sciNote, a free open source electronic lab notebook (ELN), has announced that it has incorporated artificial intelligence capabilities into its electronic lab notebook.
The sciNote Manuscript Writer add-on will allow researchers to generate a draft of a scientific manuscript using data stored by the user on its platform and relevant references. The announced add-on has the ability to simplify the process of preparing scientific manuscripts by using the technological advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence.
'At this point, we are using it to create the draft of a scientific paper. This is the first electronic lab notebook to use AI in this way' commented Dr Klemen Zupancic, CEO of sciNote.
'The main benefit is saving time for researchers. Writing a scientific paper is not only tedious but it is also time-consuming. According to our research, researchers can spend on average 72 hours writing a scientific paper and a lot of that time is just putting the data together and re-formatting that data. That is one area where we feel that AI can do a really good job' added Zupancic.
Recognising the importance of timely publication of scientific findings by the global scientific community, the add-on aims to significantly reduce the time taken to prepare initial content. By drawing upon data contained within the ELN and references that are accessible in open access journals, to provide a structured draft for the author to then edit and develop further.
Klemen Zupancic, PhD, CEO of sciNote LLC said: ‘While the competition within the scientific community to publish articles in high-ranking journals is constantly on the rise, it is also vital that valuable research data are published, and therefore accessible, at the earliest possible time. sciNote’s ELN is already used by over 20,000 scientists to store and manage scientific data. The announcement of this new AI add-on has the potential to transform the article writing process and empower these scientists while establishing sciNote as a leader in the industry.’
Speaking with Scientific Computing World Zupancic explained that the impetus to add these new AI-based capabilities to the sciNote ELN came from experience with trying to create scientific papers in an increasingly competitive environment.
‘We started as researchers, the company owners and company founders are all researchers with ample experience in writing scientific papers so we knew that this process could be improved. Then there was a couple of news stories in the past few years where people had made hoaxes by writing fake scientific papers using software and that sort of thing’ said Zupancic.
‘This led us to the realisation that science and scientific publications use language that is structured sufficiently for the software to be able to grasp it. This is where we found that advances in AI have done amazing work’ Zupancic continued.
‘It is hard to get AI to write a poem but when the text that it needs to output is very well defined and ‘standardised’ then the job for AI is much easier. That was one of the things that drove us to explore the use of AI for this particular challenge’ Zupancic concluded.
sciNote LLC is now inviting scientists interested in the Manuscript Writer add-on to visit the website, create an account in sciNote and provide feedback, to optimize AI capability and overall user experience.
Commenting on this Zupancic said: ‘We encourage the global scientific community to get involved to help evaluate this cutting-edge technology and develop the software further.’
