Software to extract citations and abstracts for meta-analysis I am conducting a meta-analysis and searching pertinent articles in PubMed. The typical scenario is to apply a dedicated search string, and then retrieve between 50 and 5000 citations including the abstract.

Citations, abstracts and ancillary details (eg PMID) can be extracted from PubMed but only as text. Some softwares can support data extraction, such as Zotero or Reference Manager, but they are apparently inefficient or costly. 

Is there any more suitable alternative, still free?
Covidence is free for students. Other software includes DistillerSR. All of these will aid with citation management a step up from what can be done with EndNote, Mendeley, Zotero, etc. 

Also, I hope you've searched databases beyond PubMed. Great tool, but alone not sufficient for an SR.