Every publication is assigned to a single application area derived from the source folder structure and its citation fields. Areas are gathered into seven tissue groups by shared anatomical region or clinical context.
Literature volume is computed from the study-type distribution of the area's publications using automatic thresholds. The clinical count feeding the threshold is narrow: randomized, prospective and retrospective clinical studies and case series are counted; case reports are not. A single case report therefore cannot lift an area to the clinical tier. Systematic reviews and guidelines are also outside this count; together with randomized trials they satisfy the separate “RCT / systematic review / meta-analysis / guideline-consensus record” condition.
The “clinical publications” figure used on the cards and in the strip above is a separate and wider count: primary clinical studies, case series and case reports, that is 863 publications in the oncology corpus. Systematic reviews and guidelines are excluded from it as well. The threshold count and this count do not share a name and cannot stand in for one another; the full threshold table is on the Literature Map.
The word “clinical” in the tissue-group table uses this same definition and includes case reports; the threshold count behind the literature volume column is narrower and does not count case reports.
The first three figures on a card (publications, clinical, preclinical) share one denominator: all records of the area within the oncological scope. The fourth (in volume count) is the subset of those that passed the validation ledger, and literature volume is computed from that subset alone. The two quantities have different denominators and cannot be used interchangeably.
Non-oncological records do not enter this directory; they are gathered in their own areas (cardiac pulsed-field ablation, non-oncological IRE and DNA vaccination by electroporation). Where a non-oncological record remains inside an oncological area, it is excluded from the card figures and counted only on the area's own page. The two figures are identical in every area in this build.
Literature volume labels are derived from the volume of literature. They do not indicate clinical use, guideline endorsement, reimbursement coverage or regulatory status in any country; they are not a formal GRADE assessment and cannot be used for treatment decisions. An area being at the “high clinical publication volume” level means many clinical publications exist in that area; it does not mean the treatment is effective, superior or approved. Likewise “predominantly preclinical literature” does not mean that an area has no human data, only that the weight of the literature lies in preclinical studies.
Every area carries a separate literature volume and publication count for each clinical method present in the corpus; the method chips on each card give them side by side. Grouping, the badge and the card edge come from the area's electrochemotherapy record, since the portal's subject is electrochemotherapy; where no electrochemotherapy record exists the first scored method is used and the badge names it. The publication, clinical and preclinical figures on each card, and the distribution bar, are area totals covering every method together; the split by method is in the method chips and in the method cards on the area page.
“Outcomes mentioned in abstracts” is an automatic match of outcome names appearing in the titles and abstracts of the area's clinical publications; where a record has no abstract, the publication's opening text is scanned in its place. The figure beside a domain is the number of abstracts mentioning that outcome, that is the number of clinical publications containing it; it is not a measure of efficacy, a response rate or an indicator of success. The denominator is the “clinical” figure on the card: the area's clinical publication count (primary clinical studies, case series and case reports). Only the 4 most frequently mentioned domains are shown on a card; the dictionary holds 10 outcome domains. A mention in an abstract does not mean the outcome was measured or that it was favourable; the name may equally appear in a rationale, a discussion of methods or a negative finding.
The full list of outcome domains, the spellings each one matches, the search patterns and the absence of negative matching rules are published in the what this count measures, and what it does not section of the Mechanisms page; that section also gives the separate counts in ECT and in IRE records.
The portal is intended for scientific and educational information only. Indication, device approval and drug licensing vary between countries.
