Welcome!

North-West University: South Africa is delighted to offer current researchers, staff and students access to its departmental licence to Covidence.

 

What is Covidence?

Covidence is a web-based software platform that streamlines the production of systematic reviews. It supports citation screening, full-text review, risk of bias assessment, extraction of study characteristics and outcomes, and the export of data and references.

The interface is intuitive and suitable for students and experienced reviewers. Covidence can save time on repetitive review tasks, enabling faster review production and more time for analysis and interpretation. 

In Covidence you can:

  • Import references - Covidence works seamlessly with your favourite 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 mean you only spend time extracting what you need.
  • Customize risk of bias - Automatically populate your risk of bias tables by highlighting and commenting on the 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.

 

Why join the NWU departmental access to Covidence?
  • Unlimited records for each review
  • Unlimited number of reviewers for each review
  • Full access to all the functions and features

 

How to join the NWU departmental licence account:

You can create your user sign-in account with Covidence before or after joining the institutional licence account. To request your email invitation to get access, you must use your current university email address  (@nwu.ac.za / @mynwu.ac.za).

  1. Go to - Request your invitation page.

  2. Accept the invitation in your email (please check your spam folder if the invitation doesn’t appear in your inbox within a few minutes. Please also keep in mind that the link is one-time use and will expire in ~30 days).

  3. Sign in if you already have an existing Covidence account with your university email address or sign up for a new account (using your university email address)

After creating a personal Covidence account and joining the NWU subscription, you will be able to sign in from anywhere by visiting: https://www.covidence.org/sign_in

Starting a review using the NWU licence:

  1. Sign in to Covidence
  2. Select “Start a new review”
  3. Select 'Which account do you want to use?", make sure to select - "North-West University: South Africa"
  4. Reviews created using the subscription account will be visible to Covidence subscription administrators at the company. Reviews created under your user account are only visible to you. 

Once you have created a review or accepted an invitation to another NWU account review, the title will appear in a separate section on your account homepage:

 

Support from Covidence

Covidence offers a range of available resources and support to help you along the way with your systematic review process. 

To get familiar with how a Covidence workflow works, you can try our pre-set Demo review. This will allow you to have a hands-on experience and understand the process better. You will find it at the bottom of your dashboard once you have signed in. Give it a go and feel free to explore!

Getting started with Covidence - video tutorials that guide you through the initial area to get you started.

Covidence Knowledge Base - home to all of our comprehensive articles, instructions and advice to FAQ.

Covidence Academy - combines all of our learning material into a single space. New and novice users can easily navigate to find the latest ‘How to’ guides on the different types of review processes, step-by-step video tutorials on the Covidence stages, and helpful links/tools to additional resources. 

Online Support Team - contact our team for support on your review by emailing support@covidence.org

When logged into your account, you can also easily contact the Support Team and the comprehensive articles from our Knowledge Base within Covidence by clicking the 'Need help?' button in the lower right-hand corner of the screen.