retained as you walk through the procedure described in the manual.

This method is potentially time consuming because it requires to be repeated for each group of duplicates, so may not be feasible if you have hundreds of them. As an alternative, you could use a cheap shortcut (especially useful if your "Duplicates" code was assigned only to the extra copies you've found). You can manually add all items to one (or more), arbitrarily selected, existing group(s). This is very fast, and will ensure your review statistics are correct. What will not be correct is the record of what item is the real "master" of a given "manually added" one. This is probably irrelevant (once you are sure you are getting rid of real duplicates), making this option quite attractive.

As before, "List all items with this code" in the main documents window and then select them all. Click on the "Manage duplicates icon" button, open the "Manual/Advanced" tab, verify that all the items are still selected, select one arbitrary existing group and click "Add selected item(s)". All the currently selected items will be added to the current group. If you are dealing with 50 or more new duplicates, I would suggest not to stretch the system and add them in smaller batches to more than one group. It is just a precaution: the space available on the screen to show manually added items is not very big, so it may save you a lot of scrolling should you wish to locate some item that should not have been marked in this way.

Note also: you can complement this last technique and check if any of the items you have selected already belongs to (and probably is the master of) an existing group: in the "manual/advanced" tab, click find and then "find groups that contain the selected items".

I hope this helps.

Best wishes,

Sergio