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Record W4411016802 · doi:10.1016/j.xpro.2025.103873

How has structuring your ideas into protocols contributed to your research progress and facilitated collaboration with others in the field?

2025· article· en· W4411016802 on OpenAlexaff
Xi Zhang, Leila Shokri

Bibliographic record

VenueSTAR Protocols · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldBiochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
TopicBioinformatics and Genomic Networks
Canadian institutionsDalhousie University
Fundersnot available
KeywordsStructuringTroubleshootingProtocol (science)Field (mathematics)Computer sciencePublicationProcess (computing)Data sciencePolitical scienceMedicine

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Stuck in the middle of a project or degree and unable to see an immediate path forward is a common experience for researchers. In this backstory, Xi shares how tidying up a step-by-step protocol for STAR Protocols has led to unforeseen progress and connections. He has collaborated with the STAR Protocols team to publish five protocols and review three manuscripts. He finds that structuring thoughts in protocol form helps build confidence and explore ideas behind the data, especially when outcomes are unexpected. Additionally, the troubleshooting process can unravel interesting biological questions. For more information on the protocols related to this backstory, please refer to Zhang et al. 1 , 2 , 3

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.173
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.386
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesMetaresearch
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: Methods · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Qualitative · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.827
Threshold uncertainty score0.915

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.1730.386
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0020.002
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.003
Bibliometrics0.0050.004
Science and technology studies0.0110.018
Scholarly communication0.0290.040
Open science0.0050.018
Research integrity0.0070.023
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0290.029

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.033
GPT teacher head0.376
Teacher spread0.343 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

Study designQualitative
DomainMethods
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations0
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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