Welcome!

Walter Sisulu University (WSU) is delighted 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. In Covidence you can work with:

  • Unlimited references/citations for each review.
  • Unlimited number of reviewers for each review.
  • Unlimited number of reviews.

 

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.
  • 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 join the institutional-wide licence account:

Only the approved university email address domains (@wsu.ac.za / @mywsu.ac.za) can request an email invitation to join:

  1. Go to - request your invitation page
  2. Enter your information (using your university email address) and click the "Request Invitation" link
  3. Accept the invitation in your email – check your spam folder if the invitation doesn’t arrive in a few minutes. Please also keep in mind that the link is for one-time use and will expire in ~30 days.
  4. Sign in if you already have an existing Covidence account with your university email address or sign up for a new user account (using your university email address).

This will automatically link you to the Walter Sisulu University licence. 

Starting a review under the unlimited institutional-wide licence:

  1. Sign in to Covidence 
  2. Click on the “Start a new review” button
  3. Under 'Which account do you want to use?", make sure to select "Walter Sisulu University"

Reviews created using the university institutional licence account will be visible to Covidence subscription administrators at the organisation. Reviews created using your user account are only visible to you.

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

Working with review team members from other organizations/institutions?
Once a review is created, you can add co-reviewers.

  1. From the homepage (Your reviews), select the review you wish to add co-reviewers to and click on “Settings”

  1. From the review Settings, navigate to “Reviewers”
  2. Click on “Invite another reviewer” and you can invite WSU and non-WSU 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 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.