Introducing “Shamra Academia”, the Academic Arabic search engine
Definition
Shamra is a Syrian search engine launched on September 6, 2015. Since then, it has provided a number of new and useful services to Syrian users, Shamra Academia in particular.
Shamra Academia provides unique and useful services for Syrian researchers and students, being the only archive that contains research studies, theses, articles and graduation projects that have been produced in Syria. Therefore, a researcher could search for articles and research studies using search queries or keyword, in order to find studies in the desired discipline in a rather fast and precise manner.
Shamra Academia Advantages
Shamra Academia has these advantages:
- It provides advanced search filters, such as by heading, author, publication date and area of research interest. Using such filter makes the search process easier.
- It doesn’t contain any spam or fake files.
- It provides a guide for Syrian educational institutions.
- It provides a guide for scholarships for Syrian students.
Some Statistics and Numbers
The academic search engine has seen substantial participation rates from educational institutions in the country, with those topping the list of the number of studies submitted are, Damascus University (2697), Tishreen University (2631), Al-Baath University (2288) and Higher Institute for Applied Sciences and Technology (87).
Moreover, the total number of research studies increased significantly between 2016 and 2017. In 2016 the total number of uploaded studies was (2839) while it reached(3913) in 2017.
Suggestions to improve the service
the service may be optimized through the following:
1) Adding a filter to determine the palagiarized research studies. This can be achieved by using machine learning technologies to determine similarity ratios between studies — if a high ratio exists, the new study will be deleted.
2) Adding a keyword-generation system, achievable through NLP use.
3) Adding volunteering translation service allowing volunteer users to contribute translation services: volunteers can translate any research study and send it to the researcher. If they approve, the translation will be published.
4) Adding a service to help the researcher finding a job: this can be accomplished by linking Shamra Academia to Shamra Jobs and notifying the researcher when a relevant job opening become available.
5) Establishing a Syrian Data Center to help the researchers in Machine Learning and Data Science fields.
You can visit this service on the following link : https://shamra.sy/academia/