How to monitor progress in the project and single stage progress

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Project progress


Project dashboard provides an overall overview of project progress. You can follow the statistics in the progress for each stage.  In the panel on the right side, you can check:

  • what stages are included in the project, 

  • the total number of references in each stage (at the current timepoint),

  • the number of included and excluded studies, and how many references remain to be screened or extracted

  • number of conflicts


Example of a project dashboard with highlighted progress panel for each stage



You can change the colors of the progress bar by clicking on the user account icon (coloured circle with initials in the top right corner) and selecting the ‘Color settings’ option.




Stage progress - introduction


Stage progress monitoring allows you to track various statistics relating to the progress of the screening or data extraction, as well as the progress of the team. In order to understand all the progress monitoring domains, we need to distinguish between two concepts:

  • Task - used mainly in the 'Screening tasks' domain - refers to any decision that the Researcher has to make, both for screening decisions.
  • Reference - refers to the each uploaded record. 
Note that the number of references and number of tasks is not the same if you are performing double screening.



Stage progress - screening stage

Stage progress statistics include:

  • Screening progress - summarises the progress of entire stage. In the screening progress domain, you can check how many records remain to be reviewed, how many are included or excluded and which records are in conflict. This can help you manage your team and check if there are any problems or obstacles.

  • Team progress - Below the Screening progress section, you can find the Team progress - all inclusion/exclusion decisions (tasks) for individual Researcher. The team progress also summarises all the work that removed users have done on the project. 

  • Conflicts - refers to the number and type of records that are in conflict. In the 'Conflicts' section, you can check:

    • Number of all references being in each type of conflict (IN vs OUT, OUT vs OUT or IN vs IN) 

    • Number of conflicts resolved

    • Methodology of conflict reconciliation


By clicking on the 'Show list' icon, you can view to the list of resolved and unresolved conflicts and their details.


Example of Title and abstract screening stage dashboard with highlighted sections to track stage progress - conflict resolution, stage progress and team progress.


Screening tasks section summarises data from all previously distributed sets of records. It presents the number of references distributed once, Researchers assigned to distributed sets of references and distribution method. It also shows if any references need to be redistributed, for example if a researcher has been removed from the project. To view the details of each arrow, click on the arrow icon in the selected batch.


Title and abstract screening stage dashboard with detailed description of the 'Screening tasks' section

After selecting single group of distributed references preview, you can see distribution details. Here you can check the number of distributed references and their method of assignment.

The progress bar allows you to follow the general progress of the distributed set of records, while the 'Team member' section shows the number of tasks (in the case of screening - the number of references to screen) that each reviewer has finished.

Note that in the presented example,  the number of references distributed is 11, but the number of tasks is doubled due to the double screening, where each reference should be evaluated by two researchers. The number of tasks may increase if there are conflicts.


Distribution details of a single group of distributed references at the Title and abstract screening stage.

Stage progress - data extraction stage 

The dashboard for monitoring Data Extraction progress is similar to the one used in the previous screening stage. The main difference is the additional stage specific to data extraction: Quality Assurance

  • In the Primary Extraction section, you can track how many studies have been extracted, are in progress, or have not yet started.
  • In the QA section, you can see the list of studies reviewed by a second extractor, along with those in progress or not started yet. Note that this bar shows the progress of records that have already been extracted during the primary extraction 

Data extraction stage dashboard with highlighted sections for monitoring data extraction progress.



Progress of individual records


You can also monitor the progress of individual records. Within the Reference list you will find a filter section on the left hand side of your screen. You can use this filter to sort records by their status at each stage of the systematic review.


Reference list view showing the status of each record, with a filter section enabled. Users can filter records by their reference status.



All information on the status of the record is available in the 'Decision' column, which shows the current status/last decision. You can also access the decision/status of the record for all stages of the systematic review.


The colours of the labels indicate the current status of the record at each SR stage.

  • Grey square, filled  -  record distributed to researchers, screening or data extraction in progress- not completed

  • Grey square, unfilled -  record distributed to researchers but screening or data extraction has not yet started  

  • No label - record excluded at previous stage or included but not distributed to researchers

  • Green or red label with decision for each stage


The example (see screenshot) shows possible labels for each stage (i.e. title and abstract screening/full-text screening/data extraction):

  1. Record was included after tiab, FT, data extraction and QA were completed. 

  2. Record was included after tiab, FT, distributed to data extraction, but extraction has not yet started.

  3. Record included after tiab, distributed to researchers for FT screening, FT screening started (i.e. decision made by one researcher), final decision for FT not yet available.


Reference list view with examples of possible status labels for each stage.



RELATED ARTICLES

  1. Title and abstract stage dashboard overview  

  2. Overview of the Reference list panel 


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