Abstractus 101
Follow an illustrated walkthrough of your first review: find records, screen papers, review the results, and share your work.
Find your records
Build a search strategy
Open Search Assist and describe your research question. You can also add existing search strings to receive feedback on them. Select Generate search strategy to create a strategy for 1 credit.
Check the search breadth
The record count shows how many results match your PubMed search string. The bars show the number of matches for each concept separately. Select Narrow or Broaden to adjust the strategy. Each adjustment costs 1 credit.
Copy the search strings
Search Assist provides a search string for each database in the strategy, using that database's required syntax. Copy each string and run it in the corresponding database.
Search within Abstractus using Discovery
You can also search directly in Discovery. Enter your question in plain language and choose research papers, patents or trademarks. Discovery searches the sources at the same time for 1 credit.
Export your search results
Select Export to download the displayed results immediately, or search for more records in the background, up to 10,000 per record type. Choose RIS for papers you plan to screen.
Screen your records
Start a new screening
Open New Task and choose Abstract Screening. Full-Text Screening and Data Extraction start the same way.
Upload your search results
Upload the file you exported from a database, reference manager or Discovery. RIS or NBIB files work best. Use Remove duplicates if needed, check the record count, then select Confirm and Continue.
Write your criteria
Give the review a title and a research question, then add your inclusion and exclusion criteria, one per line.
Submit and track progress
Check your screening details in the Review step, then submit. The confirmation shows the credit cost. Your Dashboard displays progress as papers are screened, and you receive a notification when the job is complete.
Read the results
Read the Breakdown
Results open on the Breakdown tab. The charts show inclusion and exclusion counts and group excluded papers by their most relevant exclusion criterion. Select Clusters or Bars to change the chart layout.
Review and download individual results
The Papers tab lists every paper with its decision, label and reason. Download the included, excluded or all papers as CSV, RIS or BibTeX.
Collaborate and screen full texts
Discuss decisions in the Run log
The Run log contains the review's run history and team comments. Quote a paper's reasoning to discuss a decision. You can download the log to keep a copy with your review records.
Continue to full-text screening
Select Start Full Text to begin screening PDFs of the included papers. Your screening criteria carry over to the new job. Once full-text screening is complete, you can extract data from the papers.
Extract and verify the data
Describe what to extract
Open New Task and choose Data Extraction. Upload PDFs and describe the information you need, then select Draft the form. If your papers are already screened, use Extract from a finished review instead.
Check the form and report criteria
Review each field's name, extraction instructions and guidance for borderline cases. Check the report criteria and select Approve or Save, then save the form before continuing.
Test the form before the full run
Select up to 3 papers and choose Run the pilot on … papers. Review the values and quotes before starting the full run. Pilot papers are reused without another charge if you keep the same form. The pilot does not generate a report.
Run the extraction and verify the results
In Full run, check the remaining cost and select Extract all … papers. When the report is ready, select its citations to inspect the source PDFs. Open Extraction matrix to compare individual values. Use Export to download the report or CSV.