Importing studies and references into a review

Choose the route that fits your records

Screening usually happens before extraction, in a reference manager or screening tool. Import the studies you will extract from, with their full texts, rather than every search result.

In eviStreams you can drop PDFs onto the Documents page, import a compressed EndNote library (.enlx) with its PDFs, import a RIS file, or paste DOIs. For references without a PDF, eviStreams looks for open-access full text through Unpaywall and PubMed Central; those it cannot find are marked as needing a PDF.

You can also search PubMed and ClinicalTrials.gov from the Documents page. A PubMed record arrives with an open-access PDF or PubMed Central full text when one is found, otherwise with its abstract if it has one. A ClinicalTrials.gov record brings the registry entry and any posted results.

Handle duplicates without losing reports

A duplicate is the same report recorded twice. A second report of the same study, such as a conference abstract and a later journal article, is not a duplicate: keep both and link them, so that the study, not the report, is the unit of the review.

eviStreams keeps one document when the identical PDF is uploaded twice. EndNote, RIS, and DOI imports skip references that match an existing document by file, DOI, or PubMed ID, and report how many they skipped. Two documents that share a DOI are both marked as a possible duplicate but never merged automatically, because an accepted manuscript and the published version can share a DOI.

Check that every study can be read

Before extraction, make sure each included study has the text your form needs. An abstract rarely contains enough detail for outcome data.

1. Import the included studies and wait until each one has finished processing.
2. Attach a PDF to any reference marked as needing one.
3. Decide whether abstract-only or registry-only records are enough for your form; eviStreams holds them out of extraction until someone accepts them.
4. Check each document’s study ID, such as “Raslan 2021”, and edit it where needed.
5. Resolve possible duplicates and note which reports belong to the same study.

Keep a record of what came in

Track how many records each source produced, how many duplicates were removed, and why studies were excluded, so you can report the flow of studies. The Cochrane Handbook also expects trial registers such as ClinicalTrials.gov to be searched, since some studies are never published in a journal.

eviStreams names each document with a study ID from the first author and year when available, adding letters such as “2010a” and “2010b” when two studies share one. Retrieval and metadata lookups are best effort, so check the imported records before extraction.