Skip to main content

How to Use Labels and Exclusion Reasons in Rayyan

  • Updated

Labels and exclusion reasons are both available in the Screening and Full-text screening stages. They may seem similar but serve very different purposes — using them incorrectly affects your PRISMA flow diagram.

Feature Purpose Appears in PRISMA? Filterable?
Labels Short, flexible tags for categorizing or flagging references (e.g., “Full Text Needed”, “RCT”, “Pediatric”) No Yes
Exclusion reasons Documented rationale for why a reference was excluded (e.g., “Wrong population”, “Not peer-reviewed”) Yes Yes
Important Only exclusion reasons appear in the PRISMA flow diagram — labels do not. If you use a label instead of an exclusion reason, that information will not appear in your PRISMA report.

How to add labels and exclusion reasons

The workflow is the same for both. Open a reference and click Label or Reason in the decision bar. Select an existing item from the list, or type a new one, check the box, and click Apply. Once applied, it is saved to the list for future use across the review.

Best practice Agree on a standard set of labels and exclusion reasons before screening begins. Use consistent, descriptive names — “Full Text Needed” rather than “FT” or “full text”. This makes filtering more reliable and prevents duplicate entries with different spellings.
Common issue Avoid creating reasons that mean the same thing with slightly different wording — “Wrong population”, “Incorrect population”, and “Population mismatch” will all appear as separate entries in your PRISMA report.

How to remove labels and exclusion reasons

To remove a label or reason from a reference, reopen the panel, deselect it, and click Apply. With Blind Mode on, you can only manage your own annotations. With Blind Mode off, any member except Viewers can remove labels or reasons added by others.

To remove from multiple articles at once, use Multi-Select — available on all plans. Free plan users can select up to 10 articles at a time.

How to remove a label or reason from your entire review

Rayyan has no global delete option. To remove a label or reason from the entire review, deselect it from every article that carries it — once no articles carry it, it disappears from the list automatically.

  1. Turn Blind Mode off so all team annotations are visible
  2. Set the Filter by Inclusion dropdown to All Articles — the default shows only Undecided, so this ensures decided articles are included too
  3. Filter by the label or reason you want to remove
  4. Use Multi-Select to select all matching articles, deselect the label or reason, and click Apply

How exclusion reasons appear in PRISMA

Exclusion reasons from both Screening and Full-text screening are automatically included in the PRISMA flow diagram. Pre-defined reasons cannot be removed or edited — they are a starting point. Custom reasons are saved for the life of the review. For full details, see How to Create a PRISMA Diagram in Rayyan.

Continue to: How to Filter, Search, and Sort Your References in Rayyan

Related articles

Comments

0 comments

Article is closed for comments.