The “Article Section” filter can be used to explore the evidence in specific parts of an article. The user can choose one of the following options (Figure 1):
- General: The summary of the manuscript summarizing the important parts of the article. Articles in Causaly which do not have author-made sections, where the abstract appears as an unstructured paragraph, are also assigned to this section.
- Conclusion/Discussion: Study results interpreted and compared with previous studies.
- Introduction/Background: Provides readers with the background information needed to comprehend the study and reports the aims of the study.
- Results/Findings: Includes data derived from the applied methodology, without an interpretation of the results and represents the core findings of the study that are significant to address the research questions of the article.
- Article Title: The article title of a citation, which typically mentions the most important topics of an article.
- Methods/Design: The framework of research methods and techniques chosen.
- Objective/Aim: Describes the goal of the research paper and what the authors aim to achieve, while the objectives refer to the steps taken to achieve these aims.
- Study Parameters: Criteria used in clinical trials. Study parameters include the primary outcome, the study type and design, as well as the status.
- Case Report: Detailed reports of the symptoms, signs, diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up of individual patients.
Figure 1: The “Article Section” filter. Numbers in brackets indicate the number of relationships under a specific subcategory, in the Relationships tab. For example, there are 1,227 relationships found within the “General” section, 935 relationships within the “Conclusion/Discussion section etc. Options that have no relevant results, such as the Case Report in the example above, are displayed in a light-grey color.
Use Case: Primary Research Findings For Biomarkers Involved In Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD)
To explore this use case in Causaly, the powerful and time-saving filters of the Intelligent Search Module will be used.
Initially, the search will include all possible biomarkers for NAFLD (link).
Subsequently, in order to refine the results to newly reported findings and avoid repetitions from older studies that are usually in the introduction section, the user can use the “Article Section” filter and select “Results/Findings” and “Conclusion/Discussion” sections only (Figure 2).
The exact search results can be found here.
Figure 2: Selecting the “Results/Findings” and “Conclusion/Discussion” sections under the “Article Section” filter. The numbers in brackets indicate the number of relationships under a specific subcategory, in the Relationships tab. In this case, the results include the 935 relationships obtained from the “Conclusion/Discussion” section and the 548 relationships from the “Results/ Findings” section.
The articles displayed will only contain findings that support the relationship between a gene or a protein and NAFLD, in the two selected sections (Figure 3).
Figure 3: Examples of evidence points for the relationship between IL-6 and NAFLD, found in the Conclusion/Discussion section.