Articles

image about universities neurodiverse students

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 (1). While it’s difficult to gauge how many students are neurodivergent, in the US [...]

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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. The biggest advantage of eLearning is that it’s self-paced. If you have a computer and internet access, you can do it anywhere and at a time that suits you. eLearning has been invaluable since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, with millions of locked-down students and employees [...]

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Woman using her smartphone

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 [...]

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teaching methods

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 [...]

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creative

Combining AI and visual design to create beautiful scientific posters

The challenge for academics: too many complex papers, not enough time 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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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. And the problem isn’t limited to published research.  The number of [...]

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literature review

How to do an Effective Literature review

How to do an effective literature review with Scholarcy 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 [...]

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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. The [...]

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Can summarization tech help authors draft their manuscripts?

Scholarcy’s Manuscript Pilot with Future Science Group Background 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. The pilot was based on post-acceptance, pre-publication papers supplied as un-copyedited Word files to FSG’s Editorial Director, Laura Dormer and included: 1.      Population-based assessment of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network recommendations for baseline imaging of rectal cancer (Abdel-Rahman and Cheung, 2019) 2.      Medicaid insurance status [...]

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