Meta-Research of COVID-19 Literature

Researchers are frequently faced with the daunting task of sifting through hundreds if not thousands of publications to gather supporting evidence for their questions or hypotheses or just to have a good understanding of a specific area. A case in point is trying to answer research questions about COVID-19 using the 51k thousands articles of the CORD-19 datasets.

Rayyan,technology developed by Qatar Computer Research Institute (QCRI), eases the painful task of literature screening using proven machine learning algorithms and a well-thought out interface to focus the attention of the reviewers on what is important. An independent evaluation conducted by a group of users in Sweden and our own survey have shown that Rayyan’s users enjoy on average more than 50% time saving compared to other methods and tools. A recent study from a group of researchers from the University of Cambridge showed that Rayyan tops the list of 15 tools for titles and abstracts screening. User testimonials demonstrate the positive feedback on the system and give many insights on how it is becoming a critical part of any review project. To date, Rayyan has attracted more than 57k users from all over the world and the number is growing.

This lecture, will give an overview of the different features of Rayyan, how we can benefit from the system, and will also share the different steps of screening a large set of articles.

Speakers Bios:

• Mourad Ouzzani

  Is a Principal Scientist at the QCRI. Since joining in 2011, Mourad has played a key role in establishing the data analytics group within QCRI. Mourad's research interests lie in the fields of data management and analytics with a focus on data integration, data cleaning, and collaborative data science. He is the project lead of Rayyan, the leading systematic reviews web and mobile app, that now serves more than 55k users worldwide. He holds a PhD from Virginia Tech, and a BSc and MSc from USTHB, Algiers, all in computer science.

• Hossam Hammady

  Is a Senior Software Engineer and the Software Engineering Team Manager at QCRI. He is leading a team of 10 engineers that work on Rayyan, SAQR and other projects and technologies developed at the institute. His current focus is on the architecture of large-scale web applications. Hossam is also an open source enthusiast and has numerous contributions on GitHub. He received his Master’s in Computer Engineering from the Arab Academy for Science and Technology and a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Alexandria University

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