Scite

Scite, founded in 2018 by Josh Nicholson and Yuri Lazebnik, operates an AI-powered platform designed to enhance the discovery and evaluation of scientific research. The company originated from concerns about the reproducibility of scientific studies, aiming to provide clarity on how research is cited. Nicholson, with a Ph.D. in cell biology, had prior entrepreneurial experience in scholarly publishing, having founded The Winnower and served as CEO of Authorea, both of which were acquired. This background in both academic research and improving scholarly communication directly informed Scite's mission.

The company's core offering is 'Smart Citations,' a system that moves beyond simple citation counts. Using a deep learning model, the platform analyzes the full text of research articles to determine the context of each citation, classifying it as supporting, contrasting, or simply mentioning the cited work. This provides researchers, students, and academic institutions with a more nuanced understanding of a study's reception and reliability within the scientific community. The platform has analyzed over 1.2 billion citation statements from millions of articles. Key features include an AI-powered 'Scite Assistant' chatbot, Reference Check for bibliographies, and dashboards for tracking research impact.

Scite operates on a freemium subscription-based business model, offering tiered plans for individuals, academic institutions, and corporate R&D departments. Its client base includes individual researchers, major universities, and pharmaceutical companies. In November 2023, Scite was acquired by Research Solutions (NASDAQ: RSSS), a provider of cloud-based workflow solutions for R&D organizations. The acquisition aimed to integrate Scite's AI capabilities into Research Solutions' broader suite of tools, creating an end-to-end workflow for researchers. At the time of the acquisition, Scite had approximately 21,000 active subscribers and an annualized software subscription value of $3.6 million.

Keywords: scientific literature analysis, citation context, AI research tool, Smart Citations, research reproducibility, scholarly communication, academic publishing, literature review, evidence-based research, deep learning, natural language processing, citation analysis, Scite Assistant, research validation, scholarly impact, reference checking, scientific paper evaluation, research discovery, academic search engine, Research Solutions, Josh Nicholson