Search studies

Study search in Single Cell Portal

You can look for studies of interest through a text search using the search bar on the Home page. 

In addition to this written help, a video demo is also available at the bottom of this article.

Text search

Perform a text-based search on study titles, descriptions, authors*, and metadata by typing a word of interest into the text search field, click the search icon and the portal will return matching results.

• A search without quotes (i.e. not wrapped in ") will return any study that contains any of the specified terms.
• To search for an exact phrase within studies use quotes around the entire phrase like: "single cell"
• To search for studies that contain an exact phrase and/or the other search terms, combine single terms and quoted phrases like: "single cell" Smith

* Structured data for authors is new in SCP, and many studies lack it, so author search results may be limited.

Searching for more than one word without quotes will return all studies that match ANY of the entered words.

• If the text match is in the title of the study the matching text will be highlighted in the search results.
• If the text match is in the description of the study the matching text will be highlighted in the search results provided the small section of description shown contains that text.
• If the text matched to the metadata of a study the search result will have an oval with the text that matched next to the cell count located between the study title and description. (see image below for example of metadata match)

To search for an exact phrase, surround your phrase with double-quotes. Example: "heart disease" will find all studies with the exact phrase. Without quotes, studies with the word 'heart' OR studies with the word 'disease' will all match your search.

Faceted search 

Studies can be found through search facets when study metadata is submitted using the SCP metadata convention. Such studies are filterable through facets such as species, organ, and disease, providing a way to narrow down a text search by applying filters in multiple dimensions. Studies returned are marked with badges to indicate the filters that matched each study A summary of the search logic for faceted search is shown under the search bar for reference and updated as additional filters are applied.

Here is an example using the faceted filter search to find studies that include "B cell" and "Immune system" in the metadata

Human Cell Atlas search results

In the above image there are two badges on the search result for the metadata matches for "B cell" and "Immune system". But there is a third badge on this search result "Human Cell Atlas". This is because this study comes from the Human Cell Atlas catalogue and clicking this result will bring you to the Human Cell Atlas site to explore that dataset.     

 

Inferred search

To find studies unavailable directly by faceted search, facet filters are also converted to exact phrase keyword searches, to identify additional studies. Studies found by inferred search are marked with "text match only" indicators.

Combining search mechanisms

You can utilize as many of these search mechanisms as you like to find the studies you are interested in, in the Single Cell Portal. Below is an example searching for blood using the facet filters, and the exact text "single cell" or the text synthesis.

Search for a specific set of studies

To create a search limited to specific studies, type the study accessions in the text search field.

Applying study search results to gene search

Once you have selected your study search criteria click on the Search genes tab to perform a gene search limited to the studies found in your study search. 

 

Video demo

Faceted search for studies

Cross-study gene search