Once you have imported your references into Covidence you're ready to start screening.

To screen by title and abstract click 'Continue' under title and abstract screening, from your Review Summary page. Make your decision by voting on the Yes, Maybe or No buttons for each reference.

By default, a new review within Covidence is set up in dual screening mode (more information here), so that each citation requires two votes in order to move forward in your review.

These votes must be cast by a different two people each time. All voting is blinded, meaning your colleagues will be unable to see your votes until they've cast their own, and vice versa. 

If you are the first person casting a vote on a reference, then the citation will move to your 'Awaiting other reviewer' list.

If you are the second person casting a vote on a reference, then it will move forward. Where the reference is moved forward to depends on its previous votes; please see the article and flowchart here for more details. 

 

Sorting options

You can use the option menus at the top right of the screening list to adjust how your references display during screening. The default setting for display is 25 references, but this can be increased to 50 or 100. The default setting for order is 'Most relevant', but this can be changed by each author independently to display references by 'Author', 'Title', or 'Most recent'.

The 'Most relevant' sort uses machine learning (active learning) relevancy predictions to show the studies predicted to be most relevant. 

The other display options are relevant to each review's specific list of references and ongoing work. 'Most recent' displays the references most recently acted upon within the review project, rather than most recently published.