Rayyan for Systematic Reviews

Before using Rayyan, all collaborators need to sign up for individual accounts.  This is a brief process which involves filling in a form which is then manually checked by the Rayyan admins.  This check usually happens very quickly but we would advise that the process is completed a day or two before the actual screening is likely to start.

To sign up, click on the "sign up" button on the Rayyan welcome page.

The video below demonstrates the initial sign-up process.

Check your browser compatibility before logging into your account. 

To create a new review, select "New review..." from the home screen and follow the steps demonstrated in the video below.

There is no limit on the number of reviews one can create.

There is only one owner for each review, also called the creator of the review.

Only the creator of the review can invite collaborators and can change the blind setting (Blind OFF/ON). 

Importing records into Rayyan

Rayyan claims to be compatible with the following text formats: EndNote Export (.enw), RIS, CSV and PubMed XML.  However, we have found that RIS exports from a number of databases fail to import successfully into Rayyan.  We advise different approaches depending on your context:

• If you are conducting a systematic review, incorporating search results from more than one database, we advise exporting all of your results into Endnote or another citation manager first, thoroughly deduplicating your library, and then exporting from your citation manager in RIS format.

These guides are available: 

Exporting records from EndNote, Mendeley, Paper, RefWorks

• If you are exporting results from Ovid, EBSCO, or Scopus, we have found that the RIS format offered by these databases does not import into Rayyan.  Import your results from the database to a citation manager such as Endnote first, and then reexport in RIS format.
• Web of Science RIS format successully imports into Rayyan.
• PubMed XML format successfullly imports into Rayyan.  To export results from PubMed in this format, select "Send to" and then "XML".

For other databases, please contact your liaison librarian if you require advice.

Adding to an existing Rayyan project

It is possible to add records to an existing Rayyan project.  To do this, open the project, and then click on "New Search" in the top right hand corner.

NOTE: We recommend completing all of your database searches, importing all records into a citation management package such Endnote, and deduplicating your records before importing into Rayyan.

Editing and deleting records

It is not possible to edit or delete individual records which have been completely imported into a Rayyan project.  However, it is possible to delete an entire import by clicking on the trash can icon next to the import in the "Search methods" box on the left hand side.

Duplicate detection, resolution and reporting is still under development. We strongly recommend that you use a different software (such as EndNote) to removed the duplicated records before importing your library in Rayyan. However, if you choose to use Rayyan for this purpose, the duplicate records will be detected automatically. After few minutes, Rayyan will display a special icon beside each record that has a possible duplicate. By selecting the record, you will see  "possible duplicate" tag as well as the option to accept the duplicate and delete it, or reject it and keep it as a separate record. There is also the option to 'undo' if you deleted any record by mistake.