Your search is likely to generate hundreds if not thousands of references. The only realistic way of managing these is to use a reference management package, such as EndNote.
Why use EndNote?
- When searching you can export your search results directly into EndNote.
- Once you have collected all the references from the relevant databases you can automatically de-duplicate them.
- Use EndNote's custom fields to record decisions about each paper including reasons for exclusion at the full-text screening stage.
- The Find Full text feature can be used to automatically source many of the full-text articles.
- Use the Groups feature to create sub-sets of references.
- Record the progress of inter-library loan requests for articles not held at Reading.
- Numbers derived from EndNote can populate the PRISMA flowchart when reporting your results (see Step 7).