Organize Your Review Team Using Rayyan to Divide the Work and Assign References

Rayyan provides multiple options to divide the work and assign references among your review team. 

Recommended Methods: 

By Sampling 

• Rayyan features a data sampling feature called Create Sample that allows you to generate sets of a specific number of articles or a specific percentage of articles. These samples can then be used by review teams to divide the work among them. This is the recommended way of organizing review teams because it enables both a division of labor and the ability to randomize the samples to reduce bias. Visit this Help Center article to learn how to use it.

By Minimum/Maximum Member Decisions 

• Rayyan includes the ability to filter by the number of collaborator decisions made on each reference. Every member of your team can start reviewing references by selecting the "At most 1" decision filter to review only the reference articles with 0 or 1 decisions. This causes your review team members to only see articles awaiting a first or second decision to avoid making more than 2 decisions per reference. This enables review teams to divide the work any way they choose. To get the articles that have exactly one decision awaiting a second, you would filter by At Most 1 and At Least 1.

By Searches 

• Divide your set of references into different files or "searches" and upload these search files to Rayyan. They will then be listed under the Search methods box. You can then ask each group of collaborators to work on a specific search by selecting the file they are assigned. Selecting the filename will act as a filter so they will only see the references contained within their assigned filed. The .gif below shows how this can be done.

All References 

• The default scenario typically involves two reviewers who review all references, so no division of labor or reference assignment is required. You simply invite your collaborator and get started. If there are conflicts, you invite a third reviewer to resolve conflicts at the end by turning off Blinding and having them filter by Conflicts in the decisions facet.

Other Methods:

By Alphabet

• Assign different members of the review team references using the alphabet (e.g. Reviewer 1 & 2 are assigned A through L, Reviewer 3 & 4 are assigned M through Z, etc.) The downside of this method is discovering where you left off so it is not recommended for larger reviews.

Note: All of the above methods work with Blind Mode On or Off. The following suggestion only works with Blind Mode Off and therefore is useful for instances where blinding is not required:  

By Labeling 

• Divide your review into groups of citations and then label each group differently. Labelling can be easily done with the keyboard (shift + arrow down and then apply the Label). You can then assign each collaborator to work on a group with a specific label. However, this would mean that you can't turn blind mode on since your labels won't be visible to collaborators with blinding on.