Systematic review screening
An include or exclude decision, with written reasoning, for every paper — for |
What you get
Abstractus covers the two slowest parts of a systematic review: building a defensible search, and reading everything it returns.
Turn a research question into ready-to-run search strings for PubMed, Embase, Cochrane and more, with verified MeSH and Emtree terms and a live count so you know how broad the strategy is before you run it.
Upload your search results and set your inclusion and exclusion criteria. Every paper comes back with an include or exclude decision and the reasoning behind it, so nothing is a black box.
Duplicate counts, records screened, and a decision with written justification for each one: the numbers a PRISMA flow diagram asks for, exportable to CSV whenever you need them.
The evidence
Abstractus finds more of the relevant literature than a single human reviewer does, and it does it while you are still opening the first file.
Relevant papers found
Abstractus
Manual
screenings Abstractus completes in the time a researcher finishes one
Time to screen a review
Measured on public benchmark datasets, alongside published data from “Single-reviewer abstract screening missed 13 percent of relevant studies: a crowd-based, randomized controlled trial”, Gartlehner et al., 2020. Our methodology is written up on the benchmark results post.
How it works
The same workflow you already follow, with the reading compressed from months into minutes.
Your question, your inclusion and exclusion criteria. Search Assist turns that into search strings for the databases that suit it.
RIS, NBIB or CSV from any database. Metadata is normalised and duplicates are removed before anything is screened.
An include or exclude decision for each paper, with the reasoning written out, so a second reviewer can check the call, not just the outcome.
Sort, filter and read the reasoning behind any paper. You stay the reviewer of record; the tool removes the volume, not the judgement.
Decisions, reasoning and PRISMA counts out to CSV, ready for your methods section and your co-authors.
From the blog
Benchmarks, methodology, and notes on evidence synthesis. Our numbers are written up so you can check them.
1 August 2026
On a public benchmark of 57,177 abstracts, our screening reaches a median recall of 95% and cuts the manual screening workload by 84%.
Read the post
25 July 2026
We are starting a blog about systematic reviews, evidence synthesis, and the software we are building to make screening faster.
Read the post
Bring your search results and screen them today, or talk to us about seats for a department or research group.