Meta-analyses

A community-driven, searchable, web-based catalogue of tools to support the systematic review process across multiple domains. The resource aims to help reviewers find appropriate tools based on how they provide support for the systematic review process.

System for the Unified Management, Assessment and Review of Information is the Joanna Briggs Institutes premier software for the systematic review of literature. It is designed to assist researchers and practitioners in fields such as health, social sciences and humanities to appraise and synthesise evidence of feasibility, appropriateness, meaningfulness and effectiveness; and to conduct economic evaluations of activities and interventions. Online. Free to JCU users. Instructions to access...

Colandr is an open access, machine-learning assisted tool for conducting evidence synthesis. This tool uses machine learning, natural language processing, and text-mining functions to partially automate finding relevant citations and extract desired data from PDF articles. Help and more information available at the Colandr Community site.

Supports protocol development; study selection; quality assessment; data extraction; report write up; collaboration; and, document management.

The IEBH SR-Accelerator is a suite of tools to speed up steps in the Systematic Review (SR) process. It is freely available for anyone in the world to use. The SRA is a modular design which means the tools can be incorporated into existing SR workflows and combined with other automation tools.

A web-based software platform that streamlines the production of reviews, including: Cochrane Reviews; citation screening; full text review; risk of bias assessment; extraction of study characteristics and other study data; and, export of data into RevMan.

EPPI-Reviewer 4 is the EPPI-Centre's comprehensive online software tool for research synthesis. It is a web-based software program for managing and analysing data in literature review. It was developed for all types of systematic reviews such as meta-analysis, framework synthesis and thematic synthesis.

Free academic licence for hosted version of software. Click on Buy Now and choose the Hosted licence type and then choose the Academic Licence.
Integrates project management tools and systematic review processes. SRDB.PRO streamlines the process by giving the option to automate task assignments, notifications and reduces work needed for the most time-intensive tasks.

Thoth is a web-based support tool developed to support the SLR process in software engineering.

SyRF is a free-to-use online platform for performing systematic reviews of preclinical studies. It is an initiative by CAMARADES, funded by the NC3Rs.

MetaMap is a highly configurable program developed by Dr. Alan (Lan) Aronson at the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to map biomedical text to the UMLS Metathesaurus or, equivalently, to discover Metathesaurus concepts referred to in text. MetaMap uses a knowledge-intensive approach based on symbolic, natural-language processing (NLP) and computational-linguistic techniques. Besides being applied for both IR and data-mining applications, MetaMap is one of the foundations of NLM's Medical Text Indexer (MTI) which is being used for both semiautomatic and fully automatic indexing of biomedical literature at NLM. (from website). Free but users are required to report on useage and to comply with MetaMap terms and conditions and comply with the UMLS Metathesaurus License Agreement.

Enter a search strategy into the first box to see how the search should be entered in other databases. Note it does not identify subject terms that may be different in other databases.

There are other automated filters which are offered as standalone tools. One example is RCT Tagger. In this resource a subject search is entered into a search line and the search is run against PubMed. The results returned are presented in order of probability of the record being a report of an RCT according to the underlying algorithm.

This package contains functions to automate this process by making use of the Lens.org API. An input article list can be used to return a list of all referenced records, and/or all citing records in the Lens.org database (consisting of PubMed, PubMed Central, CrossRef, Microsoft Academic Graph and CORE)

searchrefiner is an interactive interface for visualising and understanding queries used to retrieve medical literature for systematic reviews.
You need to set up a free account to use this product.

RobotSearch allows you to upload an RIS file, and it will filter out articles that do not describe RCTs using their (highly accurate) machine learning model.

A web application designed to de-duplicate large search results from multiple databases for systematic reviews. Upload your search to the web application and follow through each step to remove duplicate records. The code used to develop the web application is available via GitHub.

The Deduplicator is a tool to remove duplicates from libraries. This tool has two main functions
1) To deduplicate a library prior to screening
2) To compare two libraries and remove already screened articles

[From the website]: For optimizing the step of citation screening for systematic reviews, we are developing abstrackr: a free, open-source, web-based application for facilitating citation screening for systematic reviews. The program comprises two components; a web-based annotation tool that allows participants in a review to collaboratively screen citations for relevance, and machine learning technologies that semi-automate this process.

Use EndNote to store, deduplicate and screen references.

The Screenatron is a tool designed to allow fast abstract screening when performing a systematic review.

The Disputatron is a tool designed to automatically detect screening disagreements between reviewers of a systematic review, who screened in EndNote.

Excel is the most basic tool for the management of the screening and data extraction stages of the systematic review process. Customized workbooks and spreadsheets can be designed for the review process, and lists of references can be exported from citation managers into Excel format for screening.

Rayyan helps screen studies for systematic style reviews by automatically identifying disagreements and allowing the use of keywords to help identify relevant studies.
Rayyan also has a mobile app for iPhone, iPad and android devices.

Use the Study Selection checkbox to find more tools for screening and selecting studies.

Robot reviewer is a tool designed to automatically extract information about bias (using the Cochrane Risk of Bias tool), and additionally, can extract information about the participants, interventions, and outcomes studied in a trial.

Use the Quality Assessment checkbox to find more tools for appraising studies.

NVivo is powerful software for qualitative data analysis.

SPSS is a comprehensive statistics package for the social sciences. The IBM SPSS Statistics Premium Edition helps data analysts, planners, forecasters, survey researchers, program evaluators and database marketers – among others – to easily accomplish tasks at every phase of the analytical process. It includes a broad array of fully integrated Statistics capabilities and related products for specialized analytical tasks across the enterprise. The software will improve productivity significantly and help achieve superior results for specific projects and business goals.

This is a web-based effect-size calculator. It is designed to facilitate the computation of effect-sizes for meta-analysis. Four effect-size types can be computed from various input data: the standardized mean difference, the correlation coefficient, the odds-ratio, and the risk-ratio.

Use the Data Extraction checkbox to find more tools for extracting data from studies.

RobotReviewer is a tool designed to automatically extract information about bias (using the Cochrane Risk of Bias tool), and can also extract information about the participants, interventions, and outcomes studied in a trial.

This is a web-based effect-size calculator. It is designed to facilitate the computation of effect-sizes for meta-analysis. Four effect-size types can be computed from various input data: the standardized mean difference, the correlation coefficient, the odds-ratio, and the risk-ratio.

RevMan facilitates preparation of protocols and full reviews, including text, characteristics of studies, comparison tables, and study data. It can perform meta-analysis of the data entered, and present the results graphically.

A web application for meta-analysis of preclinical data. Functions include:
Effect size calculation (NMD/SMD/odds ratio) ; Stratified meta-analysis ; Meta-regression ; Trim-and-fill analysis ; Egger's regression ; Graphs demonstration

RevMan facilitates preparation of protocols and full reviews, including text, characteristics of studies, comparison tables, and study data. It can perform meta-analysis of the data entered, and present the results graphically.

Develop and publish well-structured electronic guidelines, evidence summaries and decision aids. This tool is used post review to facilitate drilling down and examine the primary studies used in the review. No install or setup required.

"GRADEpro GDT is an easy to use, all‐in‐one web solution to summarise and present information for healthcare decision making. It supports creating summary tables for systematic reviews and health technology assessments. It also provides a database of GRADE evidence tables and health care recommendations for adoption, adaptation and development of new guidelines." (website)

The PRISMA 2020 statement consists of a 27-item checklist of items recommended for reporting in systematic reviews, an expanded checklist that details reporting recommendations for each item, the PRISMA 2020 abstract checklist, and revised flow diagrams for original and updated reviews.