Hello Mat,

EPPI-Reviewer will help you manager your systematic review but the processes and methods you decide to use are up to you.
In the systematic reviews that we carry out at the EPPI-Centre we normally have a screening on 'title and abstract' step.  After importing our search results from various databases the screening on 'title and abstract' step involves applying some type of exclusion or inclusion criteria to narrow down the number of items that we are working with. This allows us to identify potentially relevant studies that we then need to obtain the full-text report (pdf, etc.) for further examination.

As for how you know if your search results have title and abstracts, that is very much reliant on the databases you are searching. Some databases are very organised and give you very clean references with all of the information you require. Other databases are not so organised and you often find yourself with minimal information to work with. When saving your search results from a database I normally try to get the most detailed version of the reference that they offer. As well, you want to have it in some type of tagged format meaning that each piece of information in the file is clearly identified as to what it is. If formats such as EndNote, Reference Manager, Procite, RefWorks, RIS are mentioned you can be sure it will be in a importable format.

Best regards,

Jeff

Hello Mat,

The names that you give the codes will not have any particular meaning to EPPI-Reviewer. The names are for your own understanding of how you wish to apply the code.

We don't differentiate between whether it is the title or the abstract that we include or exlcude an item. It is normally whether we are looking at the reference (that normally includes the title and abstract) or the full report.

You might want to have a coding/screening tool called 'Screen on title and abstract' and then another called 'Screen on full report'. Each would have it's own exclusion/inclusion codes based on your requirements.

Best regards,

Jeff

Hello Mat,

You can get the same effect by running a search on your imported items. This would work for distinct things such as dates or certain unwanted words but searching on individual words without looking at their context can also bring you some unexpected results.

In EPPI-Reviewer there are also text mining capabilities that you could explore. You will find details on this in the user manual under Text mining. We have used these functions on a number of our own systematic reviews. Text mining looks at many different aspects of a word or groups of words, including it's context to help identify items that may be potentially relevant.

How we have used text mining is to first screen a number of items to find a number of includes. We then apply the text mining functions against those includes to identify concepts that included studies contain. The system can then identify other studies in your review that contain those same concepts and rank those studies based on relevance. This means that you can put more effort on the items that are likely to be potentially relevant. This become valuable when your review has a very large number of items in it (we have a few with over 60,000 items) and you need to target your resources in the most efficient way.

Best regards,

Jeff