AutoLit® User Guide
Examining Results in Synthesis
Administrative Tools
Support and FAQs
Best Nest Building Practices
SLR Basics: How to Perform Systematic Review
NMA Basics: How to Perform a Meta-Analysis
Best Practices for Writing a Publishable Manuscript
Databases are overlapped in the sets of records they contain. When you run similar search strategies against multiple databases for your review, you are likely to identify the same study multiple times. Additionally, a single database itself will often contain duplicates of the same record! Screening duplicate records out of your review could take quite a while!
AutoLit provides automatic de-duplication, meaning that whenever you import multiple searches, an algorithm compares the DOI, PMID, PMCID, and title, and keeps only one version of a study that matches across these fields with a high enough certainty. While this system is derived from peer reviewed methods research & internally validated, it's not perfect! If you want to ensure that all de-duplicated records are in fact duplicates, Duplicate Review enables manual review of all de-duplication decisions.
To view duplicates, under Literature Search, select “Duplicate Review” ( red box ).
Alternatively, you can access the same page via the main Literature Search page, which provides the total duplicates that were automatically de-duplicated:
Each row in the duplicate queue corresponds to a record imported by a search. There are two duplicate types:
The duplicate queue only offers 1 reason for deduplication, although there may have been multiple criteria qualifying the record as a duplicate.
Prior to clearing any records from the duplicate records, you may want to download a spreadsheet of duplicates found. It is important to do this BEFORE making any individual decisions or clearing the queue if you want a full record of all duplicates!
The spreadsheet will only download records that are still in the queue.
To do this, click “Download Queue”
As noted above, ONLY clear duplicates that you do not need records of in AutoLit, such as after downloading the Duplicate Queue.
Clicking the “Clear Queue” button will remove all duplicates from this queue permanently and confirm that the records in question were correctly de-duplicated.
This is optional– no clearing of the queue is required in order to move forward in the nest.
After downloading the spreadsheet of duplicates, you are free to explore the list of all records that were removed from the nest as duplicates of existing records. While the basic information about the record is shown in the table, to review an individual record, click on the row to open the Duplicate Review modal.
Alternatively, you can “Clear Queue” and make a bulk decision for all records in the queue. You can decide to keep all the duplicates as separate records, or drop all duplicates, which automatically removes them from your nest.
Once you have selected a record, you can see and edit the bibliographic information of both the record that was kept in the nest and the record that was removed as a duplicate. Any differences in bibliographic information are presented in red text to highlight potential differences. From this page, you can do several things:
If the de-duplication was in error (and both records should be added to the nest as separate studies), select “Keep Both Records Separately” to over to insert each one into your nest.
If, upon review, a de-duplication decision that you are reviewing is correct, you can click “Keep only this record,” “cancel,” or click out of the modal to confirm the de-duplication decision.
As noted above, if you select “Keep only this record,” the duplicate will be permanently removed from this queue!
If the bibliographic information for the record that was kept is incorrect, you can edit it from this portal. To edit, click on any field and type in the correct bibliographic information.
While you can edit records by typing into each field (see above), you also have the option to auto-fill information from a de-duplicated record into the record you are keeping.
To 'fill fields' from the record on the right to the record on the left (i.e. from the duplicate record to the record that was kept in the nest), select “Merge to Fill Fields” at the bottom of the modal. This will result in:
Made an error and want to revert back to the original inputs? Click Reset.
Based on the PRISMA 2020 Guidelines, Duplicate records are noted in the “Records Removed before Screening” section:
See our PRISMA page for more details on tracking studies through Search and Screening.
