What is a Sciety group?

Since Sciety started, we have wanted to reflect the diversity of the sector and ensure no one is left out.

a year ago   •   3 min read

By The Sciety Team
... a collection of researchers on Sciety who work together to evaluate preprint research outputs in their discipline, for public benefit. Groups must be made up of more than one researcher and have a group name and logo.

We’ve recently posted about more than one group evaluating preprints on Sciety, as well as the three most recent groups to join the application. If you've read these posts, you might have noticed we use the word, 'group' a lot. While some readers may know what this term means, we thought it would be a good idea to shine more light on what it is and why we use it.

Since Sciety started, we have wanted to reflect the diversity of the sector and ensure no one is left out. But with this principle comes difficult decisions, ranging from names and labels, to systems and structure.

The question then was: what do you call a team of scientists who evaluate, curate and screen research articles? ‘Reviewers’ might jump to mind, but we are acutely aware that not all these teams are reviewing articles. And even more importantly, the word ‘review’ has a wider meaning in the scientific world.

Finding a path through such an ironically simple yet complex matter is something that we wrestled with in trying to identify a versatile but neutral label for this expression.

To pinpoint a suitable naming convention, we held a series of brainstorming sessions dropping potential terms on a Miro board. These were then taken through a process discussing the meanings, connotations, ease of use as well as wider adoption and recognition. ‘Group’ was found to be the most multifaceted, yet applicable of the terms.

Round 1

We use groups to define a collection of researchers on Sciety who work together to evaluate preprint research outputs in their discipline, for public benefit. Sciety is set up to facilitate the sharing of these evaluations, by being a central platform for accessing them and thus helping readers spend less time finding them. Each group has their own page to showcase its activities, processes and people to other Sciety users.

Round 2

How do groups join Sciety?

You may wonder how groups form or get recognised on Sciety. Do you have to be an existing team to be on Sciety? Do you form a group and then approach Sciety? All these are possible depending on your focus and where you are: we welcome groups that already exist within the research community, but we are also on hand to help new ones set themselves up.

Our vision is to support groups to achieve their aims by reaching a wider audience of readers, professionals and policymakers. Through aggregating evaluations on preprints, Sciety makes it easy for users to find articles that matter to them and contribute to what they want to achieve, including the ability to save, recommend and curate these articles.

Our groups’ page will give you further insight into how they work; how you can follow groups, as well as save and curate articles. If you are already part of a group evaluating preprints in any form and would like to set up on Sciety, why not get in touch with us now?

Image by aatlas from Pixabay

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