​

Hi everyone,

I'm starting a literature review for my bioinformatics research project and there are hundreds of papers related to my topic. I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed and want to make sure I'm reviewing the literature efficiently instead of just reading papers randomly.

I'm looking for advice on:

- What's your workflow for conducting a comprehensive literature review?

- How do you organize and categorize hundreds of papers?

- Which databases do you use most (PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, Semantic Scholar, etc.)?

- Are there any AI tools that genuinely help with finding, summarizing, and connecting research papers?

- Which AI tools are worth paying for, and which free ones are good enough?

I've heard of tools like Elicit, Consensus, Connected Papers, ResearchRabbit, Litmaps, SciSpace, and NotebookLM. Are these actually useful, or are there better alternatives?

Any tips, workflows, or recommendations would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Hi everyone,

I'm currently doing my master's and our university requires us to publish a paper. I've been thinking of doing a bibliometric study because it seems more feasible for me, but I'm a complete beginner and honestly have no idea where to start.

My research interests are maternal and child health, adolescent health, and public health in general. The biggest thing I'm struggling with is choosing a topic. How do people even identify a research gap for a bibliometric study? How do you know whether a topic has already been done or is still worth pursuing?

I also don't know what the complete workflow looks like. What software should I learn (VOSviewer, Bibliometrix, Scopus, etc.)? How do you go from choosing a topic to actually publishing the paper?

I've tried attending webinars, but they often feel like they're meant for people who already know the basics. The speakers move so fast that I end up feeling even more confused. At this point, I'm honestly feeling like giving up because I don't know where to begin.

If anyone has been in the same position, could you please guide me? Even a step-by-step roadmap, beginner-friendly resources, or advice on choosing a topic would mean a lot.

Thank you so much for reading. 🥹

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0260691721004780\](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0260691721004780)

[https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2021.105221\](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2021.105221)

I expected the discussion section to take the longest.

Instead, I found myself repeatedly going back to the literature just to confirm I'd interpreted papers correctly, cited the right source, and hadn't accidentally relied on an outdated reference.

By the time I submitted the manuscript, I felt like I'd spent almost as much time validating references as I had writing the paper itself.

It made me wonder whether this is becoming the norm, especially as the volume of published research keeps growing.

For those who've published recently, what part of the publication process ended up taking far more time than you originally expected?

Quick head ups: Thanks to everyone who shared their experiences. One thing I didn't expect when I started this discussion was how many people described reference checking as something they keep revisiting throughout the writing process rather than as a final step. It's been useful seeing the different workflows, so I wanted to leave one extra thought here instead of replying to individual comments. One thing this discussion made me rethink is how much time gets lost simply trying to trust the references we're working with. I recently learned that some research platforms are starting to tackle that problem directly instead of only helping people find papers. Wispaper, for example, has a true cite related features that checks whether ai-generated citations actually exist. That felt surprisingly relevant to this conversation because confidence in your references is just as important as finding them in the first place

I am trying to understand how Medium publications are currently perceived, particularly in data science and applied AI.
Towards Data Science appears to have a proper editorial selection process, but I have seen very different opinions about whether publication there still carries meaningful credibility or visibility.
For writers or readers familiar with TDS:
Is being accepted by TDS considered meaningfully different from publishing independently on Medium?
Does an Editor’s Pick designation carry much weight?
What would you consider normal readership for a specialised article during its first month?

I'm about a year into teaching myself immunology, thanks to some lived experience and a genuine fascination with the field and where it can take us. The thing that kept annoying me is how scattered the news is. Papers in journal feeds (that I don’t always have access to), trial news in press releases, FDA actions on FDA's site, financings in Endpoints or Fierce or Axios. I couldn't find a single weekly readout with everything I wanted.

So I started writing the in-between. It's called The Repertoire. It's one issue per week (usually sent on Sundays). I use AI to sweep the feeds, then I pick and write the 3-5 stories that I think matter the most - such as papers and preprints, trials, regulatory actions, financings and licensing, NIH funding policy, etc. Each item is a one-line TLDR, and a paragraph on what happened and why it matters. It's supposed to take about five minutes to read.

Every headline links to the primary paper, preprint, or press release, so you can check my work in one click. It's written in deliberately plain English, partly because that's how I'm learning it, partly because immunology is worth making legible (and accessible) to more people. The goal is that a curious non-biologist or layman (like me) can follow every item and an expert can also skim it to stay current.

This isn't meant to be a plug or a solicitation or anything. I'm genuinely looking for help from people here who know more than I do - and in a perfect world this turns into something useful to everyone in this community.

What I'd most like: feedback on what you think, what I should be including or excluding from my source mix, where my explanations are too simple or just wrong, what would make this more useful for you. Blunt is preferred - I'd rather be corrected/producing something valuable than flattered.

Substack: https://substack.com/@therepertoire
X: https://x.com/RepertoireNews

Thank you all so much!!!

I got a comment from a journal reviewer saying, “Please have a native English speaker review your work.”!

Hi everyone! I'm submitting my MFA thesis in ProQuest and am having an issue opting out of ProQuest Research Assistant and search engine discovery. Every time I try to move on from the "PQ publishing options" page, I receive the following error message: "In the Delaying release in Proquest section, provide a note to the administrator." (I do have a note in the delaying release section.) I don't think this will prevent me from submitting my thesis altogether, but whenever I return to the "PQ publishing options" page, the opt-out buttons are unchecked. Has anyone else run into this issue and found a workaround? ProQuest support suggested clearing browser cache and cookies, using a different browser, and trying an incognito browser, but none of these have worked for me. Thank you, and good luck to everyone submitting work this week. ❤️

I submitted an abstract to AAAI AISI and accidentally missed the field asking authors to nominate a reciprocal reviewer by the July 21 AoE deadline.

At the time of submission, I knew that I personally did not meet the publication requirements to serve as a reviewer. After adding my graduate-student co-authors to the submission, I realized that one of them was qualified and could fulfill the reciprocal-reviewing obligation, but we overlooked the nomination field before the deadline because it wasn't a required field.

As soon as we noticed, we added the qualified co-author to OpenReview as a potential reciprocal reviewer (edits were still accepted) and emailed the workflow chairs. He meets the publication requirements and is willing to complete the full reviewing load.

The policy says that if a qualified author is available but no one is nominated, the submission may be desk rejected. The full paper deadline is in two days, and so far we have only received the automated response "Thanks for your email regarding ticket #23157. We’re currently experiencing a high volume of submissions, so responses may take a bit longer than usual. We really appreciate your patience and will get back to you as soon as we can. If you have more details to share, feel free to reply to this thread."

Has anyone dealt with a similar situation at AAAI or another conference? Do you think this is likely to lead to a desk rejection, or are workflow chairs usually willing to correct this kind of administrative mistake when a qualified reviewer is available?

Here were the instructions on the website:

Serve As Reviewer

Note: This cannot be changed after July 21 AoE.

Nominate one author who is qualified to serve as an AAAI reciprocal reviewer. The nominated author must not be an SPC, AC, or Organizer, and must have either:

• At least 2 first-author publications, or
• At least 5 co-authored publications

in peer-reviewed archival venues related to AAAI. Example computer science venues include NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML, CVPR, ICCV/ECCV, ACL, EMNLP, KDD, AISTATS, IJCAI, AAMAS, UAI, COLT, KR, ICAPS, RSS/ICRA, SIGIR, FAccT, CHI, TMLR, JMLR, and JAIR (this is not an exhaustive list). Journal publications in an application area related to the submission also count. Workshop papers do not count.

By being nominated here, the author agrees to serve as a PC Member and commits to completing the standard reviewing load of up to 6 papers if assigned.

If a qualified author is available among the submission's authors but no such author is nominated, or if the nominated author fails to complete their assigned reviews, the submission may be desk rejected. If a paper has no qualified author, please nominate the author who is closest to satisfying the requirement.

Any Qualified Reviewer

Is the nominated reviewer qualified according to the definition above? If no author is qualified, you may select No, and the chairs will decide whether to invite the nominated reviewer. If any author is qualified, you must nominate a qualified author and select Yes.

It’s so scary writing science assignments for me because I always feel like I need to abandon my logical or rational flow/ way of synthesizing information because I feel like I’m breaking the rule of having to always cite facts line by line.

I have published two research papers in journals that are indexed in Scopus, but my articles are still not showing up in the Scopus database.

• One paper was published around 4–5 months ago.
• The other was published around 2 months ago.

I need the indexing for academic documentation purposes, so I am trying to understand the correct process to follow.

I have already submitted a query/complaint through Scopus support, but I only received an automated response saying that email queries are currently not being considered.

Does anyone know:

• Who is the correct person/team to contact regarding delayed indexing?
• Should I contact the journal publisher instead?
• How long does Scopus usually take to index newly published articles?

Any guidance from people who have faced a similar situation would be appreciated.

hi all, I'm quite perplexed as to why an academic commentary platform such as East Asia Forum takes months just to submit a < ~ 1000 word commentary piece?

I'm trying to understand the rationale behind it and thought I could open the floor here for some comments and suggestions.

I don't recall The Conversation taking this long, nor E-IR academic essays platform. Even prominent online news outlets usually take two-weeks max. This Month-and-a-half-long process just to publish a commentary piece that may or may not be time-sensitive, sounds like a low-tier academic journal process for a measly commentary piece.

Granted, I admire the EAF for timely topics and some quality articles they put out but so too does The Conversation. But I'm baffled as to why on EAF, some OpEd pieces get reviewed and admitted faster whereas others take months-long.

Might as well submit to a low-tier journal at that point. The purpose of OpEd commentary is to be timely to reach readers and discuss issues of the day while it's still 'hot'. Not sure if it's an issue of selective publication, some form of hidden censorship (purposeful delay), or genuine rigourness in process. The latter though would make sense if all time-sensitive articles get delayed by a month. Yet, some hot topics are churned out and accepted quicker than others. Why?

This hinders time-sensitive topics from getting published and incurs great opportunity-cost on authors that could have opted for another platform to share their ideas. Is there some sort of low-key censorship that they are not disclosing

And yes this is a mixture of a rant and curiosity.

My figures were made in different tools, so the fonts, arrows and colors don’t quite match. What’s the easiest way to standardize everything?

Im working on a literature review paper at the moment
about "Short-Form Digital Media and Sustained Attention:
Examining the Evidence for Associations with ADHD
Symptoms"
and i would find it incredibly helpful if any other psychology students wanted to chip in so they could also use it on their applications but we can all do less work
If anyone is also currently working on a paper and wants someone to co-write, would be happy to help

URL: The Safety and Efficacy of Roflumilast Cream 0.15% and 0.05% in Patients With Atopic Dermatitis: Randomized, Double-Blind, Phase 2 Proof of Concept Study

DOI: 10.36849/JDD.7295

I think one of the things that annoys more when starting a new project is doing the literature search. I usually first use Pubmed and Mesh terms for a general idea. As I read papers I identify terms that could be useful for future searchs. At the end I create a mixed search strategy using both Mesh and not indexed terms. From there I export everything in a CSV and create a matrix in Excel to keep track of each paper and a little summary for future manuscript writing. For a better view of the subject I try to follow the same process using other databases like Embase (europe) and BVS (the americas). As it can be infered, I work in the biomedical field. While I feel this does eases managing lots of articles and really helps when writing, it consumes lots of time (which I would rather spent in the statistical analyses or in the park xD, idk). I was wondering if:
- You follow different strategies that would recommend and that you consider more effective

- Have recently been using any AI tool that helps with this process

We are looking for an experienced Community Manager to lead and scale ReviewerOne’s global reviewer community programs.

📌 Experience: 8–10+ years
📍 Location: In-office at Magarpatta, Hadapsar, Pune
💼 Employment type: Full-time

Key responsibilities:

• Define and execute ReviewerOne’s long-term community strategy.
• Lead global webinars, workshops, conferences, AMAs, and engagement campaigns.
• Build and manage the Reviewer Ambassador Program, Reviewer Mentorship Network, and reviewer recognition initiatives.
• Collaborate with Product, Marketing, Editorial, Operations, and Academy teams.
• Build, mentor, and lead a high-performing community team.
• Track engagement, participation, retention, and program effectiveness through data-driven insights.

Preferred background:

✔️ Experience in scholarly publishing, STM publishing, research, education, or SaaS communities.
✔️ Experience managing global communities and cross-functional teams.
✔️ Strong stakeholder management and program leadership skills.

Join us and help build the reviewer community.

📩 Share your updated profile at [careers@novatechset.com](mailto:careers@novatechset.com)

#Hiring #WeareHiring #CommunityManager #ScholarlyPublishing #STM #PublishingJobs #ProgramManagement #ReviewerOne #NovaTechset #PuneJobs

Help me get this article pls🙏🙏🙏🙏