Scinapse Updates in Q4 2018
For a while, we have not been able to share updates on our product, Scinapse. There had been several issues delaying our updated ideas being implemented.
In this post, we’d like to share followings regarding our updates in Scinapse for Q4 2018: 1. Our attempts in Q4 2. the issues with these attempts 3. the current status of these attempts.
Updates on the Paper Show page
More information on this update can be found in the previous post.
We completed the first stage of this update, and it was released on December 14th. It was delayed due to some considerations in implementing the Collection Memo feature into the Paper Show page. To briefly sum up: we placed the major elements of the paper on the left column of the Paper Show page, and placed any other relevant information on the right column. The action buttons (Download PDF ,View in the source ,Cite this paper, and Collection & Memo) are gathered right below the paper title.
Updates on the Collection feature
1. Added the Memo feature to Collection
This is the update for improving the existing Collection feature. The Collection feature gives users better experience where users can organize set of papers and share their paper lists rather than merely saving them like bookmarks. It is one of the key features that differentiates Scinapse from other academic search engines(i.e, Google Scholar or Semantic Scholar), and we think that this feature could contribute to one of our goals in Q4, making Scinapse a service that users can actively use. With these thoughts, we updated this feature so that users can take memos on papers and save them in their Collections. We had released this update in mid-November as the beta version and, as the Paper show page was updated, it was released as a full version on December 14th.
2. Added the Collection control button to My Collections List.
This update is designed to allow users to manage their collections from the Full Collections List page. Now users can easily edit or delete collections without having to go inside the individual collection pages.
Improve feedback flow
In the process of developing Scinapse, we need a lot of voice of users. However, the existing feedback flow through the floating button (to the bottom right of any Scinapse page) was not easy for users to give simple feedback or to make the inquiry. Therefore, we had modified the feedback flow, which includes the ability to check and respond to users feedback in real time through Slack (we use Slack for internal communications). In addition to this, we had updated our FAQ(Frequently Asked Questions) document, which users can refer to before making any inquiry.
Updates on the Author page
This is the update with lots of history. The first step for this update was made back in October. This update started with the name “Make your own academic CV” in order to provide users with personal features. We thought that this update could provide us more detailed and accurate information about the author and hoped that this update would be the reason for users to actively use Scinapse. Also, we believed that this update will be the base to potentially develop researcher identification services such as ORCID.
With these hopes and thinks, we had roughly completed the development of this update. However, we encountered issues about this update: 1. Verification of identity (How can we verify that the user is the author?) 2.Verification of user-entered information (How can we check if the information that users entered is true?) Another issue is the inability to make a loop of actions that can be repeated in Scinapse, which was partly because most CV is not updated until authors have changes in their personal identities(e.g, affiliation changes) after authors have created it. This means, it can increase the activity of users at the beginning, but it can not be a reason in the continued use of Scinapse. To sum up, we developed primary features, but we realized that we didn’t have a specific plan for this update. So we stopped this update and reset it in early November.
The biggest reason that made such issues is the lack of consensus between our team members as to whether the information gathered from CV’s results should be limited to those CV pages, or further be utilized in Author pages. That is, we had to define this update exactly and get a consensus among our members. Considering the fact that some researchers attached a link to their Author page of Scinapse to their university profile pages for the purpose of sharing a list of papers, we decided to reorganize the existing update on Author page. We thought that this way can prevent users from being confused about profile page and Author page. Furthermore, an Author page on Scinapse which is managed by a verified member (who actually is the author her/himself) can be of great help to other users.
In conclusion, we re-designed the update and named it “Author — it’s me”. To briefly describe this update: when a user registers as the author through the “it’s me” button on an Author page, the Author page becomes the profile page of the registered user. Through this update, we could (1) solve the problem of author’s data that is separated into several Author pages (because if users register one of the separated Author pages, and they organize their papers that are scattered, we can remove the rest of the separated Author pages), and (2) remove the risk for the two issues that we initially encountered. (because users and authors are matched 1-to-1, and even when users misused it, we can resolve them internally) Currently, we have completed the development of this update and have been receiving feedback for improving it with CBT(Closed Beta Test). Next year, this update will be released to all users of Scinapse. If you want to beta test, please contact us.
Updates on the Search Result page
1. Added a toggle for abstracts on the Search Result page.
Most of the papers have long abstracts, so there is a disadvantage that the abstracts are partially visible on Search Result page. To solve this problem, we have increased the length of abstracts to 8 lines in Search Result page and added the <more> button at the end of the 8th line of every abstract so that the abstract can be read in full-text on Search Result page.
2. Added ‘Open in new tab’ button to paper items
People who search for papers have two different tastes: when they click on a paper, some want it to be opened in the same tab, but others prefer opening in a new tab. Considering these two different tastes, Scinapse now opens papers in the same tab if clicked on the title, and they’re opened in new tabs when clicked on the icons next to titles (a common symbol for external links).
3. Changed the Search Result style
Others
1. Integrating Twitter mentions -> pending
It was an idea to enhance the Comment feature of Paper show page. This functionality was to crawl the Twitter feeds and display in the comments section if there were any mentions that matched the title or author names of a Paper show page. However, our crawling algorithm couldn’t distinguish meaningful tweets from those not. Although it wasn’t successfully implemented into Scinapse, it was a quite inspiring project.
2. Figure integration -> pending
When we were planning Paper Show page update, we also designed to add information about figures. However, we encountered several issues while developing this update. The issues are: 1. The image-extracting algorithm does not get the annotations on images, so it’s hard to grasp figure’s information 2. There are lots of figures of poor quality, such as logos and author images. So we decided to hold it and to proceed after a preliminary investigation into better ways of obtaining decent (or high) quality figures.
3. Support LaTeX
LaTeX, a document preparation system is widely used in academia for the communication and publication of scientific documents in many fields, including mathematics, statistics, computer science, engineering, chemistry, physics, economics, and political science. We have not yet fully supported LaTeX, but we will continuously try to support it.
4. To Do
- Session data tracking: base work for providing personalization service.
- Notification system: base work for giving users notification (such as keyword alarms on newly indexed data)
We learned lessons from this quarter.
We wanted to give users the feeling that Scinapse is being improved, and we also wanted to deliver “perfect” feature to users. That is, we have aimed to become a lean startup, but we were also greedy. As a result, it had made delays.
We needed a new workflow that could subdivide ideas and update them incrementally, and we are making this workflow. This workflow focuses on the lessons learned by continuing to try and ending attempts, rather than focusing on making perfect features. (I will talk about this workflow this week.)
We have had a tremendous amount of experience in Q4 and believe that we will move on to the next year based on these experiences. Thank you for using Scinapse.
Pluto Network
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Scinapse: Academic search engine
Email: team@pluto.network
