Enhance rigor and reproducibility in scientific research
SciScore™ is the best methods review tool for scientific articles.
Get actionable results today regarding the transparency of your research manuscripts. Using criteria from various reporting standards (e.g. the NIH, MDAR, and ARRIVE), SciScore generates three reports and a score for every submission. These materials assist researchers, editors, and funders in improving the quality and reliability of scientific research by automatically reporting detected criteria of interest for future review. Researchers signing up with their ORCID get ten free reports. Reports can take as little as 1 minute!
Analyze your key resources
SciScore helps ensure key resources like antibodies, cell lines, and organisms, are described in enough detail (e.g. vendor names, catalogue numbers, RRIDs, etc.), so that other researchers can try to replicate a studies findings.
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Generate an MDAR report fast
Many journals, like Science for instance, currently advise researchers to complete MDAR checklists when submitting their manuscripts. SciScore can produce an MDAR report for your research in under a minute!
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Track journal reproducibility with RTI
Using SciScore, the Rigor and Transparency Index (RTI) was created in 2020. It provides information on both the general state of a journal’s rigor & transparency practices, as well as a much more detailed picture.
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- Journal Integration Partners
Frequently Asked Questions
SciScore was designed to be fast and intuitive, please contact us if you need assistance.
General Questions
What will I receive after I submit my methods section?
SciScore returns three reports (downloadable all together in a .zip file) and a score between 1 and 10. These reports cover a wide range of rigor criteria and research resource types (e.g., antibodies, cell lines, plasmids, etc.). Scores range between 1 and 10 and are based on both rigor adherence and resource reporting completeness.
How can I improve my SciScore?
Wherever possible, we try to provide useful suggestions to help you improve your report, e.g. a missing RRID or a typo in your dataset link. Adding those to your methods section might already improve your SciScore. Next is to look more thoroughly at the various sections of the report to see where information is expected but missing.
Addressing certain rigor criteria in the methods section like blinding, randomization of groups, and power analysis, even if it is to simply state that they are not relevant to the study, should improve your score. In general, though, the more rigor criteria you include, the higher your score will be.
For each research resource that is identified, adding a research resource identifier (RRID) or other important metadata, like the catalog number and vendor, should improve the score. Please note, every RRID is associated with product information. SciScore will try to match the sentence context with this data, and if this information does not match, the score will be lower. If English is not your native language, you may consider sending your methods section to a colleague to help improve sentence clarity.
If I find something wrong with my report, what do I do?
Please contact us to report any problems. SciScore can only learn from its mistakes if it knows about them.
What happens when a journal submits my methods section for me?
If a journal submits your paper, they must follow journal specific privacy policies. As the submitting party, the journal would be responsible for any actions taken as a result of SciScore.
Materials, Design, Analysis, Reporting (MDAR)
What is MDAR?
MDAR (Materials, Design, Analysis, and Reporting) is a multidisciplinary research framework aimed at helping authors, editors, and other interested parties increase reporting transparency within life science manuscripts. The MDAR checklist aims to serve as a generic, minimum reporting standard for life science studies, a complement to journal and community-specific guidelines and initiatives.
The MDAR checklist has been a collaborative effort from 13 high-impact journals (i.e. eLife, Science, PNAS, etc.) across a variety of publishers. Using SciScore, you can automatically check your manuscript against the checklist in under a minute.
Why would MDAR be relevant for me?
As of 2020, the journal Science requires an MDAR report to be submitted with acceptance of each paper, you can generate one here in as little as 1 minute.
By serving as a generic, minimum reporting standard, MDAR hopes to improve reporting standards compliance across a variety of life science guidelines with the end goal being to improve research reproducibility. In addition, 13 high-impact journals (i.e. eLife, Science, PNAS, etc.) have begun testing the MDAR checklist with potential for expanded implementation in the near future.
Can I just use SciScore's automatically generated MDAR report?
We welcome you to use our automatically generated MDAR reports when submitting to journals that require such a report, however, please be mindful that SciScore cannot detect every MDAR criteria as of yet (currently, ~80%). We point out where information is missing, but you may need to fill in additional information as requested by the journal that you are submitting to.
Research Resource Identifiers (RRIDs)
What is an RRID?
RRIDs are persistent, unique identifiers (PIDs) that identify antibodies, cell lines, plasmids, transgenic organisms, and software projects. Basically, RRIDs are to research resources to what ORCIDs are to researchers.
To find RRIDs, please go to https://scicrunch.org/resources and type in the resource's catalog number for the best results.
Why should I include RRIDs in my research?
RRIDs help researchers more easily identify and find the reagents and tools being used in research papers. The absence of such persistent identifiers makes it a lot more difficult, if not impossible, to reproduce the work found in an article thereby hindering scientific progression.
RRIDs help to limit confusion about the exact resources used in research papers, which in turn helps to promote reproducibility. Also, with the inclusion of a resource ID tag in JATS 1.2 (the NISO standard for journal articles), RRIDs have become even easier to find.
Some of my resources don’t have RRIDs. What should I do?
All key resource types (antibodies, cell lines, organisms, plasmids, and software) should have an RRID. If you cannot find an RRID, please visit https://scicrunch.org/resources/about/resource to register your resource.
Star Methods Table
What is a STAR methods table?
The STAR (structured, transparent, accessible reporting) methods table is a table framework created by Cell Press to improve the reproducibility of scientific research. More information regarding the STAR methods table can be found here.
Can I use the SciScore generated table as is?
Most likely no, you will need to fill in additional information as requested by the journal that you are submitting to. We try to point out where information is missing, however, SciScore currently only recognizes antibodies, cell lines, transgenic organisms, plasmids, oligonucleotides, and software projects. For more information, please check out our STAR page.
STAR methods tables ask for things that SciScore does not return to me, why not?
As of now, SciScore has been trained to detect the following types of research resources: antibodies, cell lines, transgenic organisms, plasmids, oligonucleotides, and software projects; it does not currently recognize other types of reagents that STAR requires. If you have any recommendations for what SciScore should find in the future, please let us know.
ORCID
What is an ORCID?
ORCID is a persistent, unique identifier used to properly distinguish researchers from one another. ORCIDs help create automatic linkages between researchers and their work, ensuring that their research is properly attributed. If you do not have an ORCID account or wish to learn more, please go to https://orcid.org.
Why do you need my ORCID?
SciScore is a tool that we make available to the scientific community, however we have no way to verify that you are indeed a researcher without a helping hand from our colleagues at ORCID. Signing up for ORCID is both easy and free, and it is now required when submitting to many journals. If you do not have an ORCID account, please go to https://orcid.org to create one.
Can I use SciScore without an ORCID?
Yes, you may use a valid credit card to access SciScore. Several packages are available for journal editorial staff and technical reviewers as well.
Privacy & Security
What do you do with my information?
Our policy is to purge your data from the SciScore servers as soon as possible to protect your information, only the report remains in your account. Please see the full terms and conditions page.
Do you keep my score private?
Yes, any score obtained through SciScore is private and visible only to your user account.
SciScore Pricing
Is your journal using Editorial Manager or eJournalPress? Contact us to discuss integrating SciScore into your submission pipeline today!
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