SRDR+ 9. Alternative Method for Assigning Articles for Extraction

Once you have uploaded the article Citations for your systematic review (section 3: Uploading Article Citations) and built out your extraction template (sections 5 through 5.5), you are ready to begin assigning extractions.

While we recommend using the Project Dashboard for article assignments, there is an alternative method

Before you or your data extractors can begin to actually enter the information from the different studies, you’ll first need to make Extraction assignment (that is, assign particular articles to particular data extractors).

First, navigate to the Extractions page under the Project option at the top of the screen.

The first time you do this you will not see any article assignments listed. So, you’ll need create an Extraction assignment by clicking on the Create Extraction button at the top left.

When you click on the Create Extraction button, a new window will open.

 

Note that you can assign multiple articles to the same data extractor. If you have only a few citations, just click one at a time to enter them into the Select Citation field. If you have many, rather than scrolling you will find it easier to just begin typing the first author’s name, when you do this SRDR+ will search your citation list and pull up that citation.

 

Once you’ve made all your extraction assignments, you will see the list of citations, who they are assigned to and the progress that the data extractors have made on that extraction. Note that this is a sortable list. Just click beside the column header to sort on that field.

 

Begin an extraction simply by clicking the Extract Data link on the left side of the cite record!

Note, that different team members will see only those citations assigned to them. If you are a project leader, you will see all extractions.

Finally, it sometimes happens that analysts are not able to complete an assignment. When this happens, the citation can be reassigned simply by clicking on the analysts name on the citation. A pulldown will appear with a list of all other analysts. Simply select the analyst to reassign to.

 

What does the Reassign Link do?

You may have noticed a “Reassign” link to the right of the progress bar. This is NOT for reassigning an extraction to a different analyst, but can be used to reassign an extraction to a different citation.

Why might you want to do this? It is not uncommon for a protocol or abstract of a study to be published prior to the publication of the full article. If you include abstracts in your project and extract what data you can from an abstract, you may want to update the extraction (adding additional detail) when the full text article is published. Rather than have two records of the same study, this will allow you to assign the extraction to the full article without duplication.