About Step 4: Manage Citations
Step 4: Manage Citations
Average time (in hours) to complete
In the Manage Citations step, you will use a citation manager to keep track of all the articles you found in your comprehensive literature search which involves:
- Exporting search results FROM your selected databases
- Uploading search results TO your citation manager
- Removing duplicate articles that were in more than one database (may take place in SR software)
- Moving articles TO your systematic review software for screening.
How a librarian can help with this step
Before you begin the SR process, ZSR can help you:
- Decide which citation manager (CM) to use and how to download it
- Learn how to export citations from a database to the CM
- Learn how to remove/combine duplicate citations
- Learn how to export citations from your CM for screening
Select your citation manager
Although there are many citation management tools out there for SRs, ZSR recommends the use of Zotero most frequently for several of reasons. Zotero is: 
- A powerful all-in-one tool for collecting, managing, and citing research sources
- Awesome at citation-grabbing in library databases and in "the wild" on the web
AND ZSR provides unlimited Zotero storage for WFU users!
Visit ZSR's Zotero Research Guide for all-things-Zotero including how to download the software and sign up for our free Zotero workshops.
There are other citation managers out there. Follow the links below for more information on these free or subscription-based tools:
Mendeley is a free reference manager available from the academic publishing company Elsevier. An account is required to use Mendeley tools, is compatible with Windows, masOS, and Linux,* and offers a web plug-in to add in-text citations in Microsoft Word. *Mendeley is NOT compatible with Google Docs.
EndNote is a subscription-based reference manager available from the academic publishing company Clarivate. EndNote is compatible with Windows, macOS, and Google Docs and offers a Cite-While-You-Write plug in.
All of these citation managers are compatible with Covidence. Furthermore, Covidence projects can accept export files from more than one reference manager (if, for instance, project team members utilize varying tools). Your team can also choose to NOT use a citation manager, however, citation managers can make the SR process much more efficient.
Importing / Exporting Citations & Removing Duplicates
Once you determine the appropriate results (citations) from searches in your selected databases,* you will IMPORT them from the database* to your citation manager. Be sure to import citations from each database into separate collections in the citation manager.
*Please note: Each database has slightly different ways to send (export) citations. Be sure to choose the file type that is compatible with your citation manager. For instance, Zotero easily imports the following file formats:
- Zotero RDF
- MODS
- BibTeX
- RIS
- Refer/BibIX
- Unqualified Dublin Core RDF
It is likely your searches will yield DUPLICATE articles across the various databases you use for your SR. They can be removed in two ways:
1. Using your citation manager
2. Using your screening manager (Covidence)
Both ways can be effective, however, you should document how many duplicates are removed to include in your PRISMA flow diagram when using your citation manager. Covidence will keep track of duplicates it automatically removes, but at times it may miss a duplicate article (which would require a manual change to the PRISMA diagram).
Lastly, you will EXPORT your citations from the citation manager into Covidence by creating a document containing your citations. Covidence accepts the following file types:
- XML
- CRS
- RIS
Check out this video from Covidence on How to import references...