Scizzling Solutions: The Tool That Will Keep You Up-to-Date on Current Literature

by Heather Burkhart

At a glance:

• Easily discover relevant papers in your field through a personalized feed
• Vanquish PubMed searching forever!
• Effortlessly share and organize your results
• Stay current and competitive

 
There’s no doubt about it – staying up-to-date on current research in your field is hard, not to mention absolutely necessary. With seemingly endless hours spent researching for your own projects, it hardly seems possible to find time to research someone else’s!
Thankfully, you’re not alone.

Photo courtesy of Dr. Gaia Vasiliver-Shamis

“With a new paper published every 20 seconds, it becomes almost impossible to keep up with the literature.” Says Dr. Gaia Vasiliver-Shamis, immunologist and Director of Career Development for Postdoctoral Fellows at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, GA. “For my PhD, I had to keep up with HIV, cell biology, cutting-edge microscopy and immunology just for my own project. Even after I left science and became a program manager at the NIH [National Institutes of Health], I had to keep up with what faculty in my institute published and it was always such a mundane task!” So she did what any scientist would do: she set out to solve the problem.

Lucky for us, Dr. Vasiliver-Shamis is super capable. With a history in biotechnical engineering, immunology, and professional development, she’s no stranger to idea development. And you’ve probably already guessed the idea: something to help researchers keep up with everything!

After verifying with over 150 scientists that keeping up with the literature was, indeed, a challenge, the idea became a reality, and Scizzle was founded. Scizzle allows users to set up feeds for the types of papers they’re interested in, and then, “automagically,” as the website puts it, collects them into one pretty, cozy little interface, allowing your inbox to breathe a little and your time spent searching to become dramatically minimized. Your time is precious, and Scizzle knows that.

But that’s not all. The accompanying Scizzle blog takes things a step further, providing a wider range of content and resources to help grad students succeed. They even did a stellar series on the Science of Star Wars.

As the number of Scizzle users grows, Dr. Vasiliver-Shamis has plans to grow with it. She says that “Working on Scizzle and helping scientists save valuable time, making information more readily available so they can spend more time on research, made me feel I’m reaching a larger audience than what I could have done as a researcher and potentially have a bigger impact.” Anyone who is familiar with the labors of scientific research can attest to the impact a tool like Scizzle can have on their life. What about you? Are you ready to be in the loop with everything that’s “sizzling hot in science?”

About the Author
Heather is an energetic science writer and recent graduate from the linguistics program at the University of Utah where she developed an interest in studying aphasia and other language properties of the brain.  She is currently Co-Managing Editor for The Scientista Foundation, and editor for its Scientista Spotlight section.  When she is not writing in a cozy corner of her home, she is most likely exploring the beautiful outdoor landscape of Utah.

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