Institutional Plans: How Licenses Work – Rayyan Help Center

Under Institutional plans, access is controlled through licenses. A license follows the user: in any review they join, a licensed user gets their institutional plan's features, within the limits of the role they have in that review. A licensed user invited as a Reviewer has Reviewer-level access, not Collaborator access.

Paid roles still depend on the review owner's plan. For example, an owner on an individual plan needs an available seat to invite a licensed user as a Collaborator or Review Admin. Once invited, the licensed user's paid features will follow their institutional license, not the owner's plan.

How licenses work

Each license is assigned to one user at a time
Licenses are owned by the institution, not by individual users
A licensed user gets their plan's features in every review they join, within the limits of their role there
On Enterprise plans, the Enterprise Owner can also promote licensed users to Enterprise Admin or Co-Owner (see below)
Review limits are organization-wide. All reviews created by licensed users count toward the shared quota

Inviting unlicensed members

You can invite unlicensed users to individual reviews in any role. They don't use a license from your institution's quota, and on institutional plans no role needs a purchased seat or has a cost. What they can do depends on the role they have in that review.

Review Admins: everything Collaborators can do (below), plus managing the review: changing Blind Mode, inviting members, and archiving or restoring the review.
Collaborators: can use the paid features available in that review. They can open ResearchPilot™, but can't run its AI features (see note below). Their access covers only the reviews they're invited to, and they can't create their own reviews with paid features.
Reviewers: screen references, add labels and notes, and take part in Data Extraction and Risk of Bias, but can't manage the review.
Viewers: read-only access, suited for supervisors or stakeholders who follow the review without taking actions.

Note ResearchPilot™ AI features, including AI Reviewer, Auto Extraction, and AI Analyzer, use AI credits. Only licensed members get credits, assigned by your institution's owner or administrators. Licensed members can use their credits on their own reviews and on reviews they're invited to, except AI Reviewer, which only the review owner can run. Unlicensed members can open ResearchPilot™ in the reviews they're invited to, but without credits they can't run its AI features. See How AI Credits Work in Rayyan.

How licenses are assigned

Academic and Business plans

The workspace owner assigns licenses by inviting users to the workspace. Only the workspace owner can assign licenses. To request a license, contact your workspace owner directly.

Sign in to your Rayyan account (you must be the owner of the Academic or Business license).
Go to rayyan.ai/admin.
In the admin panel, open Users and click Invite User to Enterprise. The button says Enterprise on Academic and Business plans too.
Enter the member's email address in User Email and click Send Invitation.

The member receives an invitation email from Rayyan. If they don't have a Rayyan account yet, Rayyan creates one for them with that email address.

If you're new to Rayyan:

In the invitation email, click Confirm and accept invitation.
On the Set Up Your Account page, enter your first name, last name, and password, confirm the password, and click Confirm Account.
When you see that your account was confirmed, click Sign in and sign in with your email and new password.
Rayyan asks you to complete your account details. Fill them in and click Save, or click Or do it later to skip this for now.

If you already have a Rayyan account:

In the invitation email, click Confirm and accept invitation.
Sign in to your account if Rayyan asks you to. If you're already signed in, you go straight to the next step.
Rayyan shows a Successfully joined message with your institution's membership name.

Either way, you land on the Rayyan home page with your institution's access. The label next to the Rayyan logo says Enterprise on Academic and Business plans too.

Note Sending an invitation reserves a license for that member right away, even before they accept it. Your own account also uses one license. For example, with 5 licenses you can invite up to 4 members. Once every license is reserved, you can't send another invitation, even if some members haven't accepted theirs yet. The invitation email shows the date it expires. If the invitation has expired or is invalid, the member sees a message explaining why.

Enterprise plans

Enterprise license assignment is automated. Users are provisioned based on your organization's contract with Rayyan. No manual assignment is needed. For questions about your provisioning setup, contact your dedicated Rayyan account representative.

Removing a licensed user

The workspace owner can remove a licensed user from the workspace, freeing the license for reassignment. This applies the same way across Academic, Business, and Enterprise plans.

Go to rayyan.ai/admin.
Click the user you want to remove to open their profile details.
In the top right corner of their profile, click Remove.

This frees the license immediately, so it can be assigned to another member.

Promoting Enterprise Admins and Co-Owners

On Enterprise plans, from the same user profile page, the Enterprise Owner or Co-Owner can also promote a licensed user's role from the top right corner:

Promote to Enterprise Admin
Promote to Enterprise Owner (Co-Owner)

These actions are only available on Enterprise plans, not Academic or Business.

Important If the organization-wide review limit is reached, no additional active reviews can be created until existing ones are archived or deleted. Contact your workspace owner or Rayyan account representative if this occurs.