Updated on 28 June 2024

University of Twente can offer ALL faculty, researchers and students access to its institutional-wide licence to Covidence. Please follow the instructions below see how to get access!

Information specialists at the University of Twente - Faculty of Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences (BMS) can assist with planning, conducting, and reporting systematic reviews and other types of research reviews. To learn more about conducting systematic reviews, check out this excellent LibGuide from the University of Michigan, take our course on (systematic) literature reviews, or contact your information specialist to request individual or group training. Click here to watch a recording of an earlier Covidence training session.

 

What is Covidence

Covidence is a web-based tool that will help you through the process of screening your references and keeping track of your work. It is particularly useful for researchers conducting a systematic review, meta-analysis or clinical guideline.

In Covidence you can:

  • Import citations - 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.
  • Upload PDFs - 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 research question. Customisable extraction forms means you only spend time extracting what you need
  • Assess risk of bias - Automatically populate your risk of bias tables by highlighting and commenting on text directly in your PDF.
  • Do 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, so two (or more) reviewers can screen and assess the references.

 

WHY join the U Twente's Covidence licence?

  • Unlimited records for each review 
  • Unlimited number of reviewers for each review
  • Unlimited number of reviews
  • Full access to all functions and features

 

HOW to join the U Twente's Covidence licence?

To submit your request, the account administrators at covidence@utwente.nl. In your e-mail, please provide an answer to the following questions:

  1. What's the (tentative) title for your review?
  2. What type of review are you planning to conduct? E.g., Systematic, Scoping, Rapid, Umbrella or Literature, or Other. Note: If you haven’t determined that yet, we recommend you take a look at this publication.
  3. Do you plan to use Covidence all the way from title & abstract, full-text screening, and until data extraction? Or only up to a certain stage?
  4. Area of research? E.g., Medical and health research, Psychology, Business, Education, Engineering, Other
  5. Question type? E.g., Therapy, Prevention, Etiology, Diagnosis, Prognosis, Qualitative, Other

Once approved, the requester will be given access to the review. An email invitation will be sent to this person (please check the spam folder too). This person is then responsible for adding other team members and managing the review. 

Once you have accepted an invitation to the review or to another 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 non-UT reviewers to work with you on the review.

 

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. 

Monthly Open Training Webinars  - Join our Community Team for free webinars (registration required).

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.