The first step in the full text screening process is to upload the PDFs for each article you need to review. There are two ways to do this:

• Bulk Import - In this method, you find and attach all of the PDFs you need to the reference in a citation manager, like EndNote or Zotero, and then upload them all at once into Covidence. Please refer to this troubleshooting guide if you run into problems.
• Manually Attach - In this method, you find and attach a single PDF directly to the matching reference in Covidence one by one.

You may notice that some references in Covidence have a message that says "Full Text Uploaded by Covidence (Open Access)" like this:

When a study moves from the title and abstract stage to the full text screening stage, Covidence will use the DOI associated to the reference to try to retrieve the full text automatically. 

Covidence will rarely be able to find all the PDFs that you need, however, Therefore, you will have to find the remaining articles yourself. Please refer to our guide on finding full text at UVM or feel free to ask for help. 

To get started, click on Full Text Review to open the summary window, which provides a status update about this stage of the review. To get started, click the blue Continue button to see the first reference to review. 

To open the PDF, click the Full Text button and then click on the title of the PDF, which may open in a new window or tab. It depends on your browser settings. 

After you have finished analyzing the PDF, it's time to vote. There are two options at this stage:

• Include - This means that the article meets the inclusion/exclusion criteria and should be included in the final review. Clicking "Include" will move the reference to the "Extraction" stage.
• Exclude - This means that the article does not meeting the inclusion/exclusion criteria and should not be included in the final review. When you click "Exclude" you will be prompted to select a reason for excluding the reference from the study. The list of exclusion reasons were entered in the Settings page, but you can also add new exclusion reasons on the fly. Click the blue Confirm button after you have selected your exclusion reason. This moves the reference to the "Excluded References" list.

Remember, all voting is masked, meaning your colleagues will be unable to see your votes until they've cast their own. 

This video provides an overview of the full text screening process: