Awards for Innovation in Publishing. In this series of posts leading up to the Awards ceremony we meet our four finalists and get to know a bit more about them.
First question has to be: Tell us about your company
Ripeta was founded by a team of three science-related experts who joined forces whilst working at Washington University in St. Louis. Leslie, Anthony and Cynthia, like many of their colleagues, were increasingly burdened with the task of improving science without having the resources to do so. They found that much of the curated data they produced at a data center were used but was not cited.
They quickly became frustrated and saw the need for a tool and practices to remedy the situation, and the idea for Ripeta was born. The Ripeta software was developed to assess, design, and disseminate practices and measures to improve the reproducibility of science with minimal burden on scientists, starting with the biomedical sciences. In 2017, Ripeta launched its first alpha product.
Main features and functions of Ripeta
Ripeta is designed for publishers, funders, and researchers. We provide a suite of tools and services to rapidly screen and assess manuscripts for the proper reporting of scientific method components. These tools leverage sophisticated machine-learning and natural language processing algorithms to extract key reproducibility elements from research articles. This, in turn, shortens and improves the publication process while making the methods easily discoverable for future reuse.
Ripeta Software: Our software is built on a reproducibility framework that includes over 100 unique variables grouped into five categories highlighting important scientific elements and creating a report:
- Study Overview
- Data Collection
- Analytics
- Software and Code
- Supporting Material (new)
This report is generated in seconds providing immediate feedback.
Portfolio Analysis: While many publishers have adopted checklists to evaluate reproducibility reporting criteria, the standard practice is for editors or reviewers to manually assess document adherence to guidelines. This review process is neither quick nor consistent. Ripeta offers a critical addition to the scientific publishing pipeline while significantly reducing the time to review and assess manuscripts. We look across a group of articles based on your criteria and provide an overview, comparisons, and suggested improvements. Do you want to know how your journal or organization is performing overall? Want to know the reporting practices of your grantees? These reports provide insights into reproducibility practices.
Tell us about the team
Dr. Leslie McIntosh, PhD is the founder and CEO. She has led multi-million dollar projects building software and services for data sharing and reuse. Leslie has a focus on assessing and improving the full research cycle and making the research process reproducible.
Cynthia R. Hudson Vitale, MLIS is the Chief Information Scientist. She has worked with faculty on projects to facilitate data sharing and interoperability while meeting faculty research data needs throughout the research life-cycle. Her current research seeks to improve research reproducibility, addressing both technical and cultural barriers.
In what
ways do you think Ripeta demonstrates innovation?
Research reproducibility is increasingly important in the scholarly communication world, yet researchers, publishers, and funders do not have a streamlined method for assessing the quality and completeness of the scientific research.
Ripeta aims to make better
science easier by identifying and highlighting the important parts of research
that should be transparently presented in a manuscript and other
materials. By detecting and predicting
reproducibility in scientific research we provide a “credit report” for
scientific publications. Our aim is to improve science and ensure resources are
well spent, and we offer a pre peer-review to a paper and report
post-publication.
The
Ripeta solution is unique because we have identified the components across
scientific fields necessary to responsibly report a scientific process. We are
using machine learning and natural language processing to programmatically
extract these components from scientific manuscripts and present them in a
user-friendly report.
Ripeta helps save
time, money, and improve reputations.
For publishers,
Ripeta offers a quick assessment of a submitted manuscript. It’s hard to find
reviewers and the reviewers are experts in specific areas. Ripeta allows a
rapid check of important elements that should be in the manuscript and presents
a report for editors and reviewers. This is measured in time to complete a
pre-review.
For researchers,
Ripeta offers a means to improve the manuscript. By rapidly reviewing the
manuscript, the report will highlight which elements are missing and which
elements have been found in a machine-readable manner. This allows researchers
the opportunity to improve their manuscript before submission. This is measured
through Ripeta report completeness from first to final submission.
What are your plans for the future?
The
Ripeta go-to-market strategy is focused on developing tools for a
subscription-model compatible with the needs of publishers and funders where
users can assess a single publication. Subscribers will be charged a fee per
report with an optional Ripeta software enterprise edition for robust analytics
and bulk manuscript evaluation. We are currently engaging and conducting pilots
with multiple publishers, universities, and researchers.
Our
long-term goals include developing a suite of tools across the broad spectrum
of sciences to understand and measure the key standards and limitations for
scientific reproducibility across the research lifecycle and enable an
automated approach to their assessment and dissemination.
- Enable researchers to upload a single manuscript at a time at no charge;
- Work with Pre-print services (e.g., bioRxiv), who could charge to have a ripetaReport linked to the pre-print; and,
- Work with large research and development firms, who would purchase enterprise installations for private hosting.
twitter: https://twitter.com/ripeta1
See the ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing Finalists lightning sessions at our Annual Conference on 11-13 September, where the winners will be announced.
The ALPSP Awards for Innovation in Publishing 2019 are sponsored by MPS Ltd.
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