ReviewAid: An Open-Source Tool for Efficient PICO-Based Screening and Data Extraction in Systematic Reviews

Sahu, Vihaan; Balakrishnan, Mohith

doi:10.5334/jors.672

About

ReviewAid is an open-source AI-driven tool designed to streamline full-text screening and data extraction phases of systematic reviews. It leverages advanced large language models to classify papers based on PICO criteria and extract custom data fields, drastically reducing the manual workload for researchers.

Why did I make this?

I built ReviewAid to act as an assistant for Researchers especially those involved in Evidence synthesis. The idea was simple, manual work will be never be replaced but more likely will be aided by this tool. Researchers can manually do the work and then check their accuracy by such a tool so as to not miss any potential important papers. Thus, acting as an "Aid". ReviewAid.

Note: Please do not replace manual done screening and data extraction completely with ReviewAid. The main aim of this tool is to use it as a 3rd person reference to minimise any errors done manually and to make the research as precise as possible.

ReviewAid vs. Other Systematic Review Tools

ReviewAid uniquely combines full-text AI screening, customizable extraction, multi-provider LLM configuration, explicit confidence scoring, and local inference in one open-source tool.

Feature	ReviewAid	Rayyan	Covidence	ASReview
AI Full-text PDF Screening	✅ Yes	⚠️ AI-assisted	⚠️ AI-assisted	❌ Primarily title/abstract
Custom AI Data Extraction	✅ Yes	✅ Yes	✅ Yes	❌ No
Multi-LLM Support	✅ Yes	❌ No	❌ No	❌ No
Explicit Confidence Scoring	✅ Yes	❌ No equivalent system	❌ No equivalent system	❌ No equivalent system
Local / Offline AI	✅ Yes	❌ No	❌ No	✅ Yes
Free & Open Source	✅ Apache 2.0	⚠️ Free tier / proprietary	❌ Proprietary	✅ MIT