AI and scientific literature work in sync

When scholars choose a topic to work on their research, they need more sources or materials to review literature and add more value to their findings. According to Canadian science publishing’s article from last year, 2.5 million research papers are published annually while another unidentified source suggests that new researches are published around the world; approximately 1 million each year! Which is equal to one every 30 seconds. With the overload of new papers in each field and more growing every year it is practically impossible for scholars to keep with the information that is put out in each paper. Christian Berger’s team from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, found a staggering number of papers on the subject; more than 10,000 in the same subject. Fortunately, the team had the support of an AI system, a writing investigation tool called Iris.ai.

Iris.ai is an AI, a tool developed for scholars to make writing research papers easier. It is a Berlin-based company that claims to save 90% of time with 85% precision of data matching, has more than 70 m open access papers. Iris.ai is programmed to learn about the topic provided and perform an elaborate frequency analysis over the text. Then it read the words for which it needs to find results and additional material that could be helpful for the paper. It uses a 500-word description of the researcher’s issue, or the link of their paper and the AI restores a guide to thousands of coordinating reports. As the website suggests, it is a scientific writing assistant.

According to Berger, it was “a quick and nevertheless precise overview of what should be relevant to a certain research question”. Iris.ai is one among many of the new AI-based tools offering targeted results of the knowledge landscape. One such tool is called Semantic Scholar, produced by the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Seattle, Washington, and Microsoft Academic.

Although every instrument is different from each other and gives different output, they all provide researchers with a different look at the scientific literature than conventional tools such as PubMed and Google Scholar. Semantic Scholar is a browser-based search tool that mimics the engines like Google and it is free. But it is more informative than Google Scholar in terms of specific results required by researchers. Doug Raymond, Semantic Scholar’s general manager, says that one million individuals utilize their service every month. It uses natural language processing or NLP to extract data while building connections to determine if the information is relevant and reputable or not.

Artificial intelligence is saving a lot of time and making it easier and quicker to automate some procedures. In the academic publishing industry, the Al-based innovations are being produced and implemented to help both authors and publishers for peer reviews, searching published content, detecting plagiarism, and identifying data fabrication. AI could be costly, but it can accelerate a researchers’ access to new fields. More and more such AI tools are being developed to cater to various requisites of writing a paper, such as filtering topics for relevance, keyword search, etc.

Experts who need more assistance for their specific concerns might consider free Al­ tool such as Microsoft Academic or Semantic Scholar. While AI is easing so many burdens and saving time for a researcher, let’s not forget that it is still machine intelligence and may require human intervention here and there to make a paper more presentable and precise.

Scientific advancement in Iran in the modern era

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), usually known as the Iran deal or Iran nuclear deal, is a nuclear concurrence signed between Iran and a group of five international superpowers in July 2015. Following this concord, the fortunes of science and research in Iran has become a much-contested topic among the academia.

The agreement put severe limitations on Iran’s nuclear program. According to the terms, Iran has assured that it will decrease its stock of uranium by 98% and maintain its uranium enrichment at 3.67, which is below the enrichment level required for creating a bomb. In exchange, the U.S., the European Union, and the United Nations have agreed to lift almost all economic sanctions on Iran. This has given new flight to the aspirations of Iranian scientists and they are optimistic that the scientific field will be benefitted in many ways. Researchers all over the country are hopeful that after the lifting of sanctions, the opportunities for scientific advancement will increase.

Long ago, Iran was a vital scientific hub at a time when there was lack of cultural advancement in Europe. Persian researchers extensively contributed to astronomy, philosophy, and mathematics. But after the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the scientific field changed drastically because of political turbulence. Many intellectuals left the country for a better future. During this time, because of Iran’s growing development toward nuclear weapons, the United States imposed stringent sanctions. In 2002, a secret nuclear facility at Natanz and a heavy water facility at Arak came to light. After these revelations, the U.N. Security Council tried to negotiate with Iran regarding the suspension of its uranium enrichment activities but woefully did not succeed. As a result, the U.N. Security Council implemented economic sanctions on Iran, which paralyzed Iran’s economy.

The sanctions were implemented to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons. But they damaged the atmosphere for the scientific community. Because of political conflicts, Iran was forbidden to buy equipment from abroad, subscribe to international science journals, and import fossils. Many Iranian researchers found it taxing to get published in international journals because publishers were afraid to go against the sanctions. Besides, due to economic sanctions, the government stopped investing in science.

Despite these obstacles, science in Iran continued to progress.  To reduce dependence on imports, Iranian researchers developed indigenous equipment (such as seismic sensors to detect earthquakes) and even went to the extent of buying the tools from the black market. According to reports, Iranian scientists publish approximately 30,000 international scientific papers every year. And the unique feature of Iran’s science is that that both men and women participate in equal measure. In fact, nearly 70% of university graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) are women—a higher percentage than in any other country.

Despite the sanctions and political turbulence, science in Iran has flourished in the last three decades. It has developed incredibly in fields such as seismology and stem cell research. After the lifting of sanctions, Iranian academics are expecting a robust era in the field of scientific knowledge because they will now have access to international collaborations. Besides, the Iranian government is promoting plans to attract Iranian intellectuals working abroad to return to their country by increasing science funding and providing academic freedom. Although the political imbroglio demonstrated that science and international relations are intertwined, the worst seems to be over for scientists in Iran.

Advantages of sharing your work

research sharing

To make your work stand out and enable it to reach large audience, you must be willing to share your research and your findings. This will help your research receive more attention in the fraternity and prompt new thoughts and advancements in the particular field of research. Read on to discover the best methods for sharing your work at each stage of production.

In the pre-submission stage

The proverb with preprints is “whenever, wherever”! You are allowed to share your preprints on any platform, whenever you want. Once your article is published, you are required to link the preprint to the formal publication by means of the article’s digital object identifier (DOI). Such links will enable your readers to access, cite, and utilize the best variant of your work. However, preprints should not be added to or upgraded in any way to make it a substitute for the previous forms of your articles.

After acceptance

Regarding accepted manuscripts, the golden rule is that you can share your research openly after the journals’ embargo time frame. You can quickly store your acknowledged manuscript copy in your establishment’s storehouse for inward use and then sit tight for the ban time frame to elapse before everybody can access it. In this process of sharing, you need to provide a link to the formal production through the DOI. Furthermore, the paper you share should bear a CC-BY-NC-ND permit.

At last, as with preprints, the paper must not be added to or upgraded in any capacity to make it a substitute for the distributed journal article.

After Publication

The approaches for sharing published journal articles (PJAs) differ for membership and open access articles, so you must ensure that the method is in keeping with the kind of article you are distributing.

If your article is a membership article, you can share the article or the links to the article through email, social media, own blog/website for non-commercial and internal purposes. The more links there are to your article from significant sources, more readers you’ll draw in and the higher it will show up in internet search results. In case your article is distributed open access, anybody can peruse your article. The reuse permit you select will decide how others can reuse your article and where you can post it.

Research Writer’s Block: What is it and how to overcome?

It is very common in the research fraternity to hear discussions going on about the inability to put down their ideas and thoughts on paper. After the completion of their research work when researchers plan to put down their findings in pen and paper they realize that their hands are paralyzed and thoughts do not come to their mind. Most researchers do not know that such a condition is common and is known as writer’s block.

Writer’s Block

Writer’s block is more of a mental block that the writers experience. There are also some psychological researches that suggest that there is no such thing. But the fact that almost all researchers experience this cannot be denied. One of the main causes of writer’s block is anxiety and this problem can be aggravated if the researcher is not familiar with English, as this is the language that is generally used the world over.

Overcoming Writer’s Block

There are some common strategies followed by experienced researchers to overcome this mental block and complete their research writing within time.

Social Writing: It is a very good idea to join a support or writing group to stay motivated till the end. Social writing reduces the root cause of writer’s block – anxiety, which in turn stimulates writing. Writing while sitting in a group, discussing about the progress, sharing writing goals and achievements helps to understand writing better and increase the flow of creativity. Social writing generates realistic goal-setting and dedicated writing time. With social writing, the need for help or instruction may not be required.

Block Some Time of the Day Exclusively for Writing: Reserve some time of the day for writing, so that you write everyday and avoid the writer’s block setting in again. Morning is considered the best part of the day for writing, the mind is fresh and at its creative best. So, try to write in the morning before checking your email or surf the net to avoid any kind of distraction. The key idea is to write daily, even if it is for 15 minutes then gradually increase the time of writing.

Draft: First write down anything that comes to your mind, without worrying about the grammar and correctness of the sentence. First, jot down your ideas and the content that you want to include in your research paper and then refine it to convert it into your final copy.

So, we can say that the writer’s block is only the creation of the mind, which can be avoided by keeping calm, focused and consistent. All other things will fall into place if the brain is tricked to believe that the writing will be over within time and it will be up to the mark, without any data being missed.

Formatting tables, graphs, and other visuals in your research paper

The format in which you present your research data is very important because it helps you communicate your data to your reader and editors in the best possible way. Although there are many formats in which tables, graphs, and other figures can be presented, you need to choose the best format for your category of data, provided it is within the prescribed guidelines of the journal you are targeting for publication. Before reviewing a paper, many journal editors and reviewers first glance at the layout of the manuscript in terms of its text, tables, figures, and illustrations. Therefore, to make your presentation effective while presenting a large amount of information, a suitable distribution between text, tables, and figures comes handy.

How to use

Sometimes using too much text can get tiresome and confusing, making the reader lose interest or miss data. So encapsulating the information into visual representations can help summarize your analysis. Centralizing the important findings will help readers get the outline without reading the whole manuscript. However, excessive use of visuals can hinder the flow of text and make the whole presentation abrupt. To achieve the highest impact, a proportionate combination of text and visuals always pays off.

Understanding the message

The intension of using a chart, graph, or table is for one of four primary reasons. One illustration might be intended to show a relationship, while another wants to show the composition of a dataset. A third visual could be plotting distribution of data, while a fourth could be comparing various data points. Therefore, you need to understand the objective of the visual before choosing the format; one format may justify one goal but might not fit another.

A relationship is the correlation and connection between the variables of the data presented, like the value of a particular share today versus the value over the year.

A composition is the set of all variables present in the manuscript to make a conclusion, like the total sale of your product, sale online, sale in retail, and direct sales.

A distribution is a representation of all the correlated and non-related data to determine the connection and pattern if any, and the interaction between the variables.

A comparison is the process of finding out the similarities and differences between sets of variables.

Best format for you

Graphics are best for putting your point forward while tables work fine for providing a structure to numerical information. Different formats that work best for various situations are:

  • A bar chart or bar graph shows correlation between distinct categories. One axis shows the particular categories being compared, and the other axis depicts a calculated value. Some bar graphs show bars bunched together in groups of more than one, showing the values of multiple measured variables.
  • Pie charts are generally applied to represent the rate and proportionality of information, and the rate of percentage depicted by every category is marked next to the corresponding portion of the full pie.
  • Line graphs can be used for more than one variable to show the change over time simultaneously.
  • Scatter plots and line graphs are alike, as both use horizontal axes and vertical axes to plot data information points. Scatter plots are used to show the degree to which one variable is affected by another variable, or the connection between them.

Understanding the Structure and Purpose of Systematic Reviews

Defining systematic review:

A systematic review is a well-planned literature review that basically answers a focused research problem, with pre-defined inclusion and exclusion criteria.

Steps involved in systematic review:

The first step involved in drafting a systematic review is identification of the REAL research problem. For this you need to search for valid literatures dealing with your subject area and locate the research gaps in those studies. This will assist you in devising an appropriate research question. In general, researchers use the PICO framework to define the question scope. Its anatomic parts are as follows:

P-Problem/Population

I-Intervention

C-Comparison, and

O-Outcome

The second step involves setting the inclusion and exclusion criteria that will further determine which studies are you going to include in the systematic review. Here are few parameters that are taken into consideration while zeroing down on a relevant study:

– Population

– Study design

– Type of intervention

– Grouping

– Outcomes of the study, and so on.

Thirdly, you need to carry out the real work of spotting out those inclusive studies by taking help of databases, such as online libraries, online searches, and so on. Then simply insert this retrieved information into a reference manager, such as EndNote, Cite This For Me, Reference Generator, and so on.

The next approach will be to extract data from these studies by using a tool, software or excel sheet. This will assist the researcher in evaluating the study bias if any. For this, you can use a risk of bias tool, such as Cochrane tool, for assessment of potential study or sample bias.

Finally, the results have to be presented along with the methodology section, which includes the criteria of selection, strategies, and so on. A meta-analysis is done, if necessary. Future recommendations can also be cited in this section, regarding any change in the policy or clinical/non-clinical practice.

In this blog, we have tried to summarize the complete process of writing a systematic review in a uncomplicated manner, and along with this, we have also tried to explain the quality elements included in each step of systematic review.

How Social Media Can Act as an Effective Promotional Tool for your Research?

Web-based social media or social networking platforms have redesigned the collective sharing of thoughts by means of online sites, groups, and networks. It is an open access medium for the researchers, authors, and scientists to connect with the world and advance their work. It has now effectively turned into a marketing platform that offers benefits to researchers as well as their intended research group.

Social media platforms can offer a significantly more prominent reach compared to a seminars or conference. The most ideal approach for research promotion on social media is to ensure knowledge upgradation of the target audience regarding the subject area you deal with. Researchers can demonstrate how their research or experiment is being performed. This can include anything like audio and video recordings or updates on how a specific research work is making headway.

In addition to this, a researcher needs to be active on social platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, ResearchGate, Slideshare, Google+, and so on. Being a dynamic participant in these sites will enable you to promote your research adequately.  As a researcher, you can advance your research by making short recordings that are important for presenting figures or any relevant findings in a live form. A kindred researcher will always get attracted toward any such interactive recordings. There are various software that can assist you in developing a good video. After you have prepared your recording, you can then share it social networking sites that will surely draw millions of eyes towards your research.

Blogging bridges the distinction between the present real world and scholarly community. Researchers can blog about their focused research area topics or talk about the subtle elements of a research after it has been completed and published. Blogging is a controlled approach to grandstand your scientific skills and logical abilities to the academic groups. It is easy to share a tweet about your published article, but a more detailed synopsis of your work can be listed on your blog.

Citation Management Tools can store and manage references to academic works that you have been reading. Some of them likewise have the additional feature of being social networking destinations like Mendeley and CiteULike.

The ideas for marketing or promotion of scientific contents mentioned above are only a couple of the numerous ways you can advance your research on social media platform. If the promotion is strategized and carried forward in a well-planned manner, it will surely gain you accolades from the scholarly community.

Funding your Research: A Far-reaching Aspect

In a research scholar’s career, the main hurdle to his/her accomplishment is the lack of grants for his/her research. At times, the scholars spend sleepless nights worrying about finding funding resources for their research studies.

Testing or developing theories calls for an in-depth research, with that comes huge funding needs. Hence, here are some of the suggestions that will surely mitigate the funding burden on the research scholars and help them to focus more on their research findings.

Suitable funding resources

National Institutes of Health (NIH): It is the largest public funding organisation for biomedical research in the world, which invests billions of dollars every year with an aim to enhance life, and reduce illness and disability through frequent innovative researches. NIH has funded varied studies that proved as breakthroughs in treatment and prevention, and helping people sustain longer, lead healthy life, and building a foundation for discoveries.

Grants.Gov: It is considered as one of the largest funding sources for research works in the USA.

National Science Foundation (NSF): It is a funding resource for scientists and researchers desiring federal grants for their research studies. NSF has gained fame in providing financial support to academic institutions for basic research and experiments. It has surpassed the margin marked by NIH.

Newton’s List: It is one of the globally available resources providing grants for basic experiments and research works in agricultural sciences, engineering, natural sciences, social sciences, or technology.

Terra Viva Grants Directory: It is a better option of funding resource with both information and opportunities for researchers seeking project grants for fields like agriculture, energy, environment, and natural resources.

Office of Extramural Research (OER) at NIH: It is one of the biggest sources of research grants in category of scientific research across the word. They do not restrict their assistance to funding only, instead they also guide the researcher with their leadership skills, oversight view, and tools required in administering and managing the NIH grants policies and operations.

The Spencer Foundation: It is the best place to approach for funding scientists and researchers who are initiating their studies on a low scale based only on the novelty of the research work.

Universities or Institutes: If you are affiliated with the University, You can directly visit your university office or the department head. Many recognized universities have offices that deal with sponsored programs. They can coordinate your request for grants and helps you unearth the various opportunities available with them.

Fiscal sponsorship: You can also enquire about the funding sources from your colleagues or peers. They can help you find out certain non-profit organization who shares your research interest. In this case, you might get hold of more grant opportunities.

Bibliometric/Scientometric Indicators

Bibliometrics is a group of mathematical and statistical methods that are used to analyse and measure the quantity and quality of different forms of publications. Basically there are three types of bibliometric indicators:

  • Quantity indicators: These measure the productivity of a researcher.
  • Quality indicators: These measure the performance of a researcher.
  • Structural indicators: These measure the connection between publications, authors, and areas of research.

Bibliometric indicators influence funding decisions, appointments, and promotions of researchers; therefore, it is important for scholars as well as organisations.

Journal-level Bibliometric

Impact Factor

Journal Impact Factor is the most prevalent bibliometric indicator among journals. It is an assessment of how frequently articles published in a particular journal are cited on an average in the two years following their publication. The greater the impact factor, the more prominent the journal. The other well-known and widely accepted bibliometric indicators are:

SCImago Journal Ranking (SJR)

SJR takes into account both the number of citations received and the significance of the journals from where such citations are sourced. SJR computation uses an algorithm similar to Google PageRank.

Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP)

SNIP assesses the impact of contextual citation by measuring citations based on the total number of citations in a particular field of study. SNIP is defined as the ratio of a journal’s citation count per paper and the citation potential in its subject field.

Impact per Publication (IPP)

This mode of measurement calculates the ratio of citations in a year (Y) to scholarly papers published in the three previous years (Y-1, Y-2, Y-3) divided by the number of scholarly papers published in those same years (Y-1, Y-2, Y-3).

Author-level Bibliometric

Bibliometric indicators measuring the impact of individual authors are known as author-level metrics.

H-index

H-index measures both the productivity and impact of the published work of a researcher. It is the most well-known author-level metric at present.
However, h-index has the following shortcomings:
• It does not account for highly cited papers, i.e. the h-index of the author remains the same whether their most highly cited paper has 100 or 10 citations.
• It does not take into consideration the career span of the author. This is because it is only dependent on productivity and impact. Therefore, authors with longer career spans and more publications will always have higher scores.

To overcome these shortcomings of h-index, the following variants were proposed:

G-index

It is an author-level metric for quantifying scientific productivity based on publication record. G-index is found by analysing the distribution of citations received by a specific researcher’s publications.

M-index

It is defined as the h-index divided by the number of years the researcher has been publishing papers.

Ranking of referees for effective peer review process

The peer review process is important for all scientific publications. After a manuscript is accepted, it is sent to the journal-assigned peer reviewer, who evaluates its quality and factual accuracy. For an effective reviewing process, a behavioral economics journal initiated a process of ranking the peer-reviewers.

The peer review process includes analysis of the paper to check its suitability for the target journal based on the journal requirements and scope of publication of the research article. The main goal is to identify the uniqueness of the conducted study. The reviewer also checks the relevance of the citations in the text as well as those in the bibliography. The process also comprises verification of the accuracy of statistical analyses done in the study and proper presentation of the data in the paper.

The peer review process helps generate good and qualitative publications by working on the improvisation of factual contents. It also provides a logical justification for the research paper. Besides, it enables authors to use the critical feedback received from the reviewer to refine their manuscripts in a more productive or constructive manner by incorporating the revisions in the research paper.

Exemplar peer-reviewers ranking

Although the peer-review process is a crucial step, it sometimes becomes long and cumbersome, which impedes the publication cycle. To encourage an efficient reviewing process and to appreciate the reviewers’ work, the Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics is in the news for its new strategy to release its referee list in descending order on its webpage.

The order will be judged based on the reviewing speed computed from the time of accepting the invitation to the time of submission. However, the journal has no plans to disclose the facts and figures of the ranking on its website. By ranking the reviewers, the journal aims to create an urge amongst peer reviewers to complete their reviewing process in time with high accuracy in order to be recognized by the journal on an online forum.

It is likely that the idea of speeding up the peer review process by a ranking system will soon catch on. If that happens, it could crunch the peer-review process followed by journals and increase the rate of submission and acceptance of papers.