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Editing With Scholarcy

When I graduated from King's College London, I obtained a Masters in Comparative Literature. Nearly a decade has passed since I collected my degree and AI technology has changed the way we learn. In hindsight, I wish I had Scholarcy as a student to help in summarising, organising and enhancing my research papers.

Emma Warren-Jones
October 9, 2023
5 min read

Maximizing Efficiency: A Postgraduate Student’s Story

When it comes to postgraduate research, every resource that helps with systematic screening of the literature, identifying connections, gaps, and the potential for future work is worth its weight in gold. We recently caught up with an inspiring student, Omar Ng, who has undertaken a Master's in Instructional Design and Technology after 20 years away from academia. In addition to navigating the complexities of his Master’s program, Omar also has a demanding full-time job. Time is short, and the challenge of synthesizing vast amounts of information into meaningful insights looms large.

Emma Warren-Jones
August 15, 2023
6 min read

Navigating the Biomedical Maze: A Scholarcy Success Story

Picture the whirlwind of being a first-year biomedical science undergraduate at the University of Sheffield – the excitement of newfound knowledge mixed with the challenge of deciphering scientific jargon that might as well be written in another language. Now, meet a remarkable undergrad on this journey, not just as a first-year student but as someone who returned to academia at the age of 23, bringing a different perspective and life experience to her studies.

Emma Warren-Jones
August 14, 2023
3 min read

Can summarization tech help authors draft their manuscripts?

We recently ran a pilot with Future Science Group to evaluate how well Scholarcy’s knowledge extraction and summarisation technology worked in comparison to author generated abstracts, summary points and keywords.

Emma Warren-Jones
February 24, 2023
7 min read

Best assistive technologies for college students

With digital-first learning becoming more established in colleges and universities, there’s also increased demand for assistive technology to support the growing number of students with a neurodiversity or physical disability. Assistive technology can unlock the learning potential of neurodivergent students in Higher Education helping them to focus, stay organised and grow in confidence. We’ve taken a look at some of the best digital assistive technologies available to college students today.

Emma Warren-Jones
January 17, 2023
10 min read

How universities are adapting to support neurodiverse students

Imagine a world where all individuals are free to use their strengths to learn, develop and create. This is a mission many universities are looking to embrace through the introduction of services, technology, and spaces designed to support students with a wide range of learning needs.It’s estimated that around 15-20% of the world’s population has a specific learning difference such as ADHD, autism, or dyslexia

Emma Warren-Jones
November 17, 2022
8 min read

The 5 Best AI Tools for Postgraduate Research

What's the most challenging part of working towards your postgraduate degree? For many students, combing through mountains of research presents an insurmountable obstacle.For one thing, the sheer volume of research articles you have to read is overwhelming. On top of that, research material isn't exactly an easy read, and sifting through each article to glean the relevant information you need takes a great deal of time and effort.

Emma Warren-Jones
August 8, 2022
5 min read

Sifting and evaluating academic articles using Scholarcy

Getting a clear insight into what an academic article is about takes time. It’s perhaps not surprising that researchers are good readers, but effective research involves two quite different kinds of reading: reading at scale, and detailed evaluation.Researchers read at scale to carry out the initial scan of an article. Using the standard figure for adult reading speeds of 300 words per minute, and given an average length of article as 4,133 words (based on a count of 61,000 articles in PubMed Central), it will take a researcher around 14 minutes to read (that is, to scan) one paper.

Emma Warren-Jones
August 1, 2022
6 min read

Can automation make you a better researcher?

With many skills, such as learning a language, playing an instrument, or learning to ski, we often think that if only we spent more time on the task, we would reach our goals more effectively. But is the same true for all aspects of academic research - for example, screening the literature? Does spending more time screening research papers always make for better research?

Emma Warren-Jones
July 27, 2022
6 min read

How to make citations work harder for you

A fundamental component of scholarly research is reading, and citing, other people’s work. One effective way to get more context and a deeper understanding of a subject is to look at the citations to, and from, an article.Science is one long trail of citations. Apart from the very first academic article, published in January 1665, every article has had earlier papers to draw on, to agree with, or to refute.

Emma Warren-Jones
May 12, 2022
6 min read

7 studying tips for non-native English speakers

For international students, the opportunity to study abroad in an English-speaking country is laden with advantages. Not only does it give students a chance to immerse themselves in another culture, but it gives them the opportunity to improve their confidence with the English language.It’s an option that appeals to many: in 2019-20 there were over 500,000 international students studying at UK universities alone – that’s over 20% of the total student population in the UK.

Emma Warren-Jones
April 26, 2022
7 min read

Making published research more accessible

Accessibility has been a consideration of web design for almost as long as the web has existed. Accessibility guidelines are arguably well understood, and relatively straightforward to implement when it comes to websites and apps. Academic books and articles, however, predate the internet by many years, and it may seem that academic articles are the most unlikely starting points for accessible text. At first sight, articles can look very daunting – full of technical abbreviations, and demanding considerable prior knowledge, presenting challenges for the general reader and students alike.

Emma Warren-Jones
April 23, 2022
8 min read

How to effectively manage citations

One of the cornerstones of the academic article is citations. Scholarly knowledge proceeds by recognising the work of others, which means by citing published articles and books, and then using that knowledge to create some new theory or idea that is different in kind to what came before. After the new paper has been published, others will critique it, might agree, or disagree with it, and so scientific knowledge continues to evolve. As Newton wrote, in a 1675 letter to Robert Hooke, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” In other words, he read all the relevant articles and books that preceded his own thinking.

Emma Warren-Jones
March 28, 2022
6 min read

How eLearning has transformed the academic world

eLearning, short for electronic learning, is ‘the delivery of learning and training through digital resources’. (1) As a form of asynchronous learning, it can refer to anything from pre-recorded video lessons to activity-based animations.

Emma Warren-Jones
March 22, 2022
7 min read

How smartphones are changing the way we study

Mobile phones have come an incredibly long way in the last 30 years. In the 1990s, mobiles were used for making phone calls, sending texts, and playing the odd game of Snake. Today, smartphone technology allows us to browse the internet, stream films and run programmes, all from a small device in the palm of our hands.Smartphones are now ubiquitous. 99% of young people in the UK between the ages of 16 and 24 own a smartphone(1), which has led to a shift in the way we interact with content – and even each other.

Emma Warren-Jones
March 3, 2022
7 min read

Innovation, integration, collaboration: Scholarcy’s review of 2021

Today, Scholarcy is powering a range of products and services across the scholarly communication ecosystem, from metadata extraction to automated visual abstract creation. Discovery services are harnessing our knowledge extraction technology to enhance user experience, helping their readers screen the literature more efficiently and uncover important findings from research that they otherwise might have missed.

Emma Warren-Jones
December 20, 2021
4 min read

What we can learn from teaching methods around the world

While the positive impact of education on individual fulfilment and collective endeavour is universally acknowledged, opinion on the most effective style of education varies widely from country to country. There are lots of factors at play in education outcomes, many of which are influenced by the culture of a particular country. From embracing technology in the classroom to introducing later start times, we look at some of the different teaching methods practised across the globe – and ask what we can learn from them.

Emma Warren-Jones
December 8, 2021
9 min read

Four ways AI is making researchers of us all

For some time now, publishers and other distributors of academic research have been harnessing natural language processing (NLP) technology to get more of their content into the hands of the global academic community. Most research content and discovery services are building their own AI-driven solutions or licensing this technology to connect and expose more of their content for their readers in the following ways...

Emma Warren-Jones
November 25, 2021
9 min read

How coding helps children become creative problem solvers

As the 21st century progresses, computer programming or ‘coding’ is becoming an invaluable skill. A recent study1 found that as many as 50% of all jobs in Australia will require a working knowledge of programming and other IT skills within the next 15 years. It is likely that coding ability will be one of the key differentiating skills of the future.But what exactly is it that makes coding so essential in everyday life? What are the benefits of learning how to code? Why should we teach it to our children?Let’s find out!

Emma Warren-Jones
November 8, 2021
6 min read

How to evaluate the quality and veracity of an article

So you’ve got a literature review to write, and the deadline is approaching. Perhaps you don’t know how to begin. Or maybe you’ve started and got stuck. Perhaps you’ve used one of the many discovery tools out there to find relevant papers, but now you have to read and filter them all. You’ve got a folder full of articles, and you’re learning that PDF doesn’t actually stand for ‘print, download, forget’….

Emma Warren-Jones
November 5, 2021
6 min read

Combining AI and visual design to create beautiful scientific posters

The background study for your research is an extensive undertaking. There’s a huge number of scientific papers you’ll need to sift through to glean vital information about the foundations and latest developments in your subject. In fact, the typical academic scholar reads an average of 20 research papers a month.Scientific papers have also become harder to read in recent years which just adds to the time pressure, especially if you’re screening a lot of literature. Complex writing styles and overuse of jargon have exacerbated the problem. Just skimming articles to identify key data and findings can take up a lot of your research time, and that’s before you even get to a shortlist of papers that you need to analyze in more depth.

Emma Warren-Jones
September 29, 2021
6 min read

Content automation is boosting audience engagement in the news and information industries

Engagement marketing managers have become pivotal to the growth and retention strategy of any online content business over the last few years. These roles demand a range of finely honed skills – from specialist industry knowledge and audience profiling – to a flair for developing multi-channel engagement programs, content creation, and an analytical eye to gauge the impact of those programmes.

Emma Warren-Jones
August 12, 2021
7 min read

Breaking news: How AI technology is helping science journalists stay on top of the latest research

Science journalists are a vital bridge between researchers and the public. They “shine a light on discoveries” [1] and translate complex studies into accessible articles that help to educate and inform the wider community.This isn’t always an easy task — science journalists face an uphill battle to secure an exclusive story about significant scientific breakthroughs and developments. Not only are journalists overwhelmed with the increasing volume of scientific papers, they’re also under pressure to transform important discoveries and findings into engaging articles as quickly as possible.

Emma Warren-Jones
July 30, 2021
7 min read

Best tools for screening and reading research papers

There’s a huge amount of relevant and high-quality research on any given subject, but researchers simply don’t have the time to absorb it all.It’s not just a question of discovering the best information, it’s understanding and applying it that matters. The risk is that important findings that could support new studies are being missed.To put this into context: there were more than 3 million articles published in 2018.

Emma Warren-Jones
March 4, 2021
9 min read

Six elements a research summary should include

Summarizing a research paper (or papers) sounds like it should be a pretty quick, easy task. After all, how hard can writing 200 words be?! But whether you’re writing a summary to include in your essay or dissertation, or you need to draft a compelling abstract for your own paper, distilling complex research into an informative, easy-to-read snapshot can be one of the most daunting parts of the research process. For that reason, it’s often the activity that gets left to last.

Emma Warren-Jones
February 16, 2021
6 min read

How to do an Effective Literature review

In our recent article: Five pitfalls to look out for when doing your literature review, we talked about some of the challenges researchers and students face when it comes to evaluating the articles that will be most for their own work. This can be a daunting task even for experienced researchers because of the sheer volume of literature out there.There’s no shortage of discovery services available that can return pages of search results, even for obscure terms.

Emma Warren-Jones
February 4, 2021
5 min read

Five pitfalls to look out for when doing your literature review

One of the activities common to all researchers – from undergraduates to post-docs – is conducting literature reviews. The volume of research literature has been growing at an unprecedented rate in recent years. The number of new scientific papers published each year now exceeds 2.5 million1 , and the problem isn’t limited to published research. Preprint servers - which are increasingly becoming an important resource for researchers - have grown by over 300% since 20152.

Emma Warren-Jones
February 3, 2021
8 min read

Machine-generated visual summaries in a crowded research space

One of the most immediate and effective ways to showcase new research is to display it as a poster at conferences. Presenting your research in a striking, visual format can be a powerful way to get audience attention. The challenge is, even with a captive audience, the time an author has to pique the interest of peers and publishers is limited. And now that authors are having to compete for attention at virtual conferences, the problem is exacerbated.

Emma Warren-Jones
January 26, 2021
8 min read

How Scholarcy is helping undergraduates with research

At Scholarcy, we’ve been talking to students at all stages of learning to find out what kind of challenges they face when it comes to reading and understanding academic literature as well as writing their own essays or theses. This week, we spoke to Xiran Li, an engineering student in China, to find out how he’s been using Scholarcy as part of a final year project that involved reading and applying a large volume of research literature.

Emma Warren-Jones
November 24, 2020
5 min read

Can automated knowledge summaries aid scholarly communication?

The product and strategy team at Cactus Communications wanted to analyze the accuracy and comprehensiveness of Scholarcy’s Highlights and Keywords, in the context of the full article, to see how useful these features could be in promoting published work and increasing reader engagement with individual papers.

Emma Warren-Jones
April 15, 2020
7 min read

How Scholarcy partnered with BMJ to further I4OC

Reference mining is fundamental to the creation of citation networks and rich, discoverable digital libraries. In recent years, a number of tools have been developed to address this need, but they are often limited by input format, infrastructure requirements and runtime performance. The most recent developments in this space have focused on reference mining PDFs from arts and humanities literature, but there’s a growing need for a fast, accurate way of extracting and parsing references from a wide range of documents and formats across the full research landscape.

Emma Warren-Jones
May 8, 2019
6 min read

How to solve the problem of too much information and not enough time

Ever find yourself thinking how much better your work could be if you just had time to read more of the information that’s out there? Even then, not everything we might save with the best intention of reading later is relevant or useful. And if that rare oasis of time does open up, skim-reading is probably the most common and practical way of processing several articles to find what’s useful. In fact, as a way of digesting large volumes of information, skim reading is actively encouraged by some. Speaking at the 2018 Deep Learning Indaba, Jeff Dean, Head of AI at Google, said...

Emma Warren-Jones
January 23, 2019
10+ min read

How AI can encourage students to read and avoid plagiarism

Our goal at Scholarcy is to help students and researchers understand complex information faster, and provide a route into dense literature that can be intimidating for a newcomer or non-expert. A recent study has shown that scientific papers are getting harder to read[1], as a result of an increase in technical jargon and assumed background knowledge. The barrier to entry to primary research literature is getting higher at a time when our need to verify sources and tackle misinformation is greatest.

Emma Warren-Jones
November 14, 2018
7 min read