Screening#

Once your project is set up, you can immediately begin screening records. To get started, click on Reviewer in the left menu if you are not already on the review page. ASReview LAB will present you with a title and abstract to evaluate and label.

Your task is to decide whether the record is relevant or irrelevant. Simply click on your choice, and the next record will be presented to you. While you review, ASReview LAB works in the background, training a model based on your decisions and continuously improving its understanding of your preferences. This process updates the ranking of the remaining records, ensuring that the most relevant records are prioritized for review.

Reviewer screen for ASReview LAB

The review screen of ASReview LAB with the title and abstract of a record to review. Click on the relevant or irrelevant button to label the record and continue to the next record. You can also add a note to the record or check self-defined tags.#

Each labeling decision by the user starts the training of a new model, provided no model is being trained at that time. When this new model is trained, the unseen records’ rank order is updated. Training and labeling occur asynchronously. With fast models, a new ranking will likely be available before the user finishes reading the text. With slower models, training continues until a new model is trained, and the user can continue screening the next record in line (2nd, 3rd, etc.).

As you keep reviewing documents and providing labels, you will probably see fewer relevant records. When to stop screening is left to you. See Progress and results for more information on progress monitoring and information on when to stop.

Tip

If you are in doubt about your decision, take your time as you are the oracle. Based on your input, a new model will be trained, and you do not want to confuse the prediction model. For the model, it may be better to consult others and read the full text (in the case of reviewing abstracts of scientific papers).

Autosave#

Your decisions (and notes) are saved automatically into your ASReview project file. There is no need to press any buttons to save your work anywhere in ASReview LAB (in fact, there is not even a save button).

Change decisions#

In some cases, you might want to change your previous decision. An overview of your decisions made during screening can be found on the Collection page. You can change decisions on this page.

  1. Start ASReview LAB.

  2. Open or Start a review.

  3. Click on Collection in the menu on the left.

  4. To change the label of a record, click on the three dots on the right of the record.

  5. Click on Change label to.

Full Text#

If Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) or URLs are available in the metadata of the records in your dataset, ASReview LAB will display the DOI and URL during screening. Most of the time, DOIs point to the full text of a publication. See datasets for more information on including DOI and URL values in your datasets.

Keyboard shortcuts#

ASReview LAB supports the use of keyboard shortcuts during screening. The table below lists the available keyboard shortcuts.

Keyboard Shortcuts#

Action

Shortcut

Label record as relevant

r or Shift + r

Label record as irrelevant

i or Shift + i

Add note to record

n or Shift + n

Show model information#

ASReview LAB allows you to view the model used to present you the record you currently see. This is especially useful if you are interested in the underlying model and how it works, or if you want to switch to a different model.

  1. Start ASReview LAB.

  2. Click on Settings (bottom left).

  3. Click on Show model information to enable or disable the model view.

  4. Go back to the reviewer screen if you are not there yet.

Note

The model information is only available when the record presented to you is the recommendation of a model. If you haven’t trained a model yet, you will not see that the record is presented to you at random.

Warning

Switching models during screening can be hard to understand for new users or non-technical users. As the model is trained in the background after each decision, records might be presented with the “old” model for a while. Once the new model is trained, a record is presented to you based on the new model. This can be confusing for new users.

Dark mode#

ASReview LAB offers the option to customize the screening appearance and functionality.

  1. Start ASReview LAB.

  2. Click on Settings (bottom left).

  3. Click on Dark mode to enable or disable dark mode. You can also use the system preference.

Note

Your preference is saved in the browser.

Font size#

ASReview LAB allows you to adjust the font size of the text displayed during screening.

  1. Start ASReview LAB.

  2. Click on Settings (bottom left).

  3. Click on Font size.

  4. Slide the slider to the desired font size.

ELAS Game#

If you want a break from screening, click on the ELAS mascot on the top right in the reviewer screen ;). Let us know about your high score!