The Covidence platform continues to evolve, with recent product updates advancing the tool towards the vision of a world where answers to questions about health and other fields of human wellbeing are accurate, up to date, and accessible. The Covidence team is committed to engaging with the Cochrane community and continuing to make improvements that are user-focused.
Recent updates
Data validation
Covidence allows for several types of data points to be collected: integers, decimals, percentages, and free text. The platform now automatically checks that the data entered to a cell matches the expected data type, saving time later on in double checking and cleaning data!
Manage customised tags
Did a few members of your team get a little too tag-happy? Did you make a typo when you added a tag? Fear no more, you can now delete those pesky superfluous tags from your settings page!
From your review dashboard, click on Settings, then on Study tags. You won't be able to delete the pre-populated tags (i.e. Awaiting classification and Ongoing study), but all others can be deleted from this page. You can also easily add tags from here!
Custom text fields now integrate to template
Covidence has a streamlined data extraction form with many of the standard elements pre-programmed, minimising time research teams have to spend on constructing their forms. You can see a walkthrough of creating a data extraction form in Covidence here.
Previously when a customised text field was added, it was limited to a study-by-study basis. Now, when added to the review template, the custom text field will be carried forward along with all the other customised elements of the template, including the baseline characteristics table, interventions characteristics table, and outcomes.
You can read more about custom text fields here.
Organisation accounts for Cochrane Review Groups
The Covidence team is in the process of creating organisational accounts for each Cochrane Review Group. These group accounts will enable editorial staff to be able to create reviews at any time in the process, including while the review is in editorial or prior to protocol registration. The editorial staff will also be able to monitor review activity within their own groups. Reviews will be clearly grouped according to their Review Group association.
Have some ideas on how to continue improving Covidence?
Thank you for voicing your feedback and user needs, these are an invaluable input into our product roadmap and prioritisation process. The Covidence team would love to hear more from you! Please contact Covidence Support at support@covidence.org if you’d like to share some ideas, have a chat, or just say hello!
We also welcome feedback via this form.
Some resources you might find helpful: