Today’s researcher is burdened with an ever-growing increase in published scientific literature. In addition, they are confronted with tighter deadlines, increasing regulatory standards, and access to fewer resources. With manual systematic review processes, these challenges can result in inefficiencies, missed deadlines, and poor-quality reviews — there has to be a better way!
Adopting efficient processes that support a robust methodology is critical. With DistillerSR, you can save time through the automation of tedious manual processes, workflows that meet organizational and regulatory requirements, and centralized tracking to facilitate review management, team collaboration and project oversight.
In the latest DistillerSR update, we’ve added several new capabilities to improve the simplicity and security of your reviews. Here’s a breakdown:
Single Sign-On (SSO) for Improved Security
Working with multiple applications that require different logins is a pain. Remembering passwords, managing team log-in credentials, and ensuring your accounts are protected, can add a layer of complexity to your workday that you simply shouldn’t need to worry about. With Single Sign-On (SSO), users can now sign into their DistillerSR account using their secure corporate or institutional credentials. As a result, IT departments can control access with standardized security, and users can enjoy a simplified sign-in process.
Simplified Reference Filtering on the Fly
With greater volumes of literature getting published every year, many organizations are dealing with considerable data overload. Manual review processes can be time-consuming and error-prone. Without a structured process in place, it is easy for things to become quickly disorganized. The filtering feature in DistillerSR is something that clients have utilized to help organize their work for a while now; in fact, one client even wrote a blog post about how she couldn’t live without it.
This year, we have updated the filtering feature to allow users to do that same sorting, but on the fly. Whether you want to filter references so you can focus on a particular topic one day, or to quickly go through a group that is easy to exclude, DistillerSR makes it easier to organize and process your references faster.
View Reference Metadata as You Review
Capturing the same data over and over again, or wasting time searching for already collected data creates inefficiencies and increases the cost and time it takes to conduct a review. In this update, the metadata collected as part of your screening, data extraction, and appraisal processes can be instantly shared across the different stages of the review. Reviewers can see all previously extracted data as they review.
How does it work? Reviews capture data as they screen and extract data that could inform later aspects of the review. Reviewers can see the data collected at earlier stages of the review, which helps better inform decisions and prevents reviewers from having to search for the information again. When the metadata is shared instantly within the review, teams can leverage this automation to improve the efficiency of the review and eliminate duplicate work resulting in more efficient data extraction — a transparent and collaborative way to streamline your reviews.
*This is an optional feature – if you prefer to keep your reviewers blind to other’s work, this simply needs to be disabled.
Instant Access to Open Source Full-Text
Full-text retrieval is a challenge for many organizations, whether there is a dedicated person on the team for this task or not. Numerous available procurement sources can become confusing, and the entire process can become expensive without an efficient strategy. The Unpaywall Plugin is a third-party browser plugin that automatically notifies you when full-text articles are available through open access. As a result, you can now instantly access open-source full-text articles as you review: No search is required, which saves time and money on your full-text procurement processes.
Integrating Review Data with DistillerSR’s API
Groups that conduct living reviews require up-to-date data, or are constantly moving and sharing data across applications. Many users struggle with inconsistency and potential security risks when files are duplicated and stored in multiple locations.
DistillerSR’s secure API integration eliminates the need for manual integration processes between platforms, reducing potential data errors and security concerns. Integrations can be set up in real-time so that third-party dashboards, safety databases, or artificial intelligence tools — among others — are automatically updated with any newly extracted data and full texts associated with references. This synchronization helps establish a single source of truth among different platforms, saving time and costs while improving security.
As timelines and resources become tighter and the volume of literature continues to grow, researchers must do everything they can to automate and streamline the systematic review process. In addition to DistillerSR’s powerful AI, these new capabilities will help research teams improve security, automate manual tasks, configure their workflows for optimal efficiency and standardization, and centrally track and monitor review progress in a transparent, fully auditable way.
Do you want to see the updates in action? Book a free demo to learn more about DistillerSR.
