QUOSA INFORMATION MANAGER:
Getting Started
QUOSA Information Manager
Getting Started
QUOSA Information Manager (QUOSA) enables researchers in the life
sciences to retrieve full articles, organize them, and perform powerful
full-text searching. It also has many other features that automate and
accelerate literature searches and management.
Downloading QUOSA Information Manager
If you haven’t already done so, take a moment to go to www.quosa.com and click
on QUOSA Software Downloads menu and download QUOSA. Follow the
instructions in the installation wizard to install it.
Registering QUOSA Information Manager
After installing QUOSA, you will be asked to register in order to get an
authorization code. When the registration dialog box appears, do the following:
1. Click Proceed.
2. Complete the short registration form to receive your authorization code. It
will be emailed to you after you register. (You do not need to enter this
code in anywhere.)
Before starting QUOSA, you may find it helpful first to watch one of the brief
Flash demos available on the QUOSA website (www.quosa.com), such
as "Full
Article Retrieval" or "Short Introduction to QUOSA with OvidSP."
Starting QUOSA Information Manager
A QUOSA icon should be on your desktop. Double-click on it to start.
Note that the instructions that follow are for searching in PubMed. When you are
ready to use QUOSA on your own, select the “channel” appropriate for accessing
full articles at your institution. Some channels are customized for particular
institutions. Select the one you need (click Channels on the Main Menu bar to
select one).
Taking a Quick Tour of the QUOSA Information Manager User Interface
There are three panes in the QUOSA window, as shown in Figure 1:
Figure 1: QUOSA Window: Three Panes (Results in upper right; Browser in lower right; My Article
Organizer/Document Summary on left)
Browser Pane.
This pane has an embedded Internet browser and is
always visible when you start QUOSA. It is where you start searches in
PubMed, OvidSP, and other channels, and where QUOSA displays a list
of article references that match your search terms; it is also the pane
where you review abstracts or full-text articles. The Retrieve button ( ∑ )
on this browser’s toolbar is used to retrieve the references of interest to
you.
Results Pane. This pane, located above the Browser pane, will appear
and displays new results after you click the Retrieve button or when you
work with previous results.The columns (No., Type, Authors, Title, and so
on), can be moved around by dragging. Note the toggle buttons at the
upper left of the QUOSA window for showing or hiding the Results and
Browser panes.
Organizer Pane. This pane is on the left-hand side, and includes the
following tabs:
My Article Organizer:
This tab shows your searches (My
Searches), listing the searches you’ve made today, yesterday, and
so on; your alerts (My Alerts), listing the alerts you’ve set; your
folders (My Folders), containing any full-text articles or abstracts
you’ve saved; and your citations (My Citations), the repository of
full articles linked with your citation manager.
Figure 2: Document Summary Tab (on left)
Document Summary:
This tab shows any passages extracted
from the article currently displayed in the Browser pane that
contain the search terms used in your search. These extracted
passages are in colors (usually one color when the entire search
term is found and another color when part of a search term is
found). Clicking on a color-coded passage will scroll the Browser
pane to the place where the passage appears in the text. In Figure
2 above, note the blue extract in the Document Summary on the
left and the passage in blue on the right in the Browser pane.
Searching in PubMed Using QUOSA Information Manager
To begin a search in PubMed, do the following:
1. Type “socs 3” (or an alternative search expression) in the PubMed “for”
search box.
2. Click Go.
PubMed will return a list of references by title, author(s), journal, and so
on.
Retrieving Articles in PubMed Using QUOSA Information Manager
To retrieve the references you want, do the following:
1. Either check the checkbox of each article of interest in the PubMed list of
references or enter the number of articles you want to retrieve in the text
box next to the Retrieve button. For example, enter “35.”
2. Select the format you want (abstract, PDF, or HTML). For example, select
“PDF.”
3. Click Retrieve to retrieve the articles.
The green “clock” (at the top of the QUOSA interface) turns blue during the
retrieval process, and then green again when the retrieval is done. The Results
pane opens (if it was closed) and displays the list of retrieved articles. If you
chose PDFs, QUOSA will retrieve them; if PDFs were not available, QUOSA will
retrieve HTML versions. Abstracts will be retrieved if neither full-text format is
available. Icons in the Type column indicate whether the article is a PDF, HTML
version, or abstract.
During the retrieval, QUOSA creates an entry for the search under My Searches
in My Article Organizer on the left. For example, Figure 1 shows the “socs 3”
search under “Today.”
Sorting Article References in the Results Pane
You can sort the Results list by title, author, source, and so on. A click on
a column header will sort the rows by the contents in the column. The
order of the columns can be rearranged by dragging the column headers
to the left or right
.
Opening Articles in the Results Pane
You can open an article by double-clicking on the reference (the text will
be displayed in the Browser pane below). If the complete article is not
available, the abstract will appear instead. To display the next article in the
list, click on the Open Next button (see Figure 2) or just double-click the
reference.
Reviewing Articles
You can quickly review an article as follows:
1. Click the Document Summary tab. As noted earlier, it will show color-coded excerpts from the
article currently in the Browser pane. When you
have multiple search terms (for example, “omega protein AND liver,” the
excerpts with both parts of the search expression are colored yellow; when
only one part is found, the passages are shown in blue.
2. Click on one of the excerpts. The Browser pane will scroll to the section in
the full text where the excerpt occurs.
Searching in Results
You can also do a full-text search of the articles in the Results pane. Do the
following:
1. Click Search in Results on the Results pane toolbar.
2. Enter the search parameters in the Search in Results dialog and click OK. QUOSA will perform a search on the results. (Complete search
options and information on syntax can be viewed by clicking on the Help
button in the Search in Results dialog.)
Saving Results in QUOSA Folders
QUOSA folders are not the same same as regular Windows folder. They are
specifically designed to support features such as exporting references to citation
managers; they’re also indexed for faster searching.
To save selected articles into a QUOSA folder, do the following:
1. Flag the desired articles (by clicking in the column with the flag icon).
2. Click the Select Flagged button on the Results pane toolbar.
3. Click the Save button.
4. From the Save Document dialog, choose an existing folder or create a
new folder, and click OK.
To save all the articles in the Results pane:
1. Click Ctrl-A before clicking on the Save button.
2. From the Save Document dialog, choose an existing folder or create a
new folder, and click OK.
The saved results will appear in My Folders in My Article Organizer on the left.
Exporting References to a Citation Manager
You can easily export citations to EndNote©, Reference Manager©, or ProCite©.
Before you start, however, you first need to select your citation manager in
QUOSA. Do the following:
1. Go to Settings on the Main Menu bar.
2. Click Citation Manager.
3. Click Select Citation Manager.
4. Select your citation manager.
Now, to export selected citations, do the following:
1. Flag the articles of interest in the Results pane.
2. Click To Citations on the Results pane toolbar. Your citation manager will
launch, and you will be prompted for the library or database where you
want to save the citations.
3. Select one and click Open. QUOSA will export the citations, which you will
see listed in your library/database. When you click on a citation, you will
also see a link back to the full article.
To export all the articles to your citation manager, click Ctrl-A before clicking To
Citations on the Results pane toolbar.
Setting Automatic Search Alerts
You can have QUOSA automatically search PubMed for newly published articles
and notify you when this happens. Close your citation manager if it is still open
and do the following:
1. Click on My Article Organizer, then My Searches, and then click on the
“socs 3” search performed earlier.
2. Click Set Alert on the Results pane toolbar. It will bring up the Configure
Search Alert dialog.
3. Set the parameters you want, and click OK. Be sure to check Send E-Mail
Notification to have QUOSA send you an email when new results are
found.
Note that your computer must be on and connected to the Internet for search
alerts to work. This is one reason for setting Enable Startup Accelerator when
installing QUOSA (set from Settings on the Main Menu bar).
Finding More Information on Using QUOSA Information Manager
For additional information on using QUOSA, go to www.quosa.com and click on Learning & Support menu. You will find links to guides and Tip Sheets, FAQs
andd an array of videos tutorials on basic and advanced features as shown in
Figure 3 below. For complete instructions on using QUOSA, click on How Do I …
on the Main Menu.
Figure 3: Available Demos on QUOSA Website
System Requirements for QUOSA Information Manager
The following are the recommended requirements for QUOSA Information
Manager:
Mac Platform:
§ PowerPC G4 or G5, Intel Core Duo or Core 2 Duo processor
§ OS: Mac OS X 10.3.9 or higher
§ At least 256MB of physical RAM
§ 20 MB free disk space for executables, and additional disk space for data files
§ Browser: Safari installed on machine (but does not need to be default browser)
PC Platform:
§ PC with 533 megahertz (minimum) or higher processor clock-speed
recommended
§ Intel Pentium/Celeron family, AMD K6/Athlon/Duron family, or compatible
processor recommended
§ 512 megabytes (MB) of RAM or higher recommended
§ One of the following operating systems:
o Microsoft
Windows 2000
o Microsoft
Windows XP
o Microsoft
Windows Vista
o 20MB
free disk space for executables, and additional disk space
for data files
§ Browser: Internet Explorer 6.0 or above installed on machine (but does not need
to be default browser)
Supported Software:
§ Acrobat Reader 6.0 and higher
§ EndNote 4.0 and higher
Note: As other software is tested with QUOSA Information Manager, the
information will be added to this guide.
