If you’ve got been at MIT lengthy sufficient, you’ve got in all probability heard grumbles about peer-reviewed journals being gradual or uncooperative. But these issues are trivial in comparison with the challenges confronted by researchers in different elements of the world.
Researchers in growing nations should sift by lists of lesser-known worldwide journals, every of which has vastly completely different insurance policies and assessment practices. That makes articles extra prone to be bounced, which may gradual publishing instances dramatically as they travel with editors. Early-stage researchers, particularly, usually tend to have their work returned for corrections or fall sufferer to predatory journals solely in accumulating publication charges.
On the opposite facet of the aisle, many worldwide journals are doing their greatest to publish high quality articles regardless of restricted sources.
PoolText performs matchmaker for each teams. The firm, co-founded by Ali Furkan Akin MBA ’16, has created a platform for researchers to add manuscripts and obtain invites to submit their work from peer-reviewed journals all over the world.
PoolText types papers and journals by matter and makes use of synthetic intelligence to supply authors with suggestions on manuscript readability, reference accuracy, and timeliness, serving to researchers appropriate points earlier than submission and streamlining the journal assessment course of.
“We try to meet the needs of researchers, especially in their early years,” Akin explains. “We remove the friction for them to get articles published in the best journals possible.”
PoolText at the moment assists 1000’s of researchers in over 100 nations. It primarily works with medical, well being science, and dental journals, although its AI instruments can be utilized to guage analysis papers on any matter.
“Due to the nature of our services, we mostly help researchers in developing countries, but we have a lot of users from the US and Europe,” says Akin. “As for the journals, we are focusing on journals that want to increase their impact and receive more manuscripts from all over the world. We like to think that we support improvements in research results worldwide.”
Tapping into MIT’s sources
When Akin got here to MIT as a Sloan Fellow in 2015, he had no plans to start out a enterprise.
“At MIT, I had the opportunity to meet people from so many different countries and career backgrounds,” Akin recalled. “It broadened my horizons and sparked an interest in entrepreneurship just by being exposed to so many successful entrepreneurs.”
After graduating, he took a job at Sprint, however Akin’s newfound ardour for entrepreneurship stored him linked to MIT. He began mentoring startup founders at MIT and in his house nation of Turkey, one thing he nonetheless does.
During a kind of mentorship periods with a buddy and entrepreneur in Turkey, he obtained the concept for a platform to assist researchers and editors of scientific journals join with one another. The concept led to the primary model of PoolText in 2017. At the top of that yr, Akin returned to MIT to take part in entrepreneurial packages throughout its interval of unbiased exercise. He additionally took entrepreneurship lessons as an alumnus, the place he developed the concept for PoolText with classmates.
“I took advantage of all the benefits that MIT offers to alumni,” says Akin, who considers PoolText an MIT spin-out. “In those classes after graduation, I used PoolText as a case study.”
Later, Akin started assembly with mentors commonly by MIT’s Venture Mentoring Service, which he continues to do at present.
“The mentors have really helped in so many ways,” says Akin. “We started the business and as an early stage startup with limited resources, VMS provides a really good support system. I recommend it to any alumnus who is thinking about starting a business.”
Support worldwide analysis
Akin began constructing machine studying instruments to present researchers suggestions on their manuscripts.
“It helps them save a lot of time, because even minor structural errors can cause weeks of loss because communicating with the journals takes a lot of time,” says Akin.
PoolText quickly grew right into a platform for journal editors as effectively, with scores on issues like readability and reference high quality to hurry up assessment.
Today, researchers can add their manuscripts to PoolText and obtain free invites from journals. PoolText affords free and paid instruments to assist researchers choose journals.
Akin notes that in growing nations, the variety of new journals and analysis papers is rising sooner than in locations just like the US. He says PoolText’s companies are particularly helpful for newer journals trying to entice extra researchers.
“A new journal with credible editorial staff still can’t get many high-quality manuscripts because they aren’t well known,” says Akin. “By using our platform, they can get manuscripts from the US, Asia, the Middle East, Europe and around the world. It enables them to improve their impact faster than would otherwise be possible.”
PoolText not too long ago began working extra straight with universities, giving affiliated researchers entry to the platform and likewise giving universities perception into how effectively they prepare their researchers to publish their work.
“We generate data from affiliated researchers’ manuscripts prior to submission and create dashboards for college boards that compare the structural quality of the manuscripts written in each department. Structural completeness of the manuscripts falls short in some departments, while citation quality falls short in others, and every university has some form of training on manuscript submissions, so we enable them to focus their training in the right places,” says Akin .
Ultimately, Akin sees PoolText’s instruments as a strategy to enhance analysis all over the world.
“We enable all parties to focus their efforts on the right things,” says Akin. “Our tools can help researchers spend more time researching and journal editors can focus more on improving their content. For university boards, the data we provide improves the quality of their institution’s research results.”
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Source: information.mit.edu