What is screening? 

Screening is the process of reviewing your search results and removing (or setting aside) the studies that are not sufficiently relevant to your research question or do not meet your previously established inclusion criteria. 

Why screen your results?

Even a well-designed and effective search will return some results that are less relevant to your research question. The more comprehensive your search strategy, the more results you will get. It can be easier to focus on key studies once you have removed irrelevant papers.

Screening for systematic reviews, meta-analyses, & other literature reviews

When performing a systematic review, meta-analysis, or other evidence synthesis -- such as a scoping review -- you are required to document the screening process, as well as the number of studies that have been included and excluded. Ensure that you allow time for screening your results.

For more details see our Systematic Review Guide.

Systematic Review Guide

Quick screening for other projects

If you are conducting a quicker, more targeted search in order to find a few relevant papers, you may choose to screen in a more informal and unstructured way -- for example, by scanning through a list of results to find the most relevant title(s). This approach would be appropriate if you are:

• Looking for a recent review on a specific condition or topic
• Locating a couple of key articles to stimulate further discussion in a journal club
• Completing informal background research to prepare for further research

Covidence for efficient screening

One of the best screening tools is Covidence. Although Covidence is designed for use in literature reviews of all kinds, it can also be used to simply help narrow down a large amount of literature to a smaller group of the most relevant papers.

Monash Health employees and students can access Covidence via our institutional subscription. For more information see our online Covidence guide.

Access Covidence

Covidence User Guide

Request Covidence workspace set-up

Library webinar on evaluating research papers

The Library runs a regular webinar on How to evaluate a research paper -- check the webinar calendar for upcoming dates.

Library Webinar Calendar

Overview of evaluation process

You can evaluate individual papers by carefully appraising them against a series of key questions covering four basic aspects:

1. Applicability – Will the results help locally?
   Is the paper relevant to your clinical setting, patient population, and healthcare system? Is it feasible to apply the findings to your setting? Are there any limitations that would affect use of the study in your settings?
   If a paper is not relevant and applicable to your setting, then you can move on to the next paper rather than continuing to evaluate this one. 
2. Reliability – Has the study addressed a clear question and used an appropriate study design?
   All studies should answer a clear and focused question that address population, intervention, and outcomes. The study design should also match the question asked -- e.g. a therapy question is best answered by an RCT. 
3. Bias checking – What is the risk of bias?
   Determine whether the study was carried out in an appropriate way, and whether its methodology has minimised the opportunity for bias to affect the results.
4. Findings – What are the results and are they valid?
   Is there enough information in the paper to determine that the results are valid and relevant to your situation? Do the results cover the aspect of the problem most important to your patient, and do they suggest a clear and useful plan of action?

Note: The answers to these questions will not always be clearly stated in the article. Instead, you will need to analyse the methods, abstract, key tables and figures, and overall actions of the researchers in order to make your own judgments about the risk of bias.

Resources to assist with evaluation

In addition to the Library's regular webinar, we recommend the below resources for further guidance on this process.

Excerpts from Trisha Greenhalgh's classic text, How to read a paper, are available as articles via the BMJ. 

• Getting your bearings (deciding what the paper is about) (1997) by T. Greenhalgh
• Assessing the methodological quality of published papers (1997) by T. Greenhalgh
• Statistics for the non-statistician (1997) by T. Greenhalgh

View the full BMJ collection to browse Greenhalgh's articles on how to read and interpret certain kinds of research papers, e.g. papers reporting on drug trials or diagnostic tests. Greenhalgh provides further guidance in her book, which is available via the Library.

How to read a paper - BMJ collection

Tools & checklists

For a structured and systematic approach to evaluating the methodological quality of a research paper, you can also be guided by critical appraisal tools and checklists. These contain prompts to consider certain aspects of a study's methodology, such as whether blinding was used.

Different critical appraisal tools and checklists have been developed for different study designs. Visit the Systematic Review Guide for links to various tools and checklists for critical appraisal.  

Systematic reviews and/or meta-analyses

If you are completing a systematic review and/or meta-analysis, you are required to complete a more formal process of critical appraisal. See below or visit our Systematic Review Guide for more information about critical appraisal.

Systematic Review Guide

If your search results contain papers published in languages other than English (LOTE), you may choose to translate their text.

While developing your research question and establishing inclusion/exclusion criteria, you may have decided to exclude non-English papers. In that case, you do not need to translate LOTE papers unless you wish to. 

Translation tools

Note: Free online translation tools may provide inaccurate translations. They are best used to generate a basic translation in order to help you determine whether or not the paper is relevant to your question.   

• Google Translate - Text entry, upload files, website translation across 133 languages. Free. 
• DeepL Translator - Text entry, upload files translation across 31 languages. Free plan available.
• Cochrane Engage platform -  Volunteer translation assistance accessible to both Cochrane and non-Cochrane review teams. [Note: MH employees can create a free account via the Cochrane Library website. Use the “Sign in” link in the top right corner to create a new account that can be used in the Engage platform.]