Colandr vs RobotReviewer
Colandr
colandrapp.comRobotReviewer
robotreviewer.netSide by side
| Figure | Colandr | RobotReviewer |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 2 |
| Spec score · AI Literature Review Software | 7.8 (#20) | 8.4 (#6) |
| Purpose | Colandr is a web-based platform for conducting evidence reviews and can be used for different types of document reviews and syntheses. | RobotReviewer automatically annotates clinical trial PDFs with PICO characteristics and likely bias assessments using the Cochrane Risk of Bias tool. |
| Support | The team directs users to its help email and bug-reporting form, and asks users to allow time for responses because volunteers run the project. | The project directs users to an email address for questions and integration assistance. |
Plans
In their own words
Colandr
Colandr is a free web platform for evidence reviews and other document reviews and syntheses. Machine learning ranks citations by relevance to help screen titles and abstracts, while natural language processing classifies included documents into user-defined categories and assists full-text data extraction. Reviewers retain the final inclusion, exclusion, and classification decisions, and teams can collaborate and cross-check work. Citation files can be imported in TXT, RIS, or BIB formats, with a 40 MB limit per import, and screening decisions and extracted data can be exported as CSV. Colandr does not connect directly to citation databases; users export citations elsewhere, although the platform can help create Boolean search strings. Full-text papers must be found and imported individually, with no mass-upload feature. Relevance rankings update after every 10 screened citations, and metadata suggestions begin after 50 hand-coded extractions. Colandr describes itself as open-source and open-access.
RobotReviewer
RobotReviewer analyzes clinical trial reports by annotating PDFs with PICO characteristics and likely bias assessments using the Cochrane Risk of Bias tool. Uploading PDFs on the website extracts key data and presents a summary table. Its REST API can process groups of clinical trial reports to synthesize results across trials. The project is open source under GNU GPL version 3.0 and is free to use. It can run locally as Docker services, with a web app and API server exposed on local ports. The self-hosted processing setup uses Grobid, RabbitMQ, Celery, and SciBERT through bert-as-a-service. Docker instructions cover GPU use, and the worker can also run CPU-only. Manual setup calls for Python 3.6, TensorFlow 1.12.0, and the associated processing services. Installation is documented as tested on Ubuntu and Mac OS; Windows works with substantial installation difficulty. Maintainers ask users to cite the 2017 ACL paper and invite questions by email, including requests for help integrating RobotReviewer into other software.