Results are screened to remove studies that are clearly not related to your topic. Use your inclusion/exclusion criteria to first screen the title and abstracts of your studies and determine whether they are relevant to your research question.
Once titles and abstracts have been screened, the full text must be retrieved and screened again to decide whether the study fits the eligibility criteria of your synthesis. At the full text stage the reason for exclusion should be noted.
Covidence is an online systematic review management tool that allows for independent title/abstract screening, full text screening, data extraction and risk of bias assessment. Although it is designed for use with systematic reviews, it can be used for other evidence synthesis methods, like scoping reviews.
To create an account using the University of Dundee license select Sign in with SSO, use your University email and complete when asked to Create Account.
The process of selecting the final studies for the review is represented in a PRISMA flow diagram and this is normally included in the results section of an evidence synthesis.