Guides & Tutorials: Systematic Search for Systematic Review: Step 6. Share References with Teammates

Copyright Disclaimer

Except where otherwise noted, the content of this guide is licensed under a CC BY-NC 4.0 License.

Step 6. Share References with Teammates

Share References with Teammates

There are couple of ways you can share your references with your teammates. To co-work on a systematic review, your teammates may need to co-edit (e.g. add, edit, remove, or annotate) references at the same time. This will require you to share your library through your EndNote web account.

The table below summarizes 4 ways of sharing references. Pick the one that suits your needs and refer to the steps therein. (Note: see the updated practice here for Endnote 21)

	When to use it	How to do this
Share whole library or part of the library through file transfer	If co-editing references is *not* needed If you need to share groups, PDFs and annotations If teammates do not have EndNote web or do not prefer to use it	Save as a compressed library (with or without PDFs) and send it to teammates through email, USB, cloud drive, etc. `Steps` Save as a Compressed Library To share part of your library (e.g. selected references, a group of references), simply copy the references to another new library and save that library as a compressed library.
Share whole library through EndNote web	If co-editing references is needed If you need to share groups, PDFs and annotations	Both you and your teammates need to have an EndNote web account. Sharing whole library through EndNote web will require you to synchronize all your references to your EndNote web account. `Steps` Share the Whole Reference Library `Be cautious!` If you already have references in your EndNote web account, synchronizing the whole library will mix its references with the existing ones. To solve this, you can either empty your EndNote web before sharing, or register a new EndNote web account with another email.
Share a group of references through EndNote web	If you only want to share a group If co-editing references is needed If you do not need to share PDFs and annotations	Both you and your teammates need to have an EndNote web account. Sharing a group in the library through EndNote web will require you to synchronize references in the whole library to your EndNote web account. `Steps` Share a Group of References with EndNote Web Users `Be cautious!` If you already have references in your EndNote web account, synchronizing the whole library will mix its references with the existing ones. To solve this, you can either empty your EndNote web before sharing, or register a new EndNote web account with another email.
Share references cited in a Word document	If you only want to share the references you have cited in your work If co-editing references is not needed	Export a “Traveling Library” from your Word document. Save it as a compressed library and then send it to teammates. `Steps` Export Traveling Library

Add Comments to References

When sharing references with teammates, you can invite them to leave comments using EndNote's "Label" or "Research Notes" fields. These two fields are usually empty in the imported references. You may also customize new fields for comments, e.g. Reviewer 1, Reviewer 2, Reviewer 3, if you have more than one reviewers. In such setting, your teammates can put in "accept", "reject", etc. in their respective fields.

Steps Add Labels and Research Notes

At this stage, you may customize again your display fields in your library's header to allow the display of teammates' comments. Some suggested fields would be: Record Number, Author, Year, Title, Name of Database, Label (or Reviewer 1, Reviewer 2, Reviewer 3), Last Update. Note that the maximum number of fields to display is 10. Revisit Step 1. Set Preferences to learn how to customize display fields.