Systematic Reviews: Reference Management

Covidence is a systematic reviews production tool for title/abstract screening, full-text screening, data abstraction, and quality assessment. Thomas Cooper Library, USC's main campus library, maintains a subscription to this product. Users must register for an institutional account using their USC email address.

REGISTER for a Covidence Account

(CLICK LOGO to log in once you have registered.)

What is Covidence?
Covidence is a web-based tool that will help you through the process of screening your references, data extraction, and keeping track of your work. It is particularly useful for researchers conducting a systematic review, meta-analysis or clinical guideline.

In Covidence you can:

• Import references - Covidence works seamlessly with your favorite reference managers like EndNote, Zotero, Refworks, Mendeley or any tool that support RIS, CSV or PubMed XML formats. Covidence can automatically remove duplicates for you.
• Screen title & abstract - Breeze through screening with keyword highlighting & a lightning quick interface. Covidence keeps full records of who voted and supports single or dual screeners.
• Bulk PDF import - Transfer PDFs stored in your reference manager to Covidence in a few clicks. 
• Screen full text - Decide quickly on studies in full text. Capture reasons for exclusion and any notes so you can resolve any disagreements quickly, with a click of a button.
• Create forms - Be in control and stay focused on your PICO question. Customizable extraction forms means you only spend time extracting what you need.
• Customize risk of bias - Automatically populate your risk of bias tables by highlighting and commenting on text directly in your PDF.
• Conduct data extraction - Extract data efficiently with a side-by-side view of your customized form and PDF. Then, when you are done, easily compare your form with other reviewers.  
• Export - Covidence exports to all the common formats so you can continue your review in your preferred software. 
• Collaborate - You can invite other reviewers (including external colleagues) to work with you on the project.

EndNote is a citation management and bibliography-creation tool.

Using EndNote, you can:

• add citations for journal articles, books, web pages, etc. to your library
• download citations from databases like PubMed
• format citations into bibliographies using your preferred bibliographic style
• organize your references into folders or groups
• share your citations with others

EndNote includes Cite While You Write, a plug-in you can use to insert references from your library and format a bibliography while you write in Microsoft Word.

There are three versions of EndNote:

• EndNote Online (freely available basic version)
• Endnote Online through Web of Science (freely available for USC faculty, staff, and students)
• EndNote Desktop/Online (freely available for USC faculty and staff; purchase required for students)

For details on adding references and organizing materials in EndNote, visit the EndNote Subject Guide.