How does SWIFT-Active Screener differ from SWIFT-Review?

SWIFT-Review and SWIFT Active Screener are separate software products, but both are used in the systematic review process. SWIFT-Review provides numerous tools to assist with problem formulation and literature prioritization. You can use SWIFT-Review to search, categorize, and prioritize large (or small) bodies of literature in an interactive manner. SWIFT-Review utilizes newly developed statistical text mining and machine learning methods that allow users to uncover over-represented topics within the literature corpus and to rank order documents for manual screening.

There is some overlap between the two tools, in that both perform literature prioritization. The key differences between the two software products are:

  • SWIFT-Review is dependent on the availability of an initial training seed; Active-Screener can work with or without an initial training seed.
  • SWIFT-Review uses ‘traditional’ machine learning to and builds its ranking model only once; Active-Screener builds its model iteratively, in response to user interaction, such that the model continually improves as references are screened.
  • SWIFT-Review provides only a ranking of the documents but no feedback on how many relevant articles are available above any given threshold; Active-Screener provides a real-time estimate of document recall so that you can know when to stop screening.
  • SWIFT-Review is a desktop application that runs on both Windows and Mac; Active-Screener is web-based software designed specifically for multi-user document screening.

To obtain your free license for SWIFT Review, simply browse to the Sciome Software web page to login and/or create your SWIFT-Review account.  Once you have logged in, you will find links to download the Windows and Mac installation software which you can use to set up SWIFT-Review on your computer.