Exclusion Criteria
Exclusion criteria are the specific reasons your team gives when deciding not to include a study. Defining them upfront ensures that all reviewers use consistent language when excluding studies, and makes your review's decision-making transparent and auditable.
Why exclusion criteria matter
During screening, every excluded study requires an exclusion reason. Rather than letting reviewers type free-text reasons - which creates inconsistent, hard-to-analyse data - ActiveSLR requires reviewers to select from a predefined list that you define. This means your exported data and PRISMA counts will be clean and categorised.
Exclusion criteria are shared across both title/abstract screening and full-text screening. You define one list that covers all screening phases.
Opening the exclusion criteria settings
Navigate to Project Management > Exclusion Criteria in the project sidebar, or go to Settings > Exclusion Criteria.
Adding exclusion criteria
Click Add Criterion to create a new exclusion reason. Enter a short, clear label for the reason - for example:
- Wrong population
- Wrong intervention
- Wrong study design
- Not a full research study (e.g., editorial, letter, commentary)
- Duplicate (already captured during deduplication)
- Outcomes not reported
- Insufficient data
Click Save to add the criterion to the list.
Use specific, distinct labels. If two criteria could apply to the same study, consider whether they should be merged into one. Overlapping criteria make it harder for reviewers to choose consistently.
Ordering exclusion criteria
The order of your exclusion criteria matters. ActiveSLR uses a hierarchical exclusion model - when a reviewer selects a reason, they are expected to use the first applicable criterion in the list, not the most specific one.
Drag the criteria into your preferred order using the drag handles on the left of each row. A common approach is to order from broadest to most specific:
- Wrong population
- Wrong intervention
- Wrong comparator
- Wrong study design
- Not a primary study
- Outcomes not reported
Editing and deleting criteria
Click the edit icon next to a criterion to update its label. Click the delete icon to remove it. You can edit and delete criteria at any time, but be careful about changes once screening has started:
Editing or deleting an exclusion criterion after screening has begun does not retroactively change decisions already made using that criterion. If you rename or remove a criterion, studies already excluded with that reason will retain the original reason in the database.
How criteria are used during screening
When a reviewer clicks Exclude for a study, a panel opens prompting them to select a reason from your exclusion criteria list. The reviewer must choose exactly one reason before the exclusion can be saved.
Reviewers can see the full list but cannot add new criteria on the fly. This enforces consistent categorisation across your entire screening team.
Exclusion criteria in reports and exports
The exclusion reason is recorded for every excluded study. When you export screening data or generate a PRISMA flow diagram, the exclusion counts are broken down by criterion, making it straightforward to report how many studies were excluded for each reason.