What is Sciety?
sciety.org is an online application designed for academic researchers that aggregates and displays public evaluations of preprints. It enables discovery of the latest research findings accompanied by expert commentary and is curated by the community, all in one place.
Why might I use Sciety?
Keeping up to date with relevant research is time consuming and it's hard to ensure you do not miss important results. Sciety helps keep you informed by surfacing relevant results in search and recommending articles to you that relate to your field.
You can quickly perform a preprint literature review by saving articles and evaluations to your own personal, shareable lists.
There are a range of factors that help you make an informed decision about the trustworthiness of a preprint. Sciety displays articles alongside all the evaluations they have received all in one place, regardless of where the article or evaluation is posted on the web.
Sciety is web-based, allowing you to share important preprints with the community online to keep them informed. Curation is therefore open and public, for the benefit of all.
If you think Sciety might be able to help you, we'd love to hear more about your experience as a researcher.
How do I discover evaluated preprints?
From the home page you can use the search function to find evaluated preprints by using descriptive keywords, article titles or DOI. You can also follow Groups that are evaluating the latest research.
Which Preprint Servers does Sciety support?
Sciety currently supports searches of preprints from BioRxiv and MedRxiv. Sciety displays articles from BioRxiv, MedRxiv, ResearchGate and Scielo.
Additional preprint servers will be added soon. If you wish to be notified about this, please subscribe to our newsletter.
How do I curate preprints?
When you discover an article of interest, you can save it to a personal List that you can share with others by copying the URL.
How do I follow a peer review group?
When you visit the group, you can use the Follow button to keep up to date with the group's evaluation activity. Each time the group performs an evaluation your personal Feed will be updated.
How do I create an account or login?
You can view the content of evaluations and preview lists created by groups and other users on Sciety without the need to sign up or login. If you wish to save articles to your list or follow evaluation activity, you will need to create an account.
To do this, you will need to complete the sign up process or if you have an existing account, continue to login.
What are 'Lists'?
Lists are collections of curated preprints. Both individuals and groups on Sciety can curate lists to make it easier for other scientists to find preprints of interest. Users can now maintain multiple lists based around theme, subject, or any other topic by saving and un-saving articles to a list of their choosing.
How do I create a new list?
When you create an account on Sciety, you are provided with a 'Saved Articles' list to enable you to start curating preprints of interest. You can provide additional context to this list by editing its title and description. If a preprint is of interest but falls outside the scope of this list, you can create a new additional list any time. Check out our 'Creating public lists of preprints on Sciety' blog post to learn more.
What are 'Groups'?
Groups are scholarly communities who carry out preprint evaluation using a consistent process to ensure fair and informative feedback for authors and readers. The groups can be formed and focused specifically on the purpose of preprint evaluation (such as overlay journals or even automated screening tools managed by researchers), or they can be research communities in a broader sense (such as societies or other research community organisations). Our groups vary in size, subject matter, and scope. No matter the group size or evaluation frequency, Sciety offers a home to showcase preprint evaluation from your community.
How can I start or join a group?
If you are currently working with a group of people to evaluate preprints, Sciety can offer you a home to showcase your activity. Please fill in our Groups short registration process and a member of our team will be in touch.
To join a Group, take a look at the Group's home page for contact details.
How do I post a preprint or evaluation?
Sciety aggregates preprints and their evaluations from other sources and displays them all in one place. Sciety does not host the preprints or evaluations itself, so if you are unsure where to submit your preprints, please get in touch with our team.
How do I request an evaluation?
Sciety is the home of a growing number of communities evaluating preprints. Visit a Group page to understand more about their evaluation process and to contact them directly.
What is the 'Sciety Feed'/'My Feed'?
The Sciety Feed is a real-time representation of all the activity happening on Sciety. When you create an account, the feed becomes your personal way to stay up to date about the research you care about.
How do I personalise my feed?
When you follow a Group, your feed is automatically updated to show you when the Group's lists are updated to reflect new evaluation activity.
How do I change my name or handle?
When you create an account on Sciety, you are asked to provide your full name and a handle with which you can share your curation work. It is not currently possible to change your username in Sciety.
How do I delete my account?
Please contact us to remove your account and details from Sciety.
How do I get involved?
Sciety is guided by researchers like you. If you can spare some time to help shape the future of public preprint curation, we want to hear from you.
What is Sciety Labs?
Sciety Labs is an experimental site that the team use to test out functionality by incorporating data points and external APIs. It is not intended for general use and may be updated frequently. If you are interested in helping us try out the latest technology please schedule a call with the team.
If your question is not answered here, please contact us.
