Jun 17, 2025
Title Abstract Screening in Sysrev
This protocol is a draft, published without a DOI.
- Melanie Gainey1
- 1Carnegie Mellon University Libraries
Protocol Citation: Melanie Gainey 2025. Title Abstract Screening in Sysrev. protocols.io https://protocols.io/view/title-abstract-screening-in-sysrev-cw4qxgvw
License: This is an open access protocol distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited
Protocol status: Working
We use this protocol and it's working
Created: July 11, 2023
Last Modified: June 17, 2025
Protocol Integer ID: 84848
Keywords: evidence synthesis, sysrev, title abstract screening in sysrev, title abstract screening, abstract screening, first stage of screening, screening, sysrev platform, abstract, called title, first stage
Abstract
This protocol contains instructions on how to do the first stage of screening, called title abstract screening, in the Sysrev platform. Contact Melanie Gainey ([email protected]) if you are having any issues or have questions.
Troubleshooting
Use this link to join our project: [insert link to project]
These instructions and the Inclusion Exclusion criteria are linked in the Project Description field for easy access.
This is where you will find important project documents.
Click on Review on the home screen to begin screening articles.
Screening articles
Read the title and abstract of the article the platform is showing you and make a Yes or No decision to include based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria and hit the Save button. Sysrev will feed you the next article.
Making Yes or No Include decisions
Some things to keep in mind as you screen:
- If you are unsure whether an article should be included or not, select Yes. An inaccurate Yes decision can be fixed later, while an inaccurate No decision is not fixable as those articles are permanently removed from the project.
Monitoring your progress:
- It should take on average 3 minutes to screen each article - this is a rough estimate.
- You can check how many articles you’ve screened on the Member Activity panel on the home screen (Overview tab).
Incomplete, Non-English, or Duplicate Records:
- If an article does not have an abstract, you can try to find the article on google and copy and paste it into the Notes field. If you are still unable to find it, select Yes.
- If the article is not in English, you can try putting it in Google translate (copy and paste the English version in the Notes field). If still not sure, select Yes.
- If you notice duplicate titles, you can select Yes or No based on the inclusion criteria and then add a note in the Notes field that it is a duplicate.
Blind Review:
- A key element of evidence synthesis projects is to reduce bias by using two independent and blind reviewers to make decisions (meaning that they are not aware of the other reviewer's decision). If you click on the Articles tab, you will be able to see other people's decisions. We want to make independent blinded decisions, so avoid looking at that tab as you screen.
Protocol references
Bozada T, Borden J, Workman J, Del Cid M, Malinowski J and Luechtefeld T (2021) Sysrev: A FAIR Platform for Data Curation and Systematic Evidence Review. Front. Artif. Intell. 4:685298. doi: 10.3389/frai.2021.685298