Four Perspectives on a shared way of working: ASReview LAB on SURF Research Cloud
Screen a ton with screenathons
The first real test came in May 2024, when Elena Jalsovec and Kianush Monschau organised a Screenathon in Utrecht. As part of the EU-funded IMPROVE project, a research consortium investigating the use of patient-generated health data in chronic diseases, the methodology would get its first real stress-test. Over two days, twenty-five researchers from ten European countries screened more than twelve thousand publications. It showed how much smoother and faster the work becomes when screening is done in parallel rather than alone and how well ASReview’s way of dividing records across participants holds up in practice.
It also made one thing clear: when teams screen at the same time, in the same project, access needs to be arranged centrally and reliably. Collaborative screening in ASReview isn’t about everyone working in parallel silos, but about sharing one live workspace, with a collectively trained AI model acting as a powerful teammate. For universities, the SURF Research Cloud offers exactly that. Researchers can open ASReview LAB in a shared workspace without installing anything, which makes organising group-based screening far more straightforward.
Paddling the way to SURF-integration
The SURF Research Cloud has long been part of the research landscape at Dutch universities and universities of applied sciences. It’s used for training models, running computational workflows, and hosting applications online. ASReview LAB slots into that environment in the same straightforward way. “We wanted the integration to be something you start with a single click,” Dawa says. “ASReview LAB was already on the Research Cloud, but with 2.0 it made sense to streamline it for collaborative work.” Yuliia Orlova, who works at SURF, describes the platform simply. “Once an application is added to the catalogue, any researcher at a connected institution can open it in a workspace without installation or configuration.” For ASReview LAB, that means supervisors, students, and external partners can all work in the same setup, regardless of technical background.
Josien Boetje, who has been working with ASReview LAB for years, now runs it through the SURF Research Cloud in her projects at the Hogeschool Utrecht, including a review on teaching critical AI literacy, where she collaborates with colleagues in the Netherlands, Spain, and Argentina and screens together in one shared project.
A Researcher’s view: ASReview LAB in daily practice on SURF
Josien has worked with ASReview LAB for several years, but running it through the SURF Research Cloud changed the way she uses it in her projects. “I didn’t have the ICT skills to host ASReview LAB on a server myself,” she says. “So when I heard it could run on the Research Cloud, it felt like the right solution. Once the workspace is set up, I just open it in the browser and everything is there. For collaborative settings, it is exactly what I was missing.”
She teaches, supervises, and conducts reviews, and initially tried ASReview LAB out of curiosity for new tools. Installing software was often a hurdle for colleagues and students; using the Research Cloud removes that step entirely. Beyond Screenathons, she’s found that working through SURF gives her a more stable structure for her projects and saves considerable time in day-to-day screening.
“So when I heard it could run on the Research Cloud, it felt like the right solution. Once the workspace is set up, I just open it in the browser and everything is there. For collaborative settings, it is exactly what I was missing.”
The everyday benefits of running ASReview LAB on the SURF Cloud
It turns out that using ASReview LAB through the SURF Research Cloud is also practical when working with colleagues outside your own institution, at least within the Dutch research landscape. An eduID login (a personal academic login used across Dutch research institutions) is enough for partners at other universities or research organisations to join a shared project, making cross-institutional collaboration straightforward. That kind of access supports team-based research, where projects are increasingly organised across groups rather than within a single department. Josien also uses this workflow outside Screenathons, in her day-to-day projects and supervision. Students screen independently within the same project, and she can monitor their progress, decisions, and notes whenever needed. “I can see how far someone is, read their comments, and step in when needed,” she says. “I used to manage this through Excel files, and it was easy to lose the overview. Now it all sits in one place.”
Because her ASReview projects run in the SURF Research Cloud, Josien can log in remotely and open them on different devices, including her phone. “For quick screening, using my phone actually works well,” she notes. “It makes the task lighter, you can work through a few records whenever you have a moment.”
Working together, even when “together” is 11,000 km’s apart
“Hello from Argentina!” is a fairly normal start to their workday. On the other side of the world Josien’s collaborator Zindzi de Graaf opens the same ASReview LAB projects. The Research Cloud doesn’t blink at distance; access runs through Dutch institutions, but once collaborators are invited, where they log in from matters little. Zindzi works from Argentina, Josien from Utrecht, and they see the same project. They see each other’s progress as it happens. Notes land in the same log. Calibration happens inside the project instead of in half-forgotten files or parallel versions. The physical gap between them plays no role at all: as long as the workspace link works, they’re effectively in the same room, just with a time-zone delay. How convenient, right?
More than just a handy setup
The setup through the SURF Research Cloud may look simple, but it quietly changes how people work together. ASReview’s familiar strengths: its transparency, the clear progress measures, and the way decisions can be reviewed later, carry over naturally when everything runs in a shared online environment. The Research Cloud doesn’t add new features; it just gives the existing ones a steadier place to live.
Dawa points out that flexibility is part of that stability. Researchers can adjust the computing resources based on their screening approach and model choices. The Research Cloud allows heavier configurations where needed, without forcing users to manage the underlying infrastructure. Most people never touch these settings, but the option is there. Yuliia places it even in a broader context. Once ASReview LAB appeared in the SURF catalogue, it became available across connected institutions, similar to familiar SURF-provided environments like Jupyter workspaces or HPC facilities.
For collaborations across departments or time zones, that consistency makes a noticeable difference. Everyone opens the same version, with the same data, in the same place. No parallel folders, no drifting copies. Josien laughs that she used to guess which laptop her project was on. “Now everything’s central,” she says. “Wherever I open it, it’s the same.”
In the end, the point is simple: ASReview LAB on the SURF Research Cloud offers a natural place for collaborative screening within Dutch research institutions. It provides shared infrastructure where teams can work together without having to set up their own environment from scratch.
Connect & collaborate
Snack, chat, and code your way into the open-source world.
Community room
Join us every Thursday at Drift 27 in The Netherlands to collaborate in a vibrant multidisciplinary hub.
Discussion platform
Grab some snacks, get comfortable, and join the discussion as a keyboard warrior on our GitHub page.
Improve documentation
Use your critical eye to refine our documentation by aligning it with your practical experience.
Other ways to help
If you’re more of a maker than a talker, this is perfect for you.
Be kind
Help keep open-source thriving—your generosity fuels continued development and accessibility.
Subscribe to our newsletter!
Stay on top of ASReview’s developments by subscribing to the newsletter.