CurTask vs Covidence: from included studies to a written synthesis

This page is for students and researchers whose systematic review runs through Covidence, or who are weighing it up, and who want to know what CurTask adds. Covidence is a purpose-built platform for systematic reviews and is known for guiding teams through screening, data extraction and quality assessment in a structured way. CurTask does not screen records, assess risk of bias or produce PRISMA diagrams. Its strength is the work around and after extraction: reading the included papers, comparing them with evidence, building themes and writing the review itself in one project.

At a glance

A comparison table where every value shows its source

In CurTask, the literature matrix is the place where included studies are compared. You describe a column in plain words, such as "participants", "setting", "intervention" or "main finding", see the credit estimate, and run it across your papers. Each AI value keeps a page number and a verbatim quote, and CurTask checks that the quote is really on that page before showing it. If it cannot find one, the cell says "No source found" instead of guessing. Every value stays marked Suggested until you accept, edit or restore it, so the researcher makes each final call. The matrix exports as CSV.

Because a paper's analyses travel with it, a study you analysed for one review is ready in the next one, and reusing that work costs no credits. A study whose full text you are still waiting for can be saved with its details and marked "No PDF"; add the PDF later from the paper's drawer. The AI analyses only papers that have their PDF, so nothing is charged for the others.

Room for qualitative and thematic synthesis

Reviews in education, health professions education and the social sciences often end in a thematic or narrative synthesis rather than a meta-analysis. CurTask supports that directly. Code passages in the full texts and see them as coloured strips beside the text, add memos, and keep a codebook whose colours stay easy to tell apart. On the synthesis map, group codes into themes, mark which papers agree, contradict or extend each other, and see the passages behind every link. Coding by hand is on every plan; on paid plans the AI codes every included paper at the push of a button and sorts your codes into categories and themes, each suggestion yours to accept or dismiss.

Writing the review beside its evidence

The Writing lens holds the review in sections you can reorder, with binder, corkboard and outline views. Send a theme from the synthesis map into the draft with its passages, and cite with @ in one of eight styles, including APA, AMA, Harvard and IEEE. Each citation can link back to its passage in the PDF through the evidence line, so a question about any claim can be answered from the page itself, and optional marks show sentences that have no citation yet. Compile the review to Word, PDF, Markdown or HTML. Beside the draft, the writing sidebar builds on the analysis you have accepted (matrix values, coded passages, themes and links): up to three cards per paragraph, contradictions first, each with its page and verified quote.

For individual researchers in Malaysia

CurTask is priced for a single student or researcher, in ringgit, with a free plan and a Student plan for university students. The interface is in English and Bahasa Melayu, and scanned PDFs are read in both languages. Your papers, notes and writing are stored on servers in Malaysia, visible only to you, and never used to train AI. Every AI action shows its credit cost before it runs, and nothing is ever charged twice. You can download all your data at any time, on every plan, as one ZIP file in open formats, with your references as BibTeX, RIS and CSL-JSON.

When Covidence might suit you

If your review follows a formal protocol with a team, needs dual screening, structured extraction and risk-of-bias assessment, or your institution already provides a licence, Covidence is a respected, purpose-built choice for that process.

Using both

The two can work side by side. Run screening and the formal review steps in Covidence, then gather the full-text PDFs of your included studies and drag them into CurTask. CurTask fills in each paper's details from its DOI, which you can edit, and checks for duplicates so nothing is stored or analysed twice. Use CurTask for close reading, coding, themes and writing the review, and keep reporting your screening flow from Covidence.

Keep the review process you trust, and bring your included studies to CurTask to write it up, starting on the free plan.