SciScore: The best methods review tool for scientific research

What is SciScore?

SciScore provides three things:

1. A table of rigor criteria, including sentences where SciScore™ found blinding, randomization, and sex as a biologica variable.
2. a table of resources (reagents) that can be used to build your STAR Methods table
3. a score from 1 to 10 that roughly represents the likelihood that someone will be able to easily find the resources described in the paper. Higher numbers represent more easily "findable" reagents, so a reagent described as "a GFAP antibody from Sigma" would be scored lower in comparison to a reagent described as "a GFAP antibody (Sigma, Cat#O123, lot# 3, RRID:AB_12345)".

What does SciScore currently test for?

SciScore identifies the proportion of key biological resources, as defined by the National Institutes of Health, that can have a research resource identifier, RRID, and compares that with the proportion of resources that actually have an RRID listed in the paper. It also attempts to find catalog numbers for other tools. It also attempts to find whether other rigor criteria have been met.

How is SciScore sold?

SciScore As A Service provides scores and reproducibility reports and is available to academic journals in the form of an online middleware accessible by journal submission systems. Please ask us about prices.

What is an RRID?

RRIDs are persistent, unique identifiers that identify antibodies, cell lines, transgenic organisms and software projects. To find RRIDs, please see https://scicrunch.org/resources and type in your resource's catalog number for the best results.

Why should you include RRIDs in your papers?

RRIDs improve you and the scientists reading your paper to more easily find reagents and tools. This helps 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.

What will I receive when I submit my methods section?

When you submit your methods section to SciScore, we will return a report outlining where RRIDs are or where RRIDs ought to be in the form of a STAR Methods table.

If I find something wrong with the report what do I do?

Contact Us to report any problems. SciScore can only learn from mistakes after you report them.

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.

STAR Methods tables ask for things that SciScore does not return to me, why not?

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.

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 in order to access SciScore. Several packages are available for journal editorial staff and technical reviewers as well.

How can I improve my numerical score?

For each research resource that is identified, adding an RRID should improve the score. In specific cases where the submitted sentence structure is very complex, SciScore may also fail to identify RRIDs. If English is not your native language, you may consider sending the methods section to one of your colleagues to help improve sentence clarity. Please note, every RRID is associated with product information. SciScore will try to match the sentence context with this data, and when this information does not match, the score will be lower.

What do we do with your 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.

What happens when a journal submits my methods section for me?

If a journal submits your paper, they must follow journal specific policies in regards to privacy. You may retrieve the SciScore output data from the journal directly. As that is now the journal's submission, the journal will be responsible for any actions they take as a result of SciScore.