Quertle searches for relationships, not just documents that contain your query terms. For example, if your query is for "caffeine migraine", you will find documents that use both terms in a relationship such as "caffeine treats migraines". This enables you to find the most relevant documents, and not get overwhelmed by the ones that happen to use both of the search terms, but not in a meaningful connection.
Quertle also does a simple keyword search for documents that contain all of your search terms independent of whether they are used in conjunction with each other. These "Keyword" results are presented on a separate tab on results page if you need them, but generally the "Relationship" results are more valuable.
Query Basics
Creating a query is simple. Just enter the term(s) of interest in the main search box and click Search or use your keyboard Enter key.
Quertle uses an advanced ontology of biological, medical, and chemical terms, so it is just fine to use the form you are most comfortable with and Quertle will find all the synonyms automatically. The ontology also enables recognition of multiple word phrases (such as "cell cycle") that convey a single concept.
At this time, Quertle supports only queries in English. Both American and British forms of words, such as "hematoma" and "haematoma", are acceptable.
Generally, to find the best relationship matches to, your query should focus on the core concept(s) of interest, leaving additional restricting terms for filtering on the results page.
Query Structure
Single term queries: If you enter a single term, the relationship search will find documents that have a statement that connect the search term to other concepts. This enables you to find the most important connections for the search term.
Two term queries: If you search for two objects, such as "protein1 protein2", the relationship search will find documents that connect the two objects by an action, such as "protein1 regulates protein2" or "protein1 is inhibited by protein2". You can think of this type of query being shorthand for "protein1 what protein2". If you search for an object and an action, such as "MDM2 binds", you will find documents that have a specific statement about MDM2 binding to something. As above, you can think of the query as shorthand for "MDM2 binds what"
Three term queries: Extending the approach as described above, you can see that a query consisting of "object1 action object2" will allow you to find the documents that support that specific relationship.
Complex Boolean queries: At this time, Quertle does not support complex Boolean queries such as "protein1 OR protein2 bind to protein3 AND protein4".
Capitalization
Use proper capitalization in your queries so that similarly spelled terms, such as "AIDS" (the disease) and "aids" (the action), are not confused. You will find this to be of particular value where a gene or protein symbol is also an English word.
Power Terms™ (Classes of Objects)
When formulating a query, you may want to find members of a class of objects. For example, instead of the broad query "what regulates apoptosis", you may want to know about proteins specifically. To enable queries of this type, Quertle supports a number of Power Terms™ that represent a class of objects. For instance, $Proteins means any protein, but not the word "protein" or "proteins", allowing you to have the query "$Proteins regulate apoptosis". When you use a Power Term (for example, $Diseases), then all members of that class found within a relationship will be listed in the "Key Concepts" filter section (for example, a list of diseases). Some of the Power Terms; can be found in the link under the main search box. In the window that opens from this link, you can click on a Power Terms to add it to your query. The full list of Power Terms is available here.
Searching for Chemicals
In searching for chemical entities, you have the choice of searching by identifier number.
A variety of ID or registry numbers are recognized, including - but not limited to -
EINECS (The European Inventory of Existing Commercial Substances),
BRN (Beilstein Registry Number), and NSC (NCI's number system).
Not all IDs or registry numbers are available for all substances.
The various codes are copyright of their respective providers.
Searches that Require Special Handling Elemental Lead:
To avoid confusion with the highly polysemic term "lead", if you are looking for
documents about Elemental Lead, you should use one of the following search terms:
plumbum, elemental lead, or Pb (the latter being case-sensitive).
An ID or registry number will also work.
This will make it clear what your search means.
When looking for documents that are by a specific author, you can simply add the author's name to the Author search box. If you also have a query in the main search box, adding one or more authors to the Author search box will limit the results to documents that include those authors. If you have no query in the main search box, an author-only query will find all the documents with the author(s), but no relationships will be found, only a list of documents.
To enter an author, start typing the author's name in the Author box. After you enter three characters, a drop-down list appears to allow you to pick the author from the list. Initially, the more prolific authors that match your typing are shown, so you may have to continue typing to have the drop-down list display the author you want. You may also type the name directly, without using the drop-down list.
To add additional authors, separate each author by a comma (for example, Simpson LA, Johnson JJ). When searching for multiple authors, Quertle will find documents that contain all of the names listed.
When looking for documents that are in a specific journal, you can simply add the journal's name to the Journal search box. If you also have a query in the main search box, adding one or more journal will limit the results to documents that are from the selected journal(s). If you have no query in the main search box, a journal-only query will find all the documents from the journal(s), but no relationships will be found, only a list of documents.
To enter an journal, start typing the journal's title in the Journal box. You can use the full title, such as "Journal of Bacteriology" or an abbreviated form, such as "J Bact". After you enter three characters, a drop-down list appears to allow you to pick the journal from the list. You may have to keep typing to find the specific journal of interest.
To add additional journals, separate each entry with a comma. When searching for multiple journals, Quertle will find documents that contain any of the journals listed.
Relationships: Quertle's primary results are relationships that contain your search term(s). A relationship is a subject-verb-object "fact" (with the usual caveat that just because an author wrote it doesn't mean it is correct). These relationships, presented on the Relationships results tab, provide more rapid access to the critical facts in the literature.
One document may contain multiple relationships relevant to your query. Up to five such relationships (the five most relevant) will be shown for each document. By default, the most relevant relationship will be displayed, but you can see the others by clicking "More Relationships". If you so desire, all the relationships for a result set can be expanded simultaneously by clicking the "Expand all Relationships" link at the top of the Results page.
Keywords: Quertle also searches for documents based on keywords. That is, if a document contains all of your search terms, that document will be listed - even if those search terms are not used together in any meaningful way. To access the Keyword results, click the link "View: ### documents from keyword search".
Author List
Each result entry begins with the document authors. If there are more than two authors, the list is abbreviated to show only the first and last authors. To see the full author list, click on the » icon or the ellipses (…). To collapse the author list, click on the « icon.
Publication Date
The publication year is displayed for each result entry. To see the full date, as provided by the document's publisher, mouse over the year and a tool tip will appear. If no tool tip appears, the publisher only provided a year for the publication date.
Document Source
The journal is displayed in an abbreviated format for each result entry. To see the full journal title, mouse over the title and a tool tip will appear with the full title.
View Original Document
The original document source is provided at the end of the bibliographic information.
To view the original document either click on the document title of the source name.
Context and Highlighting
For relationship results, the sentence(s) encompassing the relationship(s) that matches your query will be displayed to provide the context for that fact. For both relationship and keyword results, the query terms will be highlighted in yellow.
View Full Abstract
To view the full abstract for any result, simply click on "Show Abstract". To close the abstract, click on "Hide Abstract". When the abstract is shown, any relationships are temporarily hidden until the abstract is closed.
To enable you to find the most important relationships of documents faster, the results are initially presented in order of relevance to your query.
To sort the results by date, simply click the "Sort by Date" link. The results will now be sorted by date (most recent first). To return to relevance-based order, click the link at the top that now displays "Sort by Relevance".
Quertle makes it easy to refine your results using a set of filters conveniently located left side of the results page. As you apply a filter, the Applied Filters section at the top left will update to show "breadcrumbs" for the filter(s) that have been applied. These breadcrumbs allow you to remove any or all of the filters easily.
Also Containing (Additional Search Terms)
Use the "Also Containing" filter to essentially add a term to your query. For relationship results, the results will be narrowed down to relationships that contain the additional term, as opposed to the additional term just being anywhere. After you apply an "Also Containing" filter, the term used will be bolded in the results display.
Published Within (Publication Date) To limit the results to a specific period of time, simply click on the desired time frame and the results will update accordingly.
Publication Type
To limit the results to a specific type of publication, simply click the box next to the desired type(s). Click More to show additional publication types, if desired. If you select more than one publication type, the filter will limit results to any of the selected types.
Key Concepts
The "Key Concepts" filters show the most relevant concepts found within the relationships. Click on any of these concepts to limit the results to those that include that concept. Note that the key concepts do not update with filtering, so that you can easily chose another concept from your initial result set.
The term you click on will be bolded in the results display.
The Key Concepts are broken out into sections:
Power Term™ Membership:
For each Power Term used in your query, the "Key Concepts" filter will display a section for that Power Term class.
In this section, the members of the class that are most relevant to your query will be displayed, in order of their importance.
Quertle has some "automatic" classes, such as "leukemia" (all forms of leukemia); these, too, will be separated into concept groups.
The full list of Power Terms includes all the special and automatic Power Terms you can use.
Concepts Relevant to "What":
If your query used "what" as part of a relationship-style query (e.g., "What causes migraine"), then
the Key Concepts will begin with the concepts specifically from the portion of the relationship that might contain the "what". This also applies if your query implies "what". For example, the query "p53 regulation" implies "what regulates p53".
General Concepts:
This section will identify other key concepts, even if they do not belong to a defined class and even if they are not previously known to Quertle's ontology. As appropriate for your query, this section may be divided further into objects and then actions.
On the Results page, you can select and export references for use in bibliographic managment software.
To select a result for export, simply click the checkbox at the beginning of that reference.
To select all results on the current page, click the icon.
To clear all selections on the current page, click the icon.
To clear all selections from the current search, no matter what page they are on, click the icon.
You do not have to mark any references if you want to export all of the results; you will have this option in the Export dialog.
To export, click Export at the top of the results list.
You have the option to export all results (up to a maximum of 1000) or just the ones you have selected.
Note that the First 1000 is sensitive to the sort order you have chosen (by relevance or by date).
You also have the choice of export format. RIS is a tag-delimited format used by many software packages. MODS is an XML format, also for use with multiple bibliography managers.
When you click Export, your bibliographic management software may launch automatically, if your package supports this function.
icon.
To clear all selections on the current page, click the 
icon.
To clear all selections from the current search, no matter what page they are on, click the 
icon.
You do not have to mark any references if you want to export all of the results; you will have this option in the Export dialog.