Welcome!

University of Bern, Medical Library is excited to offer collaborators access to Covidence for the projects that uses our systematic review services.  The Medical Library's Information Specialists are available to facilitate the planning, conducting, and reporting of systematic reviews and other types of research reviews.  To learn more about conducting systematic reviews at the University of Bern, visit our website unibe.ch/ub/medresearch or contact our research support service team at support_med.ub@unibe.ch

 

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.

 

How to launch a review in the institutional account:
  1. Request your review by asking the information specialist with whom you will carry out the project or by emailing to support_med.ub@unibe.ch
  2. Once approved, an email invitation will be sent to join your review (may need to check your spam folder): click 'Accept invitation'

  3. Sign in if you already have an existing Covidence account with your university email address or sign up for a new account (we recommend using your university email as this will make it easier to affiliate with your university's licence)

 

Once you have successfully accepted the invitation to the review, it will appear in a separate section on your account homepage:

You will be able to sign into your account by visiting: https://www.covidence.org/sign_in

 

Support

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

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.

When logged into your account, you can easily access support 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.