Before you begin This article is for researchers, students, librarians, and review teams who are new to Rayyan. It covers what Rayyan is, how it works, and what to expect as you get started.
What is Rayyan?
Rayyan is a research collaboration platform designed to help researchers complete literature reviews and systematic reviews more efficiently. It combines AI, machine learning, and natural language processing to support faster screening, smarter prioritization, and more structured review workflows.
Note Rayyan is used by more than 1 million researchers, librarians, and students across disciplines. Whether you are working alone or as part of a team, Rayyan reduces manual effort and keeps your review organized at every stage.
How a typical review works in Rayyan
- Create a new review and choose your review type
- Upload your reference files from external databases
- Deduplicate to remove duplicate records
- Invite collaborators if you are working with a team
- Screen references and make Include, Exclude, or Maybe decisions
- Extract data from included studies
- Assess risk of bias
- Export your results when the review is complete
Best practice Before your team starts screening, define your inclusion and exclusion criteria in the Overview page, and agree on the naming conventions you will use for labels and exclusion reasons. Both are created on the fly during screening — consistent naming across the team matters from the first decision.
Key features
| Feature | What it does |
|---|---|
| Import References | Upload up to 10 files of 100 MB at a time in any supported format, including compressed files. |
| Deduplication | Automatically detect and resolve exact and near-duplicate records. |
| Screening | Make Include, Exclude, or Maybe decisions on references. Apply labels, exclusion reasons, and notes as you go. |
| Relevance Ranking | Rayyan learns from your decisions and ranks unscreened references by relevance to help you prioritize. |
| Blind Mode | Hide team decisions from each other to reduce bias and support independent screening. |
| PICO Elements | Automatically highlight Population, Intervention, Comparison, and Outcome terms. Available on Advanced and institutional plans. |
| PRISMA | Generate a pre-set PRISMA flow diagram automatically. Available on all paid plans. |
| Data Extraction | Extract and organize structured data from included studies. |
| Mobile App | Screen articles, manage your review, and work offline using the iOS or Android app. |
| ResearchPilot™ Suite | Five AI-powered modes to accelerate your review workflow: AI Reviewer, AI Analyzer, Auto Extraction, Chat with Help Center, and Chat with Articles. Available on Institutional plans subject to institution's contract. |
Continue to: Signing Up for an Account on Rayyan
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