How to use scite to help with your research (scite webinar, Sep 29, 2021)

Josh Nicholson, the co-founder and CEO of Site, introduces the webinar aimed at demonstrating how Site can enhance research reliability and interpretation. He emphasizes the importance of scientific research and its impact on various aspects of life. Josh invites participants to interact by asking questions or providing feedback during the presentation. He also mentions Dom, who is available to answer technical questions. A special discount for the webinar attendees is provided, and Josh offers his contact information for further inquiries. The session begins with a reflection on the broader context of scientific publishing and the challenges of information overload and reproducibility in research.

This paragraph delves into the functionality of Site, highlighting its ability to analyze how individual articles and researchers have been cited. It discusses the browser extension that provides citation information while reading research articles online. The extension shows the number of paper citations and breaks down citation statements into supporting, mentioning, and contrasting evidence. The paragraph also explains how Site uses machine learning to classify citation statements and the importance of full-text articles for extracting in-text citations. Site's partnerships with publishers to access content and the use of the Grobid tool for machine learning models are also covered.

The speaker discusses the process of training a deep learning model to classify citation statements into supporting, mentioning, or contrasting categories. The model was trained on approximately 50,000 citation statements annotated by experts with MDs or PhDs from diverse disciplines. A holdout set of 10,000 citation statements is used to test the model's precision and recall. The challenges of accurately classifying citations due to variations in scientific writing and notation are acknowledged. The paragraph also covers how Site organizes citation information, allowing users to filter and explore citations based on various criteria such as year, paper section, and citation type.

Josh introduces the visualization of citation networks on Site, which helps users understand the relationships between cited works. The size of the nodes in the network visualization represents the number of citations a paper has received. Users can expand the network to see multiple papers and filter citations to focus on supporting evidence or contrasting views. The paragraph also discusses the potential for further development in visualization tools to improve the understanding of citation contexts and networks.

This section covers the dashboards available for journals and affiliations on Site, providing insights into citation patterns, editorial notices, and the overall Site index, which is a ratio of supporting to contrasting citations. The dashboards offer a way to quickly assess the impact and reception of publications within specific journals or from certain affiliations. The paragraph also mentions the potential for creating subject-specific dashboards to further analyze citation trends in particular fields of study.

Josh presents advanced search capabilities on Site, including the ability to search for topics across papers and to filter results based on citation metrics. He introduces the Reference Check tool, designed to help authors, editors, and peer reviewers analyze the references of a manuscript. This tool can identify if cited references have been retracted or if they have been cited with supporting or contrasting evidence. The integration of Reference Check with major submission systems is discussed to automate the process of checking references.

The webinar addresses the representation of social sciences and humanities on Site compared to experimental sciences. While the value of citation context is consistent across disciplines, the incidence of supporting or contrasting citations may vary. An analysis of the Site journal index across different subject areas shows a distribution that reflects the nature of different scientific fields and how researchers cite work within them. The paragraph emphasizes the importance of understanding these variations and the potential for further research in this area.

This paragraph discusses the importance of access to full-text publications for citation analysis and acknowledges that Site does not have access to all content. It introduces a new citation statement search feature that allows users to search the entire database for expert analyses and opinions on virtually any topic. The feature is designed to provide quick insights into how topics have been discussed and cited in the research literature, enhancing the accessibility and understanding of research across various fields.

Josh concludes the webinar by acknowledging the pioneers in citation analysis, such as Eugene Garfield, and their foundational work that has inspired the development of Site. He emphasizes the importance of building upon previous research and ideas. The conclusion also highlights the potential for Site to improve and evolve based on user feedback and the team's commitment to listening and making prompt enhancements.

The final paragraph covers the Q&A session where Josh and Dom address questions from participants about Site's capabilities, such as analyzing institutions and the validation of the supporting contrasting classification. They discuss the possibility of filtering institutions by topic and the ongoing process of validation and feedback from the research community. The paragraph ends with an invitation for further questions and feedback via email and a thank you to the participants for their engagement.