Systematic Reviews are currently available on Pro, Teams, and Enterprise plans. Each Systematic Review you start counts as 1 workflow toward your plan's workflow limit.
With AI and language models, Elicit can help you save up to 80% of the time on a systematic review without sacrificing accuracy. The Systematic Reviews workflow provides step-by-step guidance through search, screening, and data extraction, culminating in a research report summarizing the relevant papers.
How It Works
Elicit supports the major steps of a systematic review:
Set up your review on the Protocol Page
Gather all papers for the systematic review
Screen papers by title and abstract
(Optionally) Screen papers by full text
Extract data from screened-in papers
Generate a research report
Set Up Your Review: The Protocol Page
When you start a new systematic review, the first thing you'll see is the Protocol Page. This page shows every step and setting in one place, so you can configure your review before anything runs.
Research question
Enter your research question at the top. Elicit uses this to generate search strategies, screening criteria suggestions, extraction column suggestions, and to guide the research report. You can update it at any time.
Additional Context (for protocol details)
Use this free-text field to describe your eligibility criteria, PICO framework, or other protocol parameters. For example:
Population, Intervention, Comparator, Outcome definitions
Inclusion and exclusion criteria
Study design requirements (e.g., "RCTs only" or "exclude case reports")
This gives Elicit additional context to apply throughout your review.
Workflow stages
The Protocol Page displays every stage of your review as a visual timeline. Some stages are always included, and others can be toggled on or off:
Always on:
Gather — search for and collect papers
Extraction — extract data from included papers
Report — generate a research report
Toggleable:
Abstract screening — screen papers by title and abstract. Turn this off if you want all gathered papers to go directly to extraction.
Full-text screening — an additional screening step using the full paper text. Only available when abstract screening is enabled. Useful when your eligibility criteria require details not found in abstracts.
Disabling abstract screening will also disable full-text screening.
Search strategy
Choose how Elicit gathers papers:
Semantic search — Elicit interprets your question and finds conceptually relevant papers. Best for exploratory reviews.
Keyword search — use Boolean strings (AND, OR, NOT) for precise, reproducible searches. Best for PRISMA-compliant reviews or HTA filings.
Note: you can add additional search options once on the Paper Sources step.
Additional settings
Strict screening — when enabled, papers that fail any strict criterion are automatically excluded. Useful for hard requirements like study type or date range.
Figure extraction — allow Elicit to analyze figures and images in papers during screening and extraction. Available on Teams and Enterprise plans.
Report template — select the structure and format of your final research report.
Dual review — invite another reviewer to independently make screening decisions in Elicit, on abstract and full-text screening. Available for Enterprise plans. To enable, toggle it on below the "Additional context" field and invite a second reviewer.
Modifying your protocol mid-review
You are not locked into your initial settings. Click Protocol in the sidebar at any point to reopen the Protocol Page and make changes.
Changes apply to stages that haven't completed yet.
If you enable a stage that runs before your current stage (e.g., turning on full-text screening while you're in extraction), you will be taken back to that earlier stage.
If you disable a stage that has already run, its effects are removed from downstream stages. The results are saved, so this is reversible — re-enable the stage and they come back.
Gather Relevant Papers
The Gather step consolidates papers into a single systematic review. You choose an initial search strategy on the Protocol Page, but you can add more searches, delete tabs, or change your approach within the Gather stage itself. Per systematic review Pro users can add up to 5,000 papers, Scale users up to 20,000 papers, and Enterprise users up to 40,000 papers.
Multi-Tab Search: Open multiple search tabs using the + icon. Combine broad semantic questions with precise Boolean queries simultaneously.
Iterate & Refine: Test different search strategy variations. Elicit automatically de-duplicates papers across active search tabs.
Uploads: Upload PDFs directly or select papers from your Elicit Library.
Multiple databases: Search across Elicit's internal corpus of 138M papers, PubMed, and ClinicalTrials.gov.
Once you've gathered all relevant papers, click "Define screening" to continue.
Screening
The screening phase refines your criteria using a sample of papers. Title and abstract screening runs first, followed by full-text screening if you enabled it on the Protocol Page.
Defining criteria:
Elicit auto-generates screening criteria based on your research question and protocol details
You can edit, disable, or manually add criteria
Mark individual criteria as strict to automatically exclude papers that fail them
Evaluating results:
Click Evaluate screening when you're satisfied with your criteria
Papers failing strict criteria appear at the bottom of results
Other papers sort by likelihood of meeting all criteria, with screening scores visible
Click any paper to see its per-criterion decisions, exclusion reasons, and source quotes from the abstract supporting each decision
Reading mode overlays the source quotes directly on the abstract, so you can see exactly which sentences drove each criterion's verdict
To override a screening decision on a specific paper, click on that paper and then select your decision (Exclude or Include) and then press Save & next. If you exclude a paper, you can choose an exclusion reason as well.
Threshold adjustment:
Once screening has completed, increase or decrease the screening threshold to include or exclude more papers. Higher thresholds are more selective. When you've finished screening, click "Define extraction" to continue.
Dual review:
When dual review is enabled, two reviewers can independently make screening decisions in Elicit. Afterwards, Elicit will surface conflicts in screening judgements for reviewers to resolve.
To enable, turn on "Enable dual review" on the Protocol Page and add a second reviewer. They'll get an email invite.
After screening criteria are defined and Elicit generates its decisions, click "Start dual review".
Each reviewer sees papers and Elicit's recommendations, but not the other's decisions, scores, or notes until both finish.
Once both finish, a conflict resolution view lists every paper where you disagreed. You can discuss and decide on the final screening status of each conflicting paper.
Audit trail logs every decision, override, and adjudication for PRISMA reconstruction, plus agreement stats (decision agreement, exclusion reason agreement, Cohen's kappa) for both reviewer–Elicit and reviewer–reviewer pairs
Data Extraction
You'll first define extraction columns on a subset of papers to make sure your columns are functioning as you desire. Elicit generates suggested data extraction columns based on your research question. You can edit these suggestions, remove them, or add your own columns.
Click "Run extraction" when you're satisfied with your column definitions.
Click on any cell in the finished data extraction table to view supporting quotes from the paper so that you can easily check the AI-generated answers for accuracy.
For Scale and Enterprise users, extractions can pull from figures, tables, charts, and diagrams in addition to text.
Research Report
The final step generates a research report summarizing your review. When more than 80 papers are screened in, the 80 papers with the highest screening scores are included in the report.
If you selected a report template on the Protocol Page, the report will follow that structure.
Other Key Features
Browser Extension: Use your institutional database access to pull full texts before data extraction.
CSV Export: Export results from any step for further cleaning or analysis.
Collaboration: Team and Enterprise plans enable real-time collaborative editing. View-only shareable links are available on all plans.