A note on interpreting your SciScore report.

SciScore scores all papers on a scale of 1-10, based on the expectation that the methods section of your paper contains statements about sex of subjects, blinding, randomization of subjects, and catalog numbers and RRIDs for all research resources. If the tool does not find a criterion, such as blinding, it will state "not detected" and it will take off points. If it finds a sentence that matches a criterion "female rats were used..." then the sentence will be provided in the report and the score will increase. If SciScore deems that a criterion is "not applicable" to the study, then points will not be removed from the report. The average SciScore across all journals in PubMed Central was 4.2 in 2019, for a more granular breakdown please see the following paper (Menke et al, 2020; PMID:33196023).

SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore is not a substitute for expert review. SciScore checks to make sure that rigor criteria are addressed by authors. SciScore does not guarantee that the rigor criteria it detects are appropriate for a particular study. SciScore also checks for the presence and correctness of several unique identifiers, including RRIDs (research resource identifiers) in the manuscript, detects sentences that appear to be missing RRIDs, and can even suggest RRIDs under certain circumstances. All RRID suggestions should be verified; only the author can know whether the suggestions are correct.

Below you will find information about what SciScore finds or expects to find about your study. The creators of SciScore used several checklists, endorsed by various funders, journals, or scientific societies, to determine if we should add the item to SciScore. These checklists include:

• NIH Rigor Guideline (required for all NIH funded investigators)
• MDAR Checklist (required by Science, it is a combination of STAR Methods and Nature Checklist)
• ARRIVE guidelines (requested by over 1000 journals in studies that involve animal subjects)
• CONSORT guideline (required in studies involving patients)
• STAR Methods (required by Cell Press family journals especially where lots of reagents and resources are used)
• RRID (requested by over 1000 journals for various reagents and resources)

Note, not all items in any one guideline are scored by SciScore, but we attempt to point out below, which checklists require the item. Items that are typically present in the methods section are checked. Many items are required by multiple guidelines.

Additional FAQs for SciScore can be found here: https://www.sciscore.com/#faqs