Welcome!

University of Birmingham (UoB) is excited to offer current staff, researchers and students access to their unlimited institutional-wide licence to Covidence.

Covidence is a web-based software platform that streamlines the production of systematic 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.

Why join the UoB's access to Covidence?
  • Unlimited references/citations for each review
  • Unlimited number of reviewers for each review
  • Unlimited number of reviews

 

How to access the UoB's licence account:

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

  1. Go to the Covidence Sign-up page
  2. Select Create account with SSO, and enter your UoB email address
  3. You will be redirected to your UoB's SSO login page, enter your university credentials (if required, follow the multi-factor authentication process)
  4. If you have entered the correct credentials, you will be redirected back to Covidence
  5. To ensure your Covidence account functions correctly, a few additional details are required to get started. Fill these in, and then click Create account

 

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

  1. Go to the Covidence Sign-in page
  2. Select Sign in with SSO, and enter your UoB email address
  3. You will be redirected to your UoB's SSO login page, enter your university credentials (if required, follow the multi-factor authentication process)
  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 university licence. 

Please note: If you sign in to your account via a different method that is not SSO, you’ll see all of your existing reviews and be able to work on them, but you will not be able to start new reviews under your university licence.

If you have gone to the Start a new review page and the university licence is missing which you think should be available, check first to ensure you have signed in to Covidence via your institution’s SSO.

 

Starting a review under the UoB licence account:

  1. Sign in to Covidence 
  2. Select Start a new review
  3. Under 'Which account do you want to use?", make sure to select "University of Birmingham"

 

Reviews created using the licence account will be visible to Covidence subscription administrators at the universities. Reviews created using your personal account are only visible to you. 

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

 

More about Covidence

The Covidence 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 reference management software such as EndNote (Desktop or Online), or any tool that supports RIS or other file 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. Note that University of Birmingham reviewers are cautioned to not share a review, that would provide access to the full text of articles obtained through University of Birmingham subscriptions or inter-library loan, to reviewers who do not already have the same legal access to those materials.  Please contact the Copyright and Licensing Team in Library Services if you have any questions regarding sharing these materials.
  • 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.

 

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 FAQs.

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.

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.