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Knowledge Syntheses: A How-To Guide

Overview of systematic review steps and resources to assist researchers conducting reviews

What is a Citation Management Software?

The thorough nature of systematic reviews means that they involve the use of a lot of references, often numbering in the thousands. "But how," you may ask despairingly, "will I ever be able to keep track of all those references?" Luckily, you have a wealth of reference management options at your disposal, most prominently in the form of citation management software.

 

There are many citation management software available for free to all internet users out there, links to them can be found below:

Deduplication

After completing your searches in all of your team's chosen databases, there will be a number of duplicates - studies that appear in more than one database. It is important to remove these studies from the group in a process known as deduplication. Many reference management programs include a deduplication tool. WARNING: Do not delete duplicates! You must maintain an accurate record of the number of studies at each phase of the review process. Instead, move duplicates to a separate folder for safekeeping. Covidence also has an automated deduplication function that we recommend. The software will track the number of duplicates removed and the review team will have the option to flag additional duplicate citations that were missed by the automated function.