SciScore will return a report with two tables and an overall score between 1 and 10. The first table outlines whether certain rigor criteria were met; this is displayed in a rigor adherence table. The second table displays all of the research resources used within a paper and whether enough metadata was provided to correctly identify a resource. Scores range between 1 and 10 and are determined based on the level of rigor adherence and the completeness of the research resource metadata.

Addressing all rigor criteria in the methods section including blinding, randomization of groups, and power analysis, even if it is to simply state that blinding is not relevant to this study, should improve your score. Addressing rigor is required in multiple journals that implement various rigor and transparency checklists. For each research resource that is identified, adding an RRID or other important metadata (i.e., catalog number and vendor for antibodies) should improve the score. Please note, every RRID is associated with product information. SciScore will try to match the sentence context with this data, and if this information does not match, the score will be lower. If English is not your native language, you may consider sending your methods section to a colleague to help improve sentence clarity.

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If a journal submits your paper, they must follow journal specific privacy policies. You may retrieve the SciScore report from the journal directly. As the submitting party, the journal would be responsible for any actions taken as a result of SciScore.

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

RRIDs help researchers more easily identify and find the reagents and tools being used in research papers. RRIDs help 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.

The STAR (structured, transparent, accessible reporting) methods table is a table framework created by Cell Press to improve the reproducibility of scientific research. More information regarding the STAR methods table can be found here.

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.

As of now, 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. If you have any recommendations for what SciScore should find in the future, please let us know.

ORCID is a persistent, unique identifier used to properly distinguish researchers from one another. ORCIDs also help create automatic linkages between researchers and their work, ensuring that your research is properly attributed to you. To find more information regarding ORCID, please visit their website. If you do not have an ORCID account, please go to https://orcid.org to create one.

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.

Yes, you may use a valid credit card to access SciScore. Several packages are available for journal editorial staff and technical reviewers as well.

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.

Yes, any score obtained through SciScore is private and visible only to your user account.