Bibliometrix vs Rayyan

Bibliometrix is an open-source R tool for quantitative scientometric and bibliometric research. Its analyses include descriptive statistics, co-citation, co-authorship, keyword co-occurrence, thematic mapping, and historiographic networks. It works with bibliographic files from Web of Science, Scopus, Dimensions, The Lens, PubMed, and the Cochrane Library; companion R packages add API support for Dimensions, NCBI PubMed, and Scopus. Biblioshiny provides a web interface for people without coding or R knowledge, while the package can also work with other statistical R packages. Biblioverse packages extend the system from data collection to text and content analysis. The openalexR package can bring publication, author, institution, and concept metadata from OpenAlex into bibliometrix structures. Using bibliometrix or biblioshiny requires R. Stable releases are distributed through CRAN, while a daily-updated GitHub beta may contain minor bugs. PubMed exports lack citation and reference-list metadata, preventing citation, bibliographic coupling, and co-citation links. Web of Science and Scopus service access requires a subscription.

Rayyan is a platform for teams carrying out systematic evidence reviews, with workflows intended to be transparent, auditable, and reproducible. Its process spans reference import, collaboration, deduplication, title and abstract screening, full-text screening, data extraction, risk-of-bias assessment, and reporting. ResearchPilot AI Reviewer screens articles against criteria set by the user and gives decisions with reasoning notes. The Analyzer suggests inclusion or exclusion with justification, while the researcher retains final decision-making. ResearchPilot can also extract answers to custom questions from PDFs and metadata, highlight relevant passages, and let users inspect the answers. References are imported from exported files rather than a direct database connection. The API offers programmatic access to reviews, references, decisions, and metadata, plus workflow automation and external integrations. Rayyan is available on Android, iOS, web, and through an API. The Free plan allows three active reviews and two free reviewers; paid options start at $8.33 a month per seat, billed annually. Free mobile access is limited; Essential and higher provide unlimited mobile access.