London, February 11, 2025 (Globe Newswire) – Digital Science awarded its last Catalyst grants To two innovative teams, supporting their technological ideas aimed at protecting the integrity of research and strengthening confidence in science.
Winners will use the financing and mentoring of digital science to develop their ideas, which include improved dashboards – visualizations based on available data – to report retracted or doubtful research documents.
The winning applications of the Catalyst Grant Round of Catalyst of Digital Science announced today are:
- Postpub – Directed by Dr Achal Agrawal (Founder), with Dr Moumitita Koley (Senior research analyst, DST-Center for Policy Research, and researcher, Rori, United Kingdom)
- VIRUS (Visualization of irregular research under control) – directed by Dr Lonni Besançon, with Dr Fabrice Frank
Postpub – Based in India
This team aims to approach a lack of awareness of the misconduct of research as well as a lack of responsibility for those engaged there. Postpub, which has already established its own retraction dashboard, will be based on digital scientific data to extend the dashboard. The dashboard will visualize gaps in the data sharing practices of researchers through countries and journals, and the response times of the newspapers when integrity problems are reported and signal an irregular activity. Postpub also aims to create a notification system to alert the parties responsible for these irregularities and to follow the measures taken, helping to improve responsibility for research.
VIRUS – based in Sweden
This team is developing a real -time visualization system and a dashboard intended to be used by scientific “detectives”, as well as teams for the search for publishers, editorial teams in journals and universities. The system will make registers of articles that have been reported as questionable, as well as their impact on several learned measures – such as quotes, altmetry and political attention – to better understand the potentially harmful impact. The team aims to move away from the subsets of smaller and organized papers for the use of much larger databases, such as Digital Science DimensionsThe most complete database in the world of related research information.
Postpub Dr Achal Agrawal said: “We are honored to receive the subsidy from the Catalyst of Digital Science, allowing us to take the work of research integrity that we started at the next stage of development. Thanks to our work, we hope to encourage researchers, universities and publishers to do the right thing and encourage greater responsibility for the integrity of research. In the long term, we hope that our work will help reduce professional research faults and increase transparency with regard to actions taken by various stakeholders. »»
Virus Dr Lonni Besançon said: “We are both happy and honored to receive this subsidy from Catalyst of Digital Science in what we hope to be a successful company coordinated with research and the detective of the vigor of legal medicine. We believe that our system has a particularly important role to play in visually assessing and communicating the impact of questionable articles which are still mentioned or used in political documents or clinical directives. We hope that the virus will facilitate the prioritization of investigations and editorial decisions and will help provide faster and more effective decontamination of scientific literature. In the end, we plan that this work will be the first of a long collaboration with digital science and its incredible team. »»
CEO of digital sciences Dr Daniel Hook said: “I congratulate our new winners of the subsidy of the catalyst for digital sciences. Each of this year’s winners addressed a key question of research integrity from an innovative angle and focusing on practical solutions that have the potential to protect research and strengthen people’s confidence. I would also like to thank Dr. Leslie McIntosh, an anterior winner of the catalyst and vice-president of research on digital science, for having worked with our team of catalysts, led by Steve Scott, to provoke this subsidy of catalyst focused on ‘integrity. We can’t wait to supervise the successful teams to make the most of the catalyst grant and to bring their ideas to a wider audience. »»
Steve ScottDirector of portfolio development at Digital Science, said: “We were impressed by the excellence of this year’s entries in the subsidy of the catalyst for digital sciences. Our objective of this year on the integrity of research shows our commitment to solving some of the biggest problems with which the research ecosystem is faced today. The innovative solutions presented by our winning teams show a great promise, and we are delighted to see where they will go from here. »»
About Catalyst Grant
THE Digital science catalyst grant is an international initiative to support innovation in new software tools and technologies to advance research and create significant changes.
The program supports and invests in ideas at an early stage in the new use of technology, with a reward of up to £ 25,000 for the most promising ideas that facilitate research and strengthen its impact on society.
Now in its 14th year, the subsidy of the catalyst is granted to individuals or innovative startups, without the need for a commercial or complete development plan. Several grant winners in the previous catalyst have developed important products and solutions within digital science itself.
The integrity of the research was at the center of the subsidy of the catalyst of the digital sciences for 2024.
On digital science
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