How It Works
A short guide to what you'll find here and how to get the most out of it.
What is Marginalia
Marginalia is a platform where scientists, students, or anyone interested in science can read expert notes on different topics. If you work on your thesis or you are simply interested in some area, you can find a relevant collection and see the expert's notes and other useful info on it.
What problem do we solve?
In any field, there is an enormous volume of manuscripts. Reading all of them is impossible. Objective metrics, such as the number of citations or similar, might serve well but are not ideal. Often, if we really want good advice, we need a human being. That's what Marginalia is all about.
Our collections and experts are not objective like the number of citations or peer reviews. On the contrary, they are subjective. However, their opinion is often based on their expertise in the field. If you trust them — why not trust their advice.
On Subjectivity
Are these collections or recommendations subjective? Yes. Furthermore, we encourage subjectivity.
The choice might be biased. It might depend on personal preferences or even friendship. However, these are the things that make us humans.
What we have
Collections
Here we group manuscripts on a given topic. Some collections are featured (this is purely the admin's subjective decision) but it does not make them better.
Within a collection, there are two types of manuscripts: essential and others. Essentials are not better — it simply says that this expert considers them essential in their humble opinion. Essentials are meant to be your first targets when you dig into the area.
When you already know the basics, you can choose one of two modes:
- Curated — that's the order the expert considers reasonable for their collection.
- Latest — experts constantly add new manuscripts to the collection. This mode is exactly about that.
Manuscript Reviews
Each manuscript is reviewed by the expert. There are some helpful labels:
- Verdict:
- Must Read, Worth Reading, and Skip are self-explanatory. Niche — a manuscript that has a narrow niche but within this niche it can shine. Skim — not sure, but worth mentioning.
- Difficulty:
- But we all know what that really means for scientists…
Sometimes, you might see nice marginalia — these are the expert's notes on the manuscript. That's the main reason why Marginalia was created :) Read them, they are funny!
Other useful elements of a review are:
- One Liner:
- an essence of the manuscript
- Summary:
- answers the questions: What's new? Why it matters? What are the implications?
- Method:
- what methods were used by researchers
- Background:
- what do you need to know in order to understand the manuscript
Digests
Digests are the updates for a given field. Our AI robots constantly collect new interesting papers. Then our experts review them. If they find new papers interesting, they form a digest and release it.
In other words, digests are fresh collections of new manuscripts curated and commented on by the experts. Like other curated collections, they share a similar structure and data.
Reviews
These are manuscripts reviewed by our experts. Normally, they appear in either collections or digests.
Why “marginalia”?
Medieval scholars scribbled notes in the margins of manuscripts. Knights fighting snails. Monks riding bizarre creatures. Rabbits doing unspeakable things.
Scientists continue this tradition. We annotate, we argue with the text. But we are not permitted to add marginalia to our papers. Until now :)
Have a question? Have a claim? Want to join as an expert?
Drop us a line:
[email protected]Made with care in Barcelona.