Guide Getting Started
Once a project is open, the screen is three panes: your papers on the left, the PDF in the middle, and the annotation form on the right, built from the project's schema.
- Pick a paper from the left list to load its PDF and its form.
- Read the PDF in the middle; its text is selectable, and Ctrl/Cmd+F searches within it.
- Fill in the form on the right. Repeatable fields (like Findings above) show + Add and a remove (×) control for each entry.
- Save via the Save menu, or Ctrl/Cmd+S. Save as… writes to a new location and re-derives every PDF reference so they keep resolving from there.
If the project is set up for screening instead of full annotation, this pane shows a title/abstract record and an Include/Exclude choice instead — see Screening. If it's set up for multiple reviewers, you'll be asked which seat you are before you can annotate anything — see Working with several reviewers.
The box above the paper list searches title, authors, DOI, abstract, the PDF's file name, and the paper's own id by default (the META trigger on the right edge of the box). Click that trigger to switch to TAGS, which searches the annotation content you've already recorded instead — useful for "which papers did I mark as X".
The search above matches A1-37 — part of a PDF's file name, not its title or authors — and still
finds the right paper. Searching by the paper's own id works the same way; both are useful once a
project has more papers than you can recognize by title alone.
Annotation-content search looks at your own current seat's answers, so in a multi-reviewer project it finds your work, not somebody else's.
Select any text in the PDF, then click the ⧉ button next to a field to insert exactly that selection into it. Numeric fields pull out the first number in the selection.
This is the fastest way to fill in most fields without retyping anything from the paper — select the sentence that supports a claim, click ⧉ next to Claim, done.
Select text in the PDF and a small color toolbar appears — pick a color to highlight the selection and open a note box for it right away. Click any existing highlight later to reopen that box: change its color, edit or clear the note, or delete it. Press Escape, click elsewhere, or scroll the page to close the box without deleting anything.
These highlights and notes are your own — in a multi-reviewer project, each reviewer (and Consolidation) sees only their own marks, just like annotation answers. They're saved with the project like everything else, but on their own file per paper per reviewer, so two people marking up the same PDF never conflict in git.
More annotation tools. The 📝 button in the PDF header opens a row of annotation tools below it:
- A post-it button for dropping a sticky note anywhere on the page — click the button, then click the spot in the PDF, and the note's comment box opens right away.
- ‹ › buttons to step through every highlight and note on the paper, in reading order, jumping straight to each one's exact spot on the page (not just the top of the page it's on).
- A 📤 button (enabled once you have at least one highlight or note) that exports the PDF with your marks burned in as real PDF annotation objects any PDF reader can show — for sharing outside SaiLoR. Choose to save it as a new file (the default) or overwrite the paper's own PDF in place; the app warns before the second option, since that file is shared with every other reviewer and overwriting it is likely to cause a git conflict.
Each paper in the list carries a status dot on its left. In an ordinary (non-screening) project, it fills in proportionally as fields are completed:
- If the schema marks any fields required, the dot's denominator is those required fields only.
- If nothing is marked required, it's a fraction of all fields instead — better than nothing rather than staying permanently empty.
- Hover a dot (or check its accessible label) for the actual numbers: "3 of 12 fields filled".
This dot means something different depending on your seat: for a numbered reviewer it's your own progress; for Consolidation it's a simple done/not-done marker instead (whether every reviewer has recorded something for that paper yet); in a screening project it becomes the tri-state include/exclude/undecided marker described in Screening.
Validate (in the toolbar) checks every annotated paper against the schema: required fields that are still empty, values of the wrong type, and enum values outside a dropdown's allowed choices.
Click a problem to jump straight to that field. Papers with no annotations at all are listed separately under Not annotated yet rather than reported field by field — an untouched paper would otherwise fail every required field at once and bury the problems that are actually worth looking at.
Note the reminder at the top of the dialog: a Yes/No field is never reported as missing, even if it's marked required — see Things to know.
Press F1 at any time for the full, current list for whichever screen you're on — it differs between the start screen, annotating, screening, and the project editor. The most common ones while annotating:
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| Ctrl/Cmd+O | Open a project file |
| Ctrl/Cmd+S | Save |
| Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+S | Save as… |
| Ctrl/Cmd+Z / Shift+Z | Undo / redo an annotation change |
| Ctrl/Cmd+F | Search within the PDF |
Alt+↓ / ]
|
Next paper |
Alt+↑ / [
|
Previous paper |
| F1 | Open help |