PubCrawler Tutorial

Overview

The tutorial provides an introduction to the basic usage of the PubCrawler Web service. Click on the graphics to bring up larger versions of the screenshots.

Registration

Registration is free and can be carried out at the following address: http://pubcrawler.gen.tcd.ie/index_new.html.
You can choose your own username, which you need to fill in into the first text field. After that click on the 'Join!' button (circled in magenta below):


On the next page you need to provide the password (twice) and your e-mail addresses. Note: PubCrawler usernames and passwords are case-sensitive!
Click on the register button to complete the registration.


Query Setup

Next you need to set up some queries. After registration you will get automatically to the configuration page, which provides text boxes for the search terms and pull-down menues for the search fields and connectors between terms. You should also specify a short descriptive term for each query. It is advisable to try out some searches at NCBI's PubMed to have a good idea of the searches you would like to insert into PubCrawler.
Once you are done, click on the 'save' button:


The configuration window re-appears, this time with one saved query. Let's set up another one and this time change the radio button to follow up with a PubMed Neighbour search (magenta circle). Click on the 'save' button to save the second query.

The next menu is different, because for the Neighbourhood search you only need to insert the number of a document (get it from PubMed). The search will retrieve other articles that are similar to the specified one (according to algorithms implemented at NCBI).
Click on 'Finish!' to save the query and leave the query configuration page.


Results

The next page provides a summary overview of your PubCrawler account. So far no queries have been carried out. By default, these are scheduled for every Sunday, but you can click on the 'Change schedule' button to choose different times for it.


To get your results straight away, click the 'Start queries' button. After a couple of minutes you should receive a notification that tells you how many hits you received and where you can access your results, which will look similar to the following:




For help with PubCrawler, please consult the FAQ or send an e-mail to pubcrawler@tcd.ie .





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last modified $Date: 2004/04/17 03:12:23 $