Discover and Rate ArXiv Papers with SciRate: A Quick Tutorial

Staying on top of recent research is one of the biggest challenges for academics. Between writing, supervision, teaching and admin, it’s easy to miss key new papers in your field. While tools like Google Scholar can help track citations and authors, they don’t do much to surface fresh research as it comes out.

That’s where SciRate comes in. If you haven’t heard of it, SciRate is a community platform where researchers can vote on arXiv preprints. It’s a bit like Reddit, but for academic papers, making it easier to discover interesting or important new work that others in your field are reading.

In this post, we’ll explain what SciRate is, how it works, how to use it, and also some limitations to keep in mind.

What is SciRate?

SciRate is a community platform built around arXiv, the open-access preprint server. SciRate lets researchers vote (or “scite”) for papers they find valuable. It’s like Reddit for research papers, where votes help surface the most interesting and relevant work.

Researchers can subscribe to arXiv categories (like quant-ph, cs.LG, math.CO, etc.) and view a daily feed of new submissions ranked by how many people have scited them. It’s a great way to keep up with trending topics in your discipline without having to manually sift through the arXiv feed.

Why use SciRate?

1. See what your community is reading.
If you’re in a field like quantum information or theoretical computer science, there’s a good chance many of your colleagues already use SciRate. The number of scites a paper gets is a useful signal for what’s generating interest.

2. Avoid missing important work.
Instead of skimming through dozens of arXiv posts every morning, you can browse the top-ranked papers and see which ones your community is paying attention to.

3. Support researchers.
If you read a paper and think it’s valuable, give it a scite. It’s a small gesture, but one that helps others find it more easily—and it can be especially meaningful for early-career researchers.

Limitation: Beware of the popularity effect

While SciRate is a useful tool for finding new research, it’s important to recognize its limitations.

Like any popularity-driven platform, SciRate risks turning paper visibility into a popularity contest. Papers from well-known groups or with trending keywords may receive more scites, even if lesser-known work is more technically novel or relevant to your niche.

In other words, more scites doesn’t always mean higher quality. Use SciRate as a discovery aid, not a quality filter. Always read critically and apply your own judgment.

How to use SciRate

Here’s how to get started with SciRate in just a few steps.

Go to https://scirate.com and create an account. You’ll need to verify your email before you can start voting on papers.

2. Choose your arXiv categories

Once you’re logged in, click on your name in the top-right corner and go to Feeds. Here, you can choose which arXiv feeds to follow, for example quant-ph, cs.LG, math.PR, or stat.ML. Your feed will then show papers from those categories only.

3. Browse the daily paper feed

Each day, SciRate pulls new submissions from arXiv. Papers appear on the front page for a few days, ranked by number of scites. This makes it easy to spot the most talked-about research.

You can click on any paper title to go to its abstract page, read the summary, or follow the link to the full PDF on arXiv.

4. Scite a paper

If you like a paper, just click the “Scite” button (a small star icon) next to the title. You can also bookmark papers to read later.

Sciting isn’t meant to be a peer review, it just means “I found this interesting or useful.”

5. Comment (optional)

You can also leave public comments on papers. This feature isn’t used as heavily, but it can be useful for discussion or highlighting interesting points.

Final thoughts

SciRate is a simple and helpful platform for staying in touch with current research. It makes it easier to discover papers others in your field are engaging with, and to support work you find valuable.

But like any social or community-based system, it has its blind spots. Use it to guide your reading, not to replace your judgment. Sometimes, the best paper for your work might not be the most popular one on the front page.

Have questions about using tools like SciRate or integrating them into your workflow? Get in touch with us or explore the tutorials on ResearchDock.

Want more tutorials like this? Browse our blog on ResearchDock for tips on managing literature, writing, tasks, and supervision.