Systematic Review Screening Assistant
Screening is defensible only if the reason is recorded. Each decision arrives with one.
Title and abstract screening is where a systematic review spends most of its human hours and where its defensibility is decided. Two reviewers screen independently, disagreements are resolved, and every exclusion needs a reason that survives being read by someone else a year later. The volume is what makes it hard: a search returning four thousand records is normal, and attention degrades long before the list does. What helps is not speed but consistency — the same criteria applied the same way at record four hundred as at record four, with the reason recorded at the moment of the decision rather than reconstructed afterwards.
Can screening be automated?
Not the decision. Tools can prioritise and flag, but PRISMA-compliant reviews require human screening with recorded reasons.
Why does the reason matter so much?
Because the PRISMA flow diagram reports exclusions by reason, and a reader has to be able to check that the criteria were applied consistently.
What about the second reviewer?
Dual independent screening remains the standard. Agreement statistics and a documented resolution process are part of what makes the review reproducible.