Hi there,

Columns are Elicit's most powerful feature - they let you analyze hundreds of papers at once, making it easy for you to accelerate systematic review screening and extraction.

We provide 30+ pre-defined columns (like Main Findings and Population Characteristics), and you can use custom columns to ask specific questions or give additional instructions. 

You can get much better column results by experimenting with detailed column instructions. We recommend you:

1. Pick a small representative set of 5-10 papers for testing. Upload your own papers for best results.

2. Create custom columns with detailed instructions.

You can access instructions by clicking the arrow to the right of a column's name and clicking Edit. We recommend you specify your output format and provide examples, as if to a human research assistant.

3. Try High-accuracy mode. High-accuracy columns are more accurate than standard columns and use tables in papers to help answer your question, but can be slower.

4. Check results and adjust instructions. Repeat as necessary.

5. Once results on your test set look good, upload the rest of your papers.

This whole process typically takes 90% less time than manual data extraction. Plus, you can save your custom columns to reuse in other projects to save time in the future.

See our Help Center article for more instructions.

Best,

Shahid