Question 1

How are citations classified?

Accepted Answer

| Citations are classified by a deep learning model that is trained to identify three categories of citation statements: those that provide contrasting or supporting evidence for the cited work, and others, which mention the cited study without providing evidence for its validity.

Citations are classified by rhetorical function, not positive or negative sentiment.
Citations are not classified as supporting or contrasting by positive or negative keywords.
A Suppporting citation can have a negative sentiement and a Contrasting citation can have a positive sentiement. Sentiment and rhetorical function are not correlated.
Supporting and Contrasting citations do not necessarily indicate that the exact set of experiments were performed. For example, if a paper finds that drug X causes phenomenon Y in mice and a subsequent paper finds that drug X causes phenomenon Y in yeast but both come to this conclusion with different experiments—this would be classified as a supporting citation, even though identical experiments were not performed.
Citations that simply use the same method, reagent, or software are not classified as supporting. To identify methods citations, you can filter by the section.

For full technical details including exactly how we do classification, what classifications and classification confidence means please read our recent publication describing how scite was built: https://doi.org/10.1162/qssa00146

A few examples:

Supporting citatio

Question 2

How do I fix a mis-classified citation?

Accepted Answer

scite utilizes a deep learning model to automatically classify citations as supporting, contrasting, or mentioning. If find citation mis-classified you can flag it and note the correct classification. Flagged classifications are reviewed internally by at least two subject matter experts and will be changed based upon their agreement and feedback from the user who flagged the citation. In general, we aim to correct mis-classifications in less than 24 hours.

To flag a mis-classified citation, click the flag next to the citation classification

Then select the correct classification and hit submit (note, you will need to be signed in to flag citations)

Question 3

A retracted article has no contrasting cites, does that mean scite is not working?

Accepted Answer

The mission behind scite is to make science more reliable. To achieve this mission we help anyone interested in scientific research identify if a study has been supported or disputed by analyzing hundreds of millions of citation statements.

One test that users often seek to use as a test of scite is to see if retracted articles have contrasting cites, which in some cases they do not. Does this mean scite is not working?

In short, no. scite illuminates the citation landscape by breaking down citations into three different citation classifications. These classifications help shed a light onto publication bias, a phenomenon that has been well documented in scientific publishing. Thus, a retracted publication might not actually have any contrasting citations made to it and scite simply shows that. Other reasons scite might not have contrasting cites on retracted studies are as follows:

1) There are no contrasting studies to it. 2) The retraction notice does not cite the retracted article. 3) There are contrasting papers, but no contrasting citation statements (see: Does scite classify citation statements or papers?) 4) scite has not yet ingested contrasting papers.

Question 4

Using scite for literature reviews and critical analysis

Accepted Answer

Using scite to speed up literature reviews and critical analysis 🚀

Literature reviews and critical analyses take time. In order to write high quality research you need to engage with the literature, read the references being cited, read the citations to the paper and make sure you understand the field as a whole. Collecting and reading all relevant references and citations takes a long time. scite helps you spending less time on research and writing while simultaneously boosting the quality of your work by presenting what is said about a paper right away.

scite helps with some of the major aspects of performing literature reviews and critical analysis including: critically engaging with publications, understanding how a publication and its results have been cited, and finding relevant literature on the topic in question. Finally, for many researchers, the purpose of understanding previous work is not only to position your current reseach but also to identify and clearly explain the gaps in research that your work will address. scite helps you find research gaps.

By using scite to understand literature, it will be easier for you to contribute to a more in-depth and broad discussion about differences in results and arugments and identify complex ideas in the literature to surface them in your writing.

This guide will help you learn:

How to use scite to find relevant journals, authors, literature, and specific results or claims
How to use

Question 5

How can I use scite advanced search?

Accepted Answer

With scite you can search over 100M publications to find how research is being talked about, and whether citing publications are providing support or have different results then the cited work. By using scite search you will not only be able to find the highest quality research but you will be able to easily see gaps, methodological flaws, differing results, and other issues pointed out by other authors.

Basic Search

Like other literature search tools, you can search by title, abstract, digital object identifier (DOI), keywords, author name, year, journal, and more. You can use the scite search box as well as the advanced search boxes to search for these. The top search box will search across all of our search fields. If there is a search field that you feel is missing and wish for us to add don't hesitate to contact us.

We also support enclosing phrases in quotations in any field for an exact match.

Basic Search

Advanced Search

In addition to basic field searching. You can order your results by scite data, filter your searches, and use boolean search in our main search bar.

Ordering Results

We provide many ordering options such as by date, by supporting citations, by contrasting citations, by citation volume and more.

Using scite filters

There are several filters that a user can use. These come in two forms: citation range filters and m

Question 6

How do I make and use Custom Dashboards?

Accepted Answer

**“Ooooh. What else can I do with all this data?” - Probably some researcher

This article will cover:

What Custom Dashboards are
How you can make one
What information is conveyed in the dashboard
Example workflow creating a custom dashboard from search results

It also assumes that you:

Understand what Smart Citations are and how they are classified (See: How does scite work?)

Custom Dashboards

Custom Dashboards are a way of aggregating scite specific Smart Citation data about groups of papers. You can for example see:

How many total supporting, contrasting, and mentioning citations they have received
How many editorial notices they have received
The trends in the scite Index over time for these papers
All of the articles in a table that is sortable and filterable by their citation metrics

It is worth emphasizing that:

Users on a free plan are allowed one custom dashboard with up to 100 DOIs.
Users on a premium plan are allowed an infinite amount of custom dashboards with up to 1,000 DOIs each.
The limit of the number of DOIs is configurable but we ask that you reach out to us to request custom limits so we can better understand your use-case.

Okay… how do I make one?

Custom dashboards can be made by navigating to the Product tab and clicking on Create Dashboard.

There are currently four ways you can make a custom dashboard:

Importing your Zotero library
Importing your Mendeley library

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