Science X's 'Editors' notes' gets warm welcome from readers... and other publishers

Science X Network—a leading science and technology news organization—is happy to announce that its new feature called "Editors' notes" has successfully celebrated more than six months since its launch. This tool has not only enriched the Science X reader experience but has also set a new benchmark for industry practices, as it spread to other websites.

"Editors' notes" became public on March 15, 2023, after an intensive month of in-house development. This unique feature lets readers quickly assess the nature of an individual article. It's prominently positioned as a button in the top right corner of an article page. Upon clicking the button, a dialog opens, presenting the citation of individual trust-determining factors, actions undertaken by editors and points they'd like to highlight about the article.

"In an era plagued by fake news and misinformation, we are compelled to empower our readers with the knowledge of why they can place their trust in our content. With each individual article, our commitment extends to providing transparency on critical aspects such as the peer-review status of the study paper, the credibility of our sources and the fact-checking and editing processes in place," said Andrew Zinin, lead editor at Science X.

Science X has received quite a few positive user reactions since the feature got launched. What's more, we were surprised to learn, after a reader prompted us to investigate, that a feature nearly identical to "Editors' notes" appeared on another site—News-Medical.net, which belongs to AZoNetwork—a few months after our launch, around July 8, 2023 (which is evident from the Internet Archive cache copies).

The feature, then called "Reviewers' notes," not only copied the core idea of the "Editors' notes," but the wording, mobile and desktop implementations and the underlying editorial process page also looked strikingly similar to our own.

Science X sent a formal complaint to AZoNetwork about suspected plagiarism. On September 18, 2023, News-Medical.net updated the feature. The updated implementation retains the core idea, is renamed to "Reviewed," paraphrases the original text and updates the desktop/mobile popup implementation. Their editor policy page was also re-written.

Science X expresses satisfaction in having once again demonstrated its capacity to drive innovation within the research news field. The "Editors' notes" feature marks a significant stride in our ongoing commitment to delivering the highest standards of journalism to our readers. We hope it will help readers to better understand and appreciate the articles we publish.

Provided by Science X