Software tools for systematic reviews

• Covidence

  GW in 2019 has bought a subscription to this Cloud based tool for facilitating screening decisions, used by the Cochrane Collaboration. Register for an account.

• NVIVO for analysis of qualitative research

  NVIVO is used for coding interview data to identify common themes emerging from interviews with several participants. GW faculty, staff, and students may download NVIVO software.

• RedCAP

  RedCAP is software that can be used to create survey forms for research or data collection or data extraction. It has very detailed functionality to enable data exchange with Electronic Health Record Systems, and to integrate with study workflow such as scheduling follow up reminders for study participants.

• Systematic Review Toolbox

  Select the Healthcare discipline and features you want a tool to support.

• SRDR tool from AHRQ

  Free, web-based and has a training environment, tutorials, and example templates of systematic review data extraction forms

• RevMan 5

  RevMan 5 is the desktop version of the software used by Cochrane systematic review teams. RevMan 5 is free for academic use and can be downloaded and configured to run as stand alone software that does not connect with the Cochrane server if you follow the instructions at https://training.cochrane.org/online-learning/core-software-cochrane-reviews/revman/revman-5-download/non-cochrane-reviews

• Rayyan

  Free, web-based tool for collecting and screening citations. It has options to screen with multiple people, masking each other.

• GradePro

  Free, web application to create, manage and share summaries of research evidence (called Evidence Profiles and Summary of Findings Tables) for reviews or guidelines, uses the GRADE criteria to evaluate each paper under review.

• DistillerSR

  Needs subscription. Create coded data extraction forms from templates.

• EPPI Reviewer

  Needs subscription. Like DistillerSR, tool for text mining, data clustering, classification and term extraction

• SUMARI

  Needs subscription. Qualitative data analysis.

• Dedoose

  Needs subscription. Qualitative data analysis, similar to NVIVO in that it can be used to code interview transcripts, identify word co-occurence, cloud based.

• Meta-analysis software for statistical analysis of data for quantitative reviews

  SPSS, SAS, and STATA are popular analytical statistical software that include macros for carrying out meta-analysis. Himmelfarb has SPSS on some 3rd floor computers, and GW affiliates may download SAS to your own laptop from the Division of IT website. To perform mathematical analysis of big data sets there are statistical analysis software libraries in the R programming language available through GitHub and RStudio, but this requires advanced knowledge of the R and Python computer languages and data wrangling/cleaning.

• PRISMA 2020 flow diagram generator

  The PRISMA Statement website has a page listing example flow diagram templates and a link to software for creating PRISMA 2020 flow diagrams using R software.

GW researchers may want to consider using Refworks to manage citations, and GW Box to store the full text PDF's of review articles. You can also use online survey forms such as Qualtrics, RedCAP, or Survey Monkey, to design and create your own coded fillable forms, and export the data to Excel or one of the qualitative analytical software tools listed above.

References:

https://guides.mclibrary.duke.edu/sysreview/types