May 17, 2021 – Researchers often view citations as a form of currency. The more citations earned, the greater the chances of career success. But what if there was a way to provide more context and nuance for citations? A groundbreaking AI-based badge powered by scite and integrated into Research Square provides just that.
The scite badge works by scanning millions of full-text articles. Using deep learning technology, the software finds citations in the bodies of scholarly works, reads the context around those citations, then classifies them into one of three categories: Supported, Contrasted, or Mentioned. Additionally, scite calls out editorial concerns such as retractions, withdrawals, corrections, and similar notices.
Michele Avissar-Whiting, Editor in Chief of Research Square, says the scite badge adds a new level of trust, transparency, and openness to Research Square’s preprints—and research papers in general.
“Readers can more clearly judge the quality of research when they see our scite, Altmetrics, and Dimensions badges together on our preprints,” said Avissar-Whiting. “A high Altmetric score shows how much attention a paper has received on social media and through news outlets, and Dimensions shows influence through citations. The scite badge adds granularity to the citations, showing how many times other researchers have found supporting or contrasting results in their own research.”
Josh Nicholson, CEO and co-founder of scite, says his tool helps Research Square users save time and improve their preprints.
“At the preprinting phase, authors can still edit their manuscript before sending it on for peer review,” said Nicholson. “Authors can use scite to check the quality of the works they’ve referenced using our scite Reference Check or simply by using scite while reading. If they find a paper that shows an unusually high number of contrasting results, they can check to make sure that doesn’t change their interpretation of the paper or can address it in their preprint. Ultimately, the contextual information from scite allows researchers to write better papers, because they can better see how others have cited works they are citing.”
“It also saves time in that you can see how a paper has been cited by others very quickly without having to open all citing papers,” Nicholson added.
Authors submitting preprints to Research Square can also receive instant alerts from scite the moment their manuscripts are cited.
“Not only are you seeing that you had a citation and what category it falls in; you can quickly go into the scite interface and view all of the citations in one place,” said Juliet Kaplan, Director of Product at Research Square Company. “It’s a very exciting feature for authors.”
More than 5,200 preprints on Research Square now display the scite badge.
Learn more about Research Square and search its collection of 82,000 preprints at www.researchsquare.com.
About Research Square Company Research Square Company, a five-time INC 5000 award winner, exists to make research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. Through our industry leading preprint platform, Research Square, research promotion tools, and AJE’s comprehensive suite of manuscript preparation services, we are proud to have supported over 2.5 million authors in 192 countries since our founding in 2004. Across all sides of our business, our team of former researchers and publishing industry professionals truly understand the importance of sharing research results with the world. By helping researchers communicate their work more effectively, we accelerate the pace of global discovery and advancement.
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