The Graduate School have scheduled upcoming training sessions to support its RGU users - Register and join them for free!

Setting up a review in Covidence - Tuesday, 25th November 2025, at 12:00:13:00 BST - Register here!

Screening Studies in Covidence - Wednesday 3rd December 2025, 11:00-12:00 BST - Register here!

 

Welcome!

Robert Gordon University (RGU) is delighted to offer current staff, researchers, and students an unlimited institutional licence to Covidence.

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

Benefits to Robert Gordon University access to Covidence?

  • Facilitate your research project/scoping/systematic review
  • Unlimited records for each review
  • Unlimited number of reviewers for each review
  • Unlimited number of reviews

 

How to access the RGU's licence account with Single Sign-On (SSO):

New Users - If you have not yet signed up to Covidence with your RGU email address, you need to create a new account. You can do this by simply signing in via Single-Sign-On (SSO).

  1. Go to the Covidence SSO Sign-in page
  2. Enter your RGU email address
  3. You will be redirected to your RGU's SSO login page, and enter your university credentials
  4. If you have entered the correct credentials, you will be redirected back to Covidence
  5. A prompt will appear if you have an existing account with a different email address and ask if you would like to connect it with RGU's SSO and keep your work in one place. Sign in if you have the other account's credentials OR continue with Create a New Account

 

Existing Users - If you have previously used Covidence and already have a user account associated with your RGU email address, simply log in via SSO to see your existing reviews and subscriptions and to create new reviews.

  1. Go to the Covidence SSO Sign-in page
  2. Enter your RGU email address
  3. You will be redirected to your RGU's SSO login page, and enter your university credentials
  4. If you have entered the correct credentials, you will be redirected back to Covidence

Whenever you sign in via SSO, whether to a new account or an existing account, your account will be linked to the institutional licence. 

Please note: If you use an account other than the one for SSO, you will be unable to create new reviews, and the Robert Gordon University option may not appear. If this happen, please log in via SSO.

 

Starting a review under the RGU licence account:

  1. Sign in to Covidence 
  2. Select Start a new review
  3. Input the School Initials into your review title....

      Examples

      School of Health Sciences - "SHS_Public Health Practices"

      School of Nursing, Midwifery & Paramedic Practice - "SNMPP_Nurse leadership"

     4. 'Which account do you want to use?' make sure to select "Robert Gordon University (RGU)"

Reviews created using the Robert Gordon University (RGU) account will be visible to Covidence subscription administrators at the university. Reviews created using your personal account are only visible to you. 

Once you have created a review or accepted an invitation to another Robert Gordon University (RGU) account review, the title will appear in a separate section on your account homepage:

Working with review team members from other institutions?

With your review made through the institutional license, you can invite RGU and non-RGU reviewers to work with you on the review.

 

What is Covidence?

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

Discover more about Covidence, on each link:

  • 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. Customisable extraction forms mean you only spend time extracting what you need.
  • Customise 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 customised 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.

 

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 gain hands-on experience and better understand the process. 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 - Learn and understand the essentials of systematic reviews and gain insight with expert-led training and content to guide you through every step of the review process.

Covidence eBook Collection - Download our step-by-step practical guides for Systematic Review Success.

Monthly Open Training Webinars - Join our Community Team for free webinars (registration required) or watch our recent recordings without delay.

Online Support Team- contact our team directly 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.

 

If you are leaving the University

We recommend adding a secondary email address before you leave to make it easier to continue using your Covidence account without interruption.

If you need to log back into your Covidence account but cannot because you don’t have access to your university email address anymore, please get in touch by emailing support@covidence.org.