All in One View
Content from Intro to SciX and FAIR principles
Last updated on 2026-09-25 | Edit this page
Overview
Questions
- What is Open Science?
- What is FAIR?
- What do open science and FAIR mean to me?
Objectives
- Define Open Science.
- Define FAIR principles and explain what each component (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) means in the context of scientific data.
- Explain how SciX supports making research artifacts Findable and Accessible
- Identify your role with respect to open science and FAIR practices at your institution
Open Science
Open science has become a buzz word today. We are all supposed to be in favor of open science.
Define Open Science
What comes to mind when you hear “open science”? How would you define open science?
Discuss with a friend. Note any areas of disagreement or any difficulties in defining the concept.
NASA proposes that:
“Open science is a collaborative culture enabled by technology that empowers the open sharing of data, information, and knowledge within the scientific community and the wider public to accelerate scientific research and understanding.” – NASA Open Science
Furthermore, the NASA Open Science site states:
- “Data, tools, software, documentation, and publications should be available to all (FAIR)”
- “Scientific processes and results should be open such that they are reproducible by members of the community”
- “Processes and participants should welcome participation and collaboration by other researchers and organizations”
NASA also offers online training. FAIR here and in this lesson stands for Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable.
UNESCO has a similar definition.
“Open science is a set of principles and practices that aim to make scientific research from all fields accessible to everyone for the benefits of scientists and society as a whole. Open science is about making sure not only that scientific knowledge is accessible but also that the production of that knowledge itself is inclusive, equitable and sustainable.”
Furthermore the introduction to UNESCO’s recommendations for open science states that Open Science:
- “increases scientific collaborations and sharing of information for the benefits of science and society”;
- “makes multilingual scientific knowledge openly available, accessible and reusable for everyone”; and
- “opens the processes of scientific knowledge creation, evaluation and communication to societal actors beyond the traditional scientific community”.
Open Science in the Real World
Identify an open science practice that does or could benefit your community and the associated benefit(s).
Identify either one unintended consequence of open science practices in your community or one aspect of open science practice that makes members of your community uncomfortable.
Discuss your experiences with a friend. Brainstorm solutions to the unintended consequences or the areas of reluctance.
The Science Explorer (SciX) is a NASA-funded digital library that is designed to promote open science practices and support research broadly in the science fields in which NASA is interested.
FAIR Principles
The NASA definition calls for FAIR “data, tools, software, documentation, and publications.” Originally defined in a highly technical manner for data, we now apply FAIR to most research artifacts.
Define FAIR
What comes to mind when you hear “FAIR”? How would you identify or measure whether an item was FAIR?
Discuss with a friend. Note any areas of disagreement or any difficulties in defining the concept.
Again, FAIR stands for Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable.
Scientific credibility is built on transparency, which includes reproducibility. For one group of scientists to reproduce the results of another, those results must be findable and accessible. Of course, findable and accessible does not automatically equal reproducible but they are the first steps.
Traditionally, data supporting scientific research have been difficult to find in many fields. Papers often describe data collection and methods, but rarely include the actual data alongside the manuscript. As articles moved online, publishers were still not typically equipped to store and distribute datasets.
In response, standards were needed to guide data infrastructure. Consequently, participants at a 2014 Lorentz Center workshop developed the FAIR Principles for Scientific Data, which were first published by Wilkinson et al. in 2016 (DOI: 10.1038/sdata.2016.18 SciX bibcode: 2016NatSD…360018W/abstract). Each term has been expanded into guiding principles for developing resource platforms like SciX.
Findable Principles
The focus is on making data easy to locate by both humans and computers. This is achieved by creating machine-readable metadata that is essential for automated discovery:
- F1: Data and metadata are assigned a globally unique and persistent identifier.
- F2: Data are described with rich metadata (as defined further in R1).
- F3: Metadata clearly and explicitly include the identifier of the data they describe.
- F4: Data and metadata are registered or indexed in a searchable resource.
As fundamentally an indexing service, the data and metadata SciX provides are highly searchable. (F4)
SciX assigns each item a unique, persistent identifier, a bibcode that not only retrieves the article but also connects related papers via citations. When data, software, or other materials are available, they are either linked as external resources or indexed with their own identifiers internally. For interoperability, SciX also retains and displays the unique identifiers that other systems have assigned the same work. (F1)
SciX enriches the records it maintains with metadata from multiple sources, including information it develops. For instance, to make papers more findable, SciX is testing assigning keywords from the Unified Astronomy Thesaurus (UAT) to all papers in its astronomy collection. Doing so provides a consistent set of keywords across time and journals. (F2)
Accessible Principles
These principles help users understand how to retrieve data:
-
A1: Data and metadata are retrievable by their
identifier using a standardised communications protocol.
- A1.1: The protocol is open, free, and universally implementable.
- A1.2: The protocol supports authentication and authorisation, where necessary.
- A2: Metadata remain accessible even when the data are no longer available.
SciX provides a free API for standardized, programmatic retrieval of records. API users, however, must register for a token. (A1)
Applying accessibly to papers and research artifacts more broadly, SciX always links to the publisher’s version of record, even if it has a paywall. It also matches the available open access versions providing the user with multiple options. In addition, it links to data, software, and proposals to help the user understand how the reported results were achieved, reproduce them or reuse them as appropriate.
Interoperable Principles
Data often needs to be integrated with other data, used in workflows, or transformed for processing:
- I1: Data and metadata use a formal, accessible, shared, and broadly applicable language for knowledge representation.
- I2: Data and metadata use vocabularies that follow FAIR principles.
- I3: Data and metadata include qualified references to other data and metadata.
SciX uses the UAT as its preferred vocabulary for describing all research artifacts in the space sciences in part because of its community acceptance and in part because the UAT is itself a FAIR vocabulary. (I2)
When an article cites supporting references, SciX includes the citation information as part of the metadata. SciX maintains cross-references to multiple other systems. (I3)
Reusable Principles
The goal is to ensure data can be reused in various contexts:
-
R1: Data and metadata are richly described with a
variety of accurate and relevant attributes.
- R1.1: Data and metadata are released with a clear and accessible data usage license.
- R1.2: Data and metadata are associated with detailed provenance.
- R1.3: Data and metadata meet domain-relevant community standards.
SciX follows established publication and community standards and associates metadata with its provenance to ensure that data and other research artifacts are reusable in the appropriate context. (R1)
When SciX is successful in connecting researchers with existing datasets and software that is relevant to their projects, it is encouraging the re-use of scientific assets, which increases the return on investment for funders and increases the citations and recognition of the initial work.
Although SciX exemplifies all four FAIR principles, its primary focus is on being a discovery platform–making data Findable.
We have spent some time defining both open science and FAIR. How do they relate?
Open Science vs. FAIR
Are open science and FAIR the same? Is FAIR sufficient for open science? Is FAIR necessary for open science?
Discuss with a friend.
As part of its open science practice, SciX commits to:
- developing open source code
- releasing open source models
- publishing its work open access
Reflection and Discussion
- How does SciX make research more discoverable?
- In what ways do open science and FAIR principles benefit your community and society?
- Do you think investing in open science or FAIR best practices is worthwhile for your program?
- What do you see as your role in the growing open science ecosystem?
Please share your thoughts with a friend
Bonus Challenge
If you have not already taken NASA Open Science Essentials or NASA Open Science 101, browse the static version for some additional thought-provoking topics. You could also take the online version, but it is not always offered.
- Open science is a collaborative culture that shares research artifacts and knowledge to accelerate scientific knowledge development.
- The FAIR principles provide a framework for making scientific artifacts, especially data, more discoverable and usable.
- SciX makes data Findable by assigning unique, persistent identifiers and indexing rich metadata.
- SciX ensures Accessibility through standardized retrieval protocols and a robust API.
Content from Basic Searches in SciX
Last updated on 2026-09-25 | Edit this page
Overview
Questions
- How do you find an article by a specific author?
- How do you find articles about a specific topic?
- What other types of resources can you discover besides articles?
Objectives
- Execute a basic author search
- Execute a basic keyword search
- Refine a search using facets
- Identify useful metadata and resources through the abstract view
- Follow links from the abstract page to access resources such as the open access version of the article, related software, and associated datasets
Basic Searches in SciX
Once you’ve accessed the SciX main page, you’re ready to explore its search capabilities. In this episode, we’ll cover both author and keyword searches, then show you how to refine your results.
Setting Up Your Environment
When you navigate to SciX, ensure you can see the homepage. The SciX address is scixplorer.org
Selecting Your Discipline
On your first visit, select your preferred discipline from the dropdown menu in the upper left.
Note: This step customizes your search tools but does not limit your overall search.
Quick Help & Navigation
SciX offers a help carousel on the main search page. Click the left/right arrows to view introductory resources, including a quick start guide and search examples.
When you visit a page for the first time, SciX offers a quick tour of the page’s features. You can quit that at any time by clicking the x in the upper right of the current tour dialog box. At any time, you can restart the tour by clicking the blue Tour button in the upper right of the SciX header. Tours are available on the main search page, the results listing, and abstract view.
For more detailed assistance, click the “Help” button in the upper right.
Starting a Search
As an open science search engine, SciX is primarily concerned with ensuring that literature, data, and software are findable or discoverable. So, let’s find some relevant papers. Author searches are among the most common performed in SciX.
Author Search
If you select author from either the quick fields or the dropdown menu, SciX will add the field to the search bar.
- In the search field, select author from the quick fields or dropdown.
- Type
"shoemaker"(for example, for Gene Shoemaker) and click the blue magnifying glass.
author:"shoemaker" returned 2,560 results when this
example was run as you can see in the upper left; because SciX adds new
material on daily and weekly cycles you may see a different count.
The results are sorted by relevance and are in descending order. You can change the sorting criterion by using the dropdown menu to select: date, author count, citation count, entry date, first author, normalized citation count, or read count. Click the button next to the dropdown menu to switch between descending and ascending order.
For each article returned, you see the title, author list, date of publication, journal, and citation count. Looking at the three icons on the right, you can tell whether SciX links to the full-text, references or citations, and data.
As an open science digital library, SciX is also concerned with ensuring you can access the papers, data, and software that you want.
Looking at the list of results as a whole, I see some interesting articles with an author named “Shoemaker” but perhaps not immediately, Gene Shoemaker, planetary scientist. The author box on the left allows me to narrow my results. It lists variants of the name “Shoemaker” at the top followed by the names of co-authors.
The most common variants and co-authors are listed first.
Clicking a name variant opens additional options:
- Limit to preferred name(s), showing only papers by that variant
- Exclude unlikely variants to remove unrelated results
This helps narrow your results to the specific individual you’re interested in.
Refine by Institutional Affiliation
You can further narrow your search results using the Institutions facet.
For example, if your target author worked at Lowell Observatory, you can:
- Limit to papers with authors from that institution
- Exclude results from other institutions
This is especially useful when multiple authors share similar names but work at different institutions.
Refine by Date
You can also adjust the date range of your results using the slider in the left sidebar.
- Drag the endpoints of the slider to limit results by year
- Click the expand icon (four arrows) to see a larger or more precise timeline
Use this if you’re researching a specific publication window or want to filter out older or newer results.
Keyword Search
Return to the SciX main search page. Use the “all search terms” dropdown menu to start a keyword search for ‘crater.’
keyword:"crater" returned 8,901 results when this
example was run as you can see in the upper left; because SciX adds new
material on daily and weekly cycles you may see a different count.
Understanding SciX Synonym Expansion
SciX automatically expands keyword searches with discipline-specific
synonyms, related terms, and even common misspellings or alternate
forms. For example, a search for crater might automatically
include terms like:
- craters, cratering, cratered
- craterlets, craterlike, crateris
- craterform, subcrater, craterization
- krater, cratori, noncrater, etc.
This expansion improves discoverability across disciplines that might use different terminology for the same concept.
If you only want the exact term you type (no
expansion), add an equals sign: =keyword:"crater".
This exact-match feature is helpful when you’re targeting highly specific terms or avoiding irrelevant results.
Keyword Search
Return to the SciX main search page. Execute an exact keyword search for ‘crater’.
=keyword:"crater" returned 2,329 results when this
example was run as you can see in the upper left; because SciX adds new
material on daily and weekly cycles you may see a different count.
With synonym expansion disabled, fewer results are returned. However, those precise results may be just what you need.
Keyword Search
Experiment with an author or keyword search, both with and without the equal sign. What differences do you observe? Discuss your experiences with a partner.
Narrowing Results Using Keyword Facet
After running a keyword search, you can refine your results using the Keywords facet in the sidebar. Authors or publishers provided these keywords, which are listed in order of frequency within your results.
You can:
- Choose to limit to preferred keywords or exclude undesired ones
- Click the upward arrow in the lower right corner of the facet to browse the full list of keywords
- Sort keywords by frequency or alphabetically
- Search for a specific keyword or partial match
- Download keywords for use outside of SciX
This is especially useful when you’re trying to focus on a specific subtopic or filter out irrelevant results.
Powering Up Your Keyword Search
You can expand the places SciX looks for your keyword by using an abs
search. Using the abs prefix will search
- title
- keywords, provided by author or publisher
- abstract
The presence of your keyword in the abstract is a better indicator of its significance within the paper as a whole than a passing mention in the full text. This “balanced” search is the most common topical search in SciX.
Abstract Search
Return to the main menu. Use the ‘all search terms’ dropdown menu to
start an abs search for ‘crater’.
abs:"crater" returned 53,647 results when this example
was run as you can see in the upper left; because SciX adds new material
on daily and weekly cycles you may see a different count.
By searching more fields, an abs search will produce
more results than just searching the keywords field alone.
Filtering by Refereed Status
SciX allows you to filter your search results based on whether a paper is refereed (peer-reviewed) or non-refereed (everything else).
You can find this option in the Refereed facet in the sidebar. It’s useful if you’re looking only for peer-reviewed journal articles or want to ensure you see other materials like conference proceedings or technical reports.
Note: SciX considers dissertations to be refereed. Most, but not all, conference abstracts and proceedings are categorized as non-refereed.
- Refereed includes only peer-reviewed works
- Not Refereed includes the grey literature, preprints, or white papers
If you want only “Refereed” papers, you can either:
- Limit to “Refereed” papers
- Exclude “Not Refereed” items
Filtering by Publication Type
You can also filter your results by Publication Type, helping you focus on specific formats such as:
- Journal articles
- Book chapters
- Dissertations
- Conference papers
- Technical reports
- Datasets
- Software
- Proposals
Use the Publication Type facet in the sidebar to:
- Limit results to your preferred document types
- Exclude formats that aren’t relevant to your research
Within the facet, Publication Types are grouped by article (journal article, proceedings article, book chapter ….) or non-article (PhD thesis, editorial, book…)
Like the Keywords facet, clicking the upper arrow at the lower right of a long list in the Publication Type facet opens a window where you can:
- Sort keywords by types, frequency, or alphabetically
- Search for a specific type or partial match
This is particularly helpful when your search returns a mix of source types and you’re only interested in peer-reviewed articles or long-form research. It can also help you identify specialized resources like data and software.
Searching Text
You can target your search to specific parts of an article by using the corresponding field search. These are especially useful when you’re looking for a term in just one section (e.g., the title) or want to exclude it from another (e.g., the body).
Common text field searches in SciX include:
-
abstract:— abstract text only -
title:— title only -
body:— article body only -
ack:— acknowledgments only -
full:— full text of the article
in addition to our old friends
-
keyword:— author- or publisher-provided keywords -
abs:— title, abstract, and keywords
You can also use Boolean operators (AND,
OR, NOT) to combine or exclude terms.
For example:
abs:(crater AND mars) NOT body:jezeroThis finds articles that mention crater and Mars in the title, abstract, or keywords, but exclude any that mention Jezero in the body text.
Searching Acknowledgements (or Not)
Return to the SciX main search page. Construct a query that either includes or excludes text from the acknowledgments section. Share your results with a neighbor.
Exploring the Abstract View
From any list of results, click an article title of interest to open the abstract view. When you first open the abstract view, you will see in the center
- Detailed bibliographic information (title, authors, publication details, DOIs)
- Abstract
- Author- or publisher-provided keywords
Along the left side, you will see
- Links to full-text sources
- Data repositories
- Related materials, including software
SciX matches preprints to the publisher’s version of record and provides a single consolidated view of these versions.
Clicking the links on the left side for citations, references, or similar, produces the list of corresponding papers with all of their details. Those lists can be converted to search results for further investigation.
Clicking the links on the left side for metrics produces a graphical display of the citations to the paper over time. The citation data can be downloaded.
Clicking the links on the left side for export citation provides access to a variety of citation formats that can be downloaded to a file or copied to the clipboard.
Abstract View Deep Dive
Select an article and review its abstract view thoroughly. - What extra details can you find that weren’t in the results view? - What features would be most useful to you personally? Share your findings with a neighbor.
Reflection and Discussion
Take a few minutes to perform a search on a topic relevant to your work using both author and keyword searches. Then, discuss with a partner:
- What did you search for?
- Did you find relevant materials?
- What aspects of the process were straightforward or challenging?
Bonus Challenge
Try exporting a citation from one of your articles. Explore the export options and compare different formats.
- SciX enables effective author and keyword searches with powerful synonym expansion.
- Facet filters help narrow down results by author variants, institutional affiliation, and publication date.
- The abstract view provides in-depth details and links to additional resources.
Content from Literature Exploration in SciX
Last updated on 2026-09-25 | Edit this page
Overview
Questions
- What papers are useful to researchers working on (example topic)?
- How could I narrow (example topic) appropriately?
- What are the top collaborations in (example topic)?
Objectives
- Expand a search using SciX second-order operators, including
Useful()andReviews() - Explore connections among authors and papers using SciX visualizations
Literature Exploration in SciX
In this lesson, we will be focusing on different ways to explore your search results in SciX.
Setting Up Your Environment
When you go to SciX, ensure you can see the homepage.
Research Trends
First we will focus on second-order operators, which are search operations that are performed on the results of a previous query. The second order operators available in SciX are: similar, useful, reviews, and trending. Each of these second-order operators benefits from taking different things into consideration for the initial query, so we will discuss individually the three we highlight in this lesson.
To get started, let’s run an example search query on SciX. You can search for any topic you are interested in, but for my demonstration, I am going to look for papers about volcanoes.
Start by entering your terms into the main search bar and executing the search.
Next, click on the Explore button menu to see all of the options, which are categorized under two headings: Visualizations and Operations. The options under “operations” are the second order operators.
Similar
First, let’s look at the Similar() operator.
Results from this second-operator query exclude the results from the
original query, so it is best to focus on creating a narrow set of
results, or even a single relevant paper, to build off in the
Similar() search, so look through the results and select
the one to three papers most relevant for your topic. I’ll select just
the first article using the checkbox and click on Similar
under the Explore menu.
It may take a little while for the results from the second-order operator to load. In the background, Science Explorer is combining the abstracts from articles in the original selection and then ranking all abstracts in SciX based on their textual similarity to the combined abstracts. The articles returned are the most similar to those from the original selection as determined by text analysis.
Similar() acting on the most relevant paper returned by an
unfielded search for ‘volcanoes’In addition to lists of papers, Similar() accepts any
text as input. The format is
similar("any text for comparison goes here",input)For instance, I could take text from U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Volcano Notification Service report
and feed it into Similar().
similar("Yellowstone Caldera activity remains at background levels, with 61 located earthquakes in August (largest = M2.0). Deformation measurements indicate no significant uplift of the north caldera rim since January 2026 and only minor uplift of the caldera since the beginning of the year.",input)
Similar() being applied to user-provided text.to get over 68,000 results.
Michael Kurtz et
al. 2020 and the SciX
Similar() help provide examples of sophisticated
queries using Similar()
Useful
The second-order operator Useful() examines the
references included in papers identified by the original query. It
combines them into a list sorted by how often a given paper is
referenced in the original set. The documents returned are the ones
cited the most often, by the authors of the chosen papers on the topic,
which can include foundational papers, datasets, and software. This
query can also expose papers in different, but related fields, such as
papers that describe software that other researchers found useful when
exploring the topic.
Discover Useful Papers
Submit a query to determine what papers are useful to volcanologists.
Using an unfielded search for volcanoes as input, Useful()
returned over 4,000 results when this example was run, as you can see in
the upper left; because SciX adds new material on daily and weekly
cycles you may see a different count.
The top three papers shown contain significant data sets and fundamental software functions.
Reviews
The last second-order operator we will cover today is
Reviews(). This operator collects the list of papers that
cite the papers in the original query and sorts them by how frequently
each paper appears. It does not necessarily return articles from review
journals, such as Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences,
Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, or Annual Review
of Information Science and Technology. You can think of the results
from a Reviews() search as a higher-level view of your
topic or taking a step back from the details. These results will be the
most relevant papers on your topic when viewed from this broader
perspective within its field.
Discover Papers that Might Give an Overview
Submit a query to take a higher-level look at volcanoes, perhaps
place it within physical geology more broadly using
Reviews().
Using an unfielded search for volcanoes as input, Reviews()
returned over 127,000 results when this example was run as you can see
in the upper left; because SciX adds new material on daily and weekly
cycles you may see a different count.
The top three papers shown appear to be about tectonic systems.
If you were looking for a more traditional review journal covering a field with which you were less familiar, you could consult the SciX Journals database. It is available at https://scixplorer.org/journalsdb. You can type a word or two into the search bar to identify journals with titles containing those words.
If I try typing “Review”, I find a lot of choices. However, scrolling through them, I do not find a volcanology specific review journal. My best option is probably Earth Science Reviews (ESRv). If I click on the abbreviation, I will get all of the papers published in that journal.
Alternatively, if I click on the full name of the journal, I will get more technical information about the SciX holdings for this journal.
Reflection and Discussion on Second-Order Operators
Spend 2-3 minutes working with second-order operators looking for research trends in a topic of your choice. Then, discuss what you did and what you learned with a friend. Was something difficult for you? Did something surprise you?
Which operator are you most likely to use: Similar(),
Useful(), or Reviews()?
Summary of Second-Order Operators
To review, SciX second-order operators can provide deeper insights and more information about the topic you are researching. Each of them accept sets of papers, or the results of a previous query, as their input. The graphic below can help describe the similarities and differences among these operations.
For more information, we recommend
- SciX
help page on second-order queries
- Second
Order Operators in SciX
- 2020 paper by
Michael Kurtz et al on second-order operations
Connections & Collaborations
Now, let’s turn to examining SciX visualizations, and we are going to focus on the paper network and the author network because these two visualizations offer new ways to explore search results. More traditional graphs of metrics and results are also available as is a concept cloud.
Paper Network
This visualization creates groups of papers by looking at the references from each paper and grouping them based on how many are shared. Because the papers in these groups cite a similar set of other papers, we can expect the papers in the group to be about the same topics. By default, this visualization only uses data from the first 400 papers in your search results, but you can adjust that; the maximum papers analyzed are 1000 papers.
Each group is named by extracting shared, unique words from the titles of the set of articles in the group. These title words can help provide a general overview of the main topics of your original search results. Clicking on any specific group will display a list of the most cited papers from that group.
You can download a text file in comma-separated-value format (CSV) of the data that underlies the graphic. The CSV file will provide identifiers for each paper and indicate which other papers are in its same group, along with some other metadata such as citation counts and downloads.
Reviewing a paper network can help you drill down into a topic or help you expand your literature search by identifying papers you may have otherwise missed.
Author Network
This visualization is created by looking at authors that frequently appear together and creating groups based on the frequencies of those collaborations. Each of these groups contain authors that often work with each other, though not every author in each group will have worked with every other author in their group. You may find it helpful when looking for new opportunities, when trying to eliminate possible conflicts of interest, or when surveying the research landscape.
Using the top 400 documents returned by unfielded search for volcanoes for input, the visualization algorithm identified seven main groups when this example; because SciX adds new material on daily and weekly cycles you may see a different distribution.
Clicking into the section group, the inside edge of the donut, will bring up the list of papers in that group. Clicking on a specific name, or their specific section of the donut, will instead show all papers by that particular author.
Clicking on the “View link overlay?” will show connections among individuals in different groups.
Like the Paper Network, the Author Network also has an option to download the underlying data as a CSV file.
Reflection and Discussion on Visualizations
Spend 2-3 minutes individually looking at these visualizations for a topic of your choice. Then, discuss what you did and what you learned with a friend. Was anything difficult? Did anything surprise you? How could you use either the paper network or author network in your own work?
Summary of Visualizations
SciX visualizations provide additional ways of analyzing your search results. Each takes the results of a query and highlights connections among the documents: topics through references for the Paper Network, collaborations through authors for the Author Network, influence through citations for metrics and results, and relative frequency of concepts through abstract text for the Concept Cloud. These tools are helpful in building a substantive literature review and in positioning your work to your best advantage.
For more details about these two graphs and information about the
other SciX graphics, we recommend
- SciX
Help page on Visualizations
- Exploring
SciX Visualizations handout
- 2020 paper by
Michael Kurtz et al on second-order operations (Paper Network
only)
Bonus Challenge
Using search results from a query of interest to you, try one of the Explore menu options that we were not able to cover today. Consult the SciX Help documentation for anything that is unclear.
- SciX offers powerful tools that operate on sets of documents to assist you in analyzing the literature.
-
Similar()identifies items that are textually similar: find more like …. -
Useful()analyzes reference lists: what will help me with …. -
Reviews()analyzes citation lists: what has this contributed to … - The Paper Network groups papers topically through their references: how could I narrow my topic? what am I missing?
- The Author Network identifies groups through co-authorship: what collaborations are working in this field? what is that lab producing?
Content from SciX and ORCiD
Last updated on 2026-09-25 | Edit this page
Overview
Questions
- How do I ensure that all my papers are attached to my ORCiD?
Objectives
- Claim an article using an Open Researcher and Contributor Identification (ORCiD), a unique persistent digital identifier for researchers
SciX and ORCiD
In this lesson, we are going to be talking about how SciX integrates ORCiD. Hopefully, you already have an ORCiD for yourself, and an understanding of ORCiD. If not, please review the Library Carpentries Lesson “Open Research and Contributor IDs (ORCID) for Librarians” before beginning this module.
ORCiD & SciX
ORCiD stands for Open Researcher and
Contributor ID. Many researchers and authors today are claiming
ORCiDs to help disambiguate themselves from others who share their name.
SciX lets you search for published content using an ORCiD, just write
orcid: before the ID in the query field. For example:
orcid:0000-0002-6949-0090
The ORCiD identifiers attached to a paper can come from the publisher, if that information is provided by the authors when submitting the paper.
ORCiD Use
How do researchers at your institution use ORCiDs? What are the expectations of researchers, publishers, funders, and administrators regarding these identifiers? What are the barriers to ORCiD use? Discuss with a friend.
However, SciX also lets you claim papers for your ORCiD, which is especially useful if the papers pre-date the ORCiD system or if you know that the publisher did not collect that information when you originally submitted the paper. SciX shares these claimed papers back to ORCiD so that they can show up on your profile there.
In order to claim a paper for your ORCiD in SciX, you need to connect to your ORCiD account using the ORCiD menu option at the top of the screen. It will bring up the ORCiD log-in screen. Then, you can sign in with your usual ORCiD credentials.
You will first see “My ORCiD Page” listing all of the papers in SciX currently associated with your ORCiD.
To search for additional papers, click the SciX logo in the upper left of the menu bar to return to the main search page. Once there, click on the ORCiD menu item to verify that ORCiD mode is “On”.
Then, search through SciX for your papers and click the “Claim” button to the right of each article that is yours. If any are erroneously marked, you can click the “Delete Claim” button to remove your claim on the article.
Visiting “My ORCiD Page” will bring back to the dashboard of all of your claimed articles, where you can push them to sync with ORCiD and make other edits.
Reflection and Discussion
If you have published papers in SciX, spend a few minutes ensuring your ORCiD is associated with each of them.
If you do not have published papers in SciX, do one of the following - Assist a friend who is working on claiming their papers. - Search for the papers of someone at your institution and identify which of their papers they should be encouraged to claim soon.
Working with a friend, address any areas of difficulty or confusion.
Summary
ORCiDs provide a powerful tool for uniquely identifying individual authors, many of whom may have similar names. SciX provides tools to search for papers using ORCiDs, where those are known, as well as assistance to authors in ensuring all their papers are properly ORCiD tagged.
For more information about using ORCiD in SciX, we recommend:
- SciX Help page: Searching
for papers in ORCID
- SciX Help page: Claiming
papers in ORCID
- Handout: ORCiD in
SciX
Bonus Challenge
For a few well-established researchers in your field, compare the effectiveness and efficiency of traditional name searches to ORCiD searches. Which works best now?
- SciX encourages authors to identify themselves and claim their work
with ORCiDs.
- Users can search SciX for people using ORCiDs.
- Users can use SciX search tools to find their papers without ORCiDS
and claim them.
- SciX will communicate users’ claims to ORCiD.