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).
If you are new to using EndNote take a look at our introductory guide and videos on this page:
We've also produced a specific guide and video on using EndNote to manage the results of a systematic review literature search. There's an additional guide to how you use EndNote to provide the figures for your PRISMA diagram.
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.