Synthesis vs Sysrev
Synthesis
synthesis.infoSysrev
sysrev.comSide by side
| Figure | Synthesis | Sysrev |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | $50/mo |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | — | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 0 | 4 |
| Spec score · Literature Review Software | 7.5 (#22) | 8.4 (#5) |
| Exports | References can be exported as RIS for use in citation managers such as EndNote or RefWorks, and displayed data can be exported as CSV. | Project data can be exported as EndNote XML, Excel workbooks, Parquet files and bundled PDFs. |
| Intended users | The site describes use in academic research, hospitals, government agencies, private corporations, and nongovernmental organizations. | The maker describes Sysrev as suitable for researchers conducting systematic, scoping, and rapid reviews, including collaborative institutional teams. |
| Purpose | Synthesis is software for conducting scoping, systematic, and regular literature reviews. | Sysrev is a platform for data curation and systematic evidence review. |
| Support | The support page offers an online reference manual, a help sheet, and YouTube tutorials. | Users can submit an in-project issue report or email [email protected]. |
Plans
In their own words
Synthesis
Synthesis is software for conducting scoping, systematic and regular literature reviews. It organizes references and PDFs, searches abstracts and full-text PDFs by keyword or phrase, and automatically de-duplicates imported references. The support page reports externally validated deduplication sensitivity of 98% and specificity of 99%. Its screening workflow supports primary and secondary reviewers working through abstracts and full text, with kappa scores calculated for both. Analysis tools include AI-assisted topic clustering, word clouds, metadata extraction and charts. Embedded searches cover PubMed, PubMed Central, IEEE, arXiv.org and US Patents; references can also be imported from Ovid, Web of Knowledge, ProQuest and ACM. Synthesis can download many full-text PDFs when open or institutional access is available, and exports references and data as RIS and CSV. The trial allows unlimited projects, but each project can import only 50 references and uses a slower PDF viewer. The maker says orders and downloads are temporarily suspended during development of a new release. Licenses are tied to individual computers; pricing is available on request.