Systematic review

Speed up a systematic review without cutting the method

A systematic review is slow on purpose. The protocol, the search and the screening decisions have to be yours, and they have to be reproducible. The reading, the extraction drafts and the write-up are where an AI assistant saves real hours.

Try it free See the steps

Free plan includes 100 AI Autocomplete / Ghost Text · 5,000 AI Writing Words · 100 AI Rewrites.

included-study-07.pdf

14 pages · full text

What were the population, intervention, comparator and primary outcome?

Population: adults aged 40 to 65 with stage 1 hypertension (n = 186). Intervention: 12-week supervised walking program. Comparator: usual care. Primary outcome: change in systolic blood pressure at 12 weeks.

p. 3p. 4

How was allocation concealed?

The paper reports computer-generated randomization but does not describe allocation concealment.

p. 4

The problem

Where the time goes

Ask anyone who has finished one. The answers are consistent.

Full-text reading

Screening titles is quick. Reading 60 full texts for eligibility, and then again for extraction, is weeks of work.

Extraction is repetitive

The same fifteen fields from every paper, typed into a spreadsheet, usually late at night. That's when errors creep in.

Reporting standards are strict

PRISMA 2020 has a 27-item checklist. Journals ask for it, and reviewers check it.

The write-up comes last and gets rushed

By the time the analysis is done the deadline is close, and the methods section gets written from memory.

Step by step

How to do it in LitraMind

Step 2 happens outside the app, on purpose. Everything else can live in one document.

Write and register the protocol first
Draft the protocol in the editor: question, eligibility criteria, databases, search strings, outcomes and risk-of-bias tool. Register it (PROSPERO, for health topics) before you screen.
About Write New Paper
Search and screen the way you normally would
Run your structured searches in PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science or your field's equivalents, and screen with your usual process and a second reviewer. This step stays outside LitraMind.
Check eligibility at full text
Upload a full text and ask the questions from your eligibility criteria. Each answer points to a page, so confirming or rejecting a study takes minutes instead of a full read.
About Chat with Files
Draft the extraction
Ask every included study the same set of extraction questions and put the answers into your table. Treat them as a first draft: a person checks each field against the cited page.
About Chat with Files
Write up to PRISMA
With your included papers attached, use AI Write to draft the study characteristics and narrative synthesis. Write the methods yourself from the protocol, so they match what you registered.
About AI Write
Cite and format
Insert citations as you write and set the style your target journal uses, which is often Vancouver for medical journals. Finish with AI Edit for consistency.
About Research & Cite

Start step 1 free

The guide

Doing it properly

A faster review is only worth having if it's still a systematic one. These are the lines not to cross.

What makes a review systematic

Three things: a question fixed in advance, a search someone else could rerun, and inclusion decisions made against written criteria. If any of those is missing you have written a literature review. That's a fine thing to write, but call it that.

Systematic, scoping and narrative reviews compared
Feature	Systematic review	Scoping review	Narrative review
Question	Narrow, fixed in advance	Broad: what exists?	Flexible
Protocol	Expected, usually registered	Recommended	Not required
Search	Exhaustive and reproducible	Systematic and wide	Selective
Quality appraisal	Required	Optional	Rare
Reporting guideline	PRISMA 2020	PRISMA-ScR	None formal

Where AI fits, and where it doesn't

Use AI where a person then verifies the output against the source: locating information in full texts, drafting extraction fields, drafting descriptive text.

Don't hand it the decisions that define the review: final inclusion, risk-of-bias judgments, or the effect estimates that go into a meta-analysis. Check your target journal's policy and describe any AI assistance in your methods.

Two reviewers still means two reviewers

The Cochrane Handbook recommends that at least two people independently select studies and extract data, because a single reviewer misses eligible studies and makes transcription errors. An AI draft doesn't count as your second reviewer. It can make each reviewer faster.

Meta-analysis

LitraMind doesn't run statistical pooling. Do that in R, RevMan or Stata, then bring the forest plots and numbers into your document and write around them.

Written by the LitraMind team. Last reviewed 5 October 2026.

In their words

What researchers and students say

“It helped me keep the review question, inclusion criteria and synthesis structure aligned while I was working through a fairly large set of studies.”

Rachel T•••PhD Candidate, EpidemiologyN••• School of P••• H•••, United Kingdom

“I used it mainly during synthesis rather than screening. It was useful for comparing findings across studies without losing track of important methodological differences.”

Michael C•••Postgraduate Researcher, Clinical SciencesP••• M••• R••• University, Canada

“The structured workflow made it easier to separate what belonged in the methods, results and discussion of the review.”

Priya R•••Doctoral Researcher, Health SciencesN••• Institute of C••• R•••, India

“I found it useful for checking whether my synthesis actually answered the research question rather than becoming a long summary of individual studies.”

Lucas B•••PhD Candidate, Evidence-Based MedicineP••• Institute for B••• S•••, France

“For meta-analysis work I still relied on my statistical software, but it was useful for explaining the results clearly in the manuscript.”

Grace P•••Doctoral Candidate, BiostatisticsE••• University, South Korea

“The main advantage was consistency. It helped me keep terminology and study descriptions uniform across a long systematic review.”

Nora S•••Research Fellow, Public HealthC••• E••• Institute of H••• R•••, Germany

The tools

What this workflow uses

All of them live in the same editor, so you don't move text between apps.

Chat with Files

Ask questions of a PDF or DOCX and get answers with page references you can check.

About Chat with Files

AI Write

Prompt the AI with your document, your selection or your uploaded papers as context.

About AI Write

Research & Cite

Highlight a claim, search scholarly sources for it, and insert the citation in your chosen style.

About Research & Cite

AI Edit

Grammar, tone, clarity and consistency suggestions that you accept or reject one at a time.

About AI Edit

Straight answer

What it doesn't do

Being clear about this up front saves you finding out in week six.

No reproducible database searching with exportable search logs. Run those searches at the source.
No dual-reviewer screening workflow or conflict resolution. Keep using your screening tool for that.
No meta-analysis. Pooling and forest plots come from your statistics software.
Extraction answers need checking against the page reference by a person, every time.

Questions

Questions people ask

Short answers before you start. Plan limits are on the pricing page.

See plans and limits

Can AI do a systematic review for me?

No, and a review produced that way wouldn't survive peer review. The method depends on documented human decisions. AI is useful for finding information inside full texts, drafting extraction tables and drafting text, with a person checking each output.

Is using AI allowed in a systematic review?

Generally yes, with disclosure, though guidance is still developing. Report which tool you used, for which steps, and how outputs were verified. Read your target journal's instructions before you start, not after.

How does Chat with Files help with data extraction?

You upload a PDF or DOCX and ask for specific fields. Answers are grounded in that document and come with page references, so the person checking can go straight to the passage.

Does it generate a PRISMA flow diagram?

No. Record your numbers as you screen and build the diagram from the official PRISMA template, then add it to your document.

What about scoping reviews?

The same workflow applies. Use PRISMA-ScR as your reporting guide and adapt the extraction questions into a broader charting form.

Keep going

Related use cases

All use cases

Try it on one included study

Upload a full text to LitraMind, ask your extraction questions, and check the answers against the pages it cites.

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