Home/Free tools/Systematic review screening estimator
Systematic review screening estimator
Pubrica’s free systematic review screening estimator converts the number of records returned by your search into reviewer hours, elapsed weeks and cost for each stage: title and abstract screening, full-text assessment, data extraction and risk-of-bias assessment. Every rate can be edited, so you can plan the workload before screening starts.
The tool runs in your browser. No registration, email address or file upload is required, and the formula, reference or assessment criteria used are shown with the result.
- Runs in your browser
- Nothing uploaded or stored
- No email asked for
- Method shown with the answer
- Sources dated
The Tool
Estimate the Workload for Systematic Review Screening
Estimates reviewer hours, elapsed weeks and cost for screening, data extraction and risk-of-bias assessment from the size of your search.
08
Estimates reviewer hours, elapsed weeks and cost for screening, data extraction and risk-of-bias assessment from the size of your search.
Screening · extraction · risk of bias355h
Total reviewer hours
17.7wk
At 10 hours a week each
38
Studies likely to be included
This is reviewer time, not elapsed time. Retrieving full texts your library does not hold, waiting on authors for missing data, and the fact that nobody screens for eight hours a day all push the calendar out well beyond 17.7 weeks. The single biggest lever is not speed — it is the search. A search that returns 4,200 records to find 38 studies is spending 79 hours to discard 92% of what it found, and an hour spent with an information specialist on the strategy usually saves more than an hour of screening.
Method. Straight arithmetic on the rates in the fields, which are our own defaults from completed reviews and are meant to be overwritten with yours. Dual screening doubles the screening, assessment and extraction time and adds an allowance for resolving conflicts; it also halves the number of studies wrongly excluded, which is why Cochrane requires it. Automation-assisted prioritisation can cut title and abstract time substantially, but it does not remove the requirement for two humans on the included set.
Limitations
What This Tool Does Not Cover
Use the result as a starting point. These are the situations in which it needs specialist review.
The estimators
Limitations of the estimators
The screening estimator counts reviewer hours, not elapsed time: it cannot know that your library does not hold forty of the full texts, or that an author will take three weeks to answer. The timeline planner leaves out ethics committee meeting cycles, which can add six weeks on their own. Both are deliberately built to be argued with — every rate in them is an editable field rather than a constant.
Related Services
Related Pubrica Services
When your project needs more than an estimate, these services provide specialist support.
More Free Tools
Other Free Research Tools
All Pubrica tools run in your browser and show the method used with each result.
Discuss Your Systematic Review
Send us your study design, manuscript or deadline. A subject specialist will review it and provide a quote within two business days, at no cost and with no obligation.