How to Use Review Chat in Rayyan

Before you beginReview Chat is available on all plans and accessible to all review members — owners, collaborators, reviewers, and viewers. It combines team messaging with an automatic audit log of all major actions performed in the review.

What Review Chat does

Review Chat serves two purposes — it is both a team communication channel and an automatic audit trail. Every major action performed in the review is logged here with a timestamp, making it easy to track who did what and when without leaving the review. Review Chat also shows the online/offline status of each member, so you can see who is currently active.

How to use the chat for team communication

Open the chat panel from within your review and type your message in the input field. All members can see and respond to messages in real time. Common uses include:

• Sharing agreed-upon labels and exclusion reasons before screening begins
• Discussing borderline references and screening decisions
• Coordinating conflict resolution sessions
• Notifying the team when a major action has been completed
• Checking who is currently online before starting a coordinated screening session

Automatic event logging

Rayyan automatically logs major workflow actions — including imports, deduplication, exports, Blind Mode changes, PICO extraction, and sample creation — directly in the chat thread with a timestamp. These entries are system-generated and visible to all members. Export download links logged in the chat expire after 3 days — run the export again from the review if you need to re-download.

What is not logged

The audit log covers major workflow actions — not every individual action. The following are not recorded in Review Chat:

• Individual screening decisions (Include, Exclude, Maybe)
• Label additions or removals
• Exclusion reason additions or removals
• Manual edits to reference metadata
• Notes added to individual references