LAUSR - the
Library for the
Advancement of
Usable
Scientific
Research - is a collection of projects centered around making scientific research more usable by non-experts for the purpose of promoting science and reducing misinformation.
LAUSR.org is LAUSR's first project.
LAUSR.org aims to turn scientific articles into a series of dashboard-style pages where users can:
- Browse, search and find related scientific articles across many disciplines
- Browse related media content while viewing scientific research.
It is the hope that presenting scientific research alongside related media content as a dashboard-style page will make the scientific research more usable to non-experts. While media content is not scrutinized like peer reviewed articles, having the scientific article as the base for this content will dissuade viewers from misinformation and misleading rabbit-holes.
LAUSR currently covers over 1.5 million recent, high quality, peer reviewed academic articles. The presence of academic articles and their title, authors, abstract, and other publication information comes
from Semantic Scholar.
To remove older, lower quality articles LAUSR limits articles on Semantic Scholar to only those that:
- are peer-reviewed academic articles
- have been published since 2016
- are published in journals that rank within the top three quartiles of their respective field, as defined by SCImago Journal & Country Rank.
ORCID is used to provide more information about authors when available. Wikipedia and Unsplash are used to gather images related to the academic article.
Our media data (news, social media & videos) come from over 10 different APIs. Each source contains hundreds, in some cases millions of sources (e.g. YouTube).
Due to the shear volume of sources we cannot vet all of the media sources that come through. Users are recommended to view any of these media sources with suspicion. In particular, we hope you compare the media content against the evidence presented in the academic article(s) on this site.
If a source is anti-scientific, racist, sexist, homophophic or otherwise offensive
please contact us and we will review and, if deserving, block the source.
Briefly: LAUSR.org does not make money from your data.
We will never sell your data and have many safeguards in place for transferring and securing data. Light tracking is kept for security purposes. We keep very little information when you sign up and ask permission to send you non-administrative emails.
Privacy Policy of LAUSR.org
LAUSR operates the LAUSR.org website, which translates scientific articles into a series of dashboard-style pages where users can: (A) Browse, search and find related scientific articles across many disciplines and (B) Browse related media content while viewing scientific research. This page is used to inform website visitors regarding our policies with the collection, use, and disclosure of Personal Information if anyone decided to use our Service, the LAUSR.org website. If you choose to use our Service, then you agree to the collection and use of information in relation with this policy. The Personal Information that we collect are used for providing and improving the Service. We will not use or share your information with anyone except as described in this Privacy Policy.
Information Collection and Use
For a better experience while using our Service, we may require you to provide us with certain personally identifiable information, including but not limited to your name, phone number, and postal address. The information that we collect will be used to contact or identify you.
Log Data
We want to inform you that whenever you visit our Service, we collect information that your browser sends to us that is called Log Data. This Log Data may include information such as your computer's Internet Protocol (“IP”) address, browser version, pages of our Service that you visit, the time and date of your visit, the time spent on those pages, and other statistics.
Cookies
Cookies are files with small amount of data that is commonly used an anonymous unique identifier. These are sent to your browser from the website that you visit and are stored on your computer's hard drive. Our website uses these “cookies” to collection information and to improve our Service. You have the option to either accept or refuse these cookies, and know when a cookie is being sent to your computer. If you choose to refuse our cookies, you may not be able to use some portions of our Service.
Service Providers
We may employ third-party companies and individuals due to the following reasons:
- To facilitate our Service;
- To provide the Service on our behalf;
- To perform Service-related services; or
- To assist us in analyzing how our Service is used.
We want to inform our Service users that these third parties have access to your Personal Information. The reason is to perform the tasks assigned to them on our behalf. However, they are obligated not to disclose or use the information for any other purpose.
Security
We value your trust in providing us your Personal Information, thus we are striving to use commercially acceptable means of protecting it. But remember that no method of transmission over the internet, or method of electronic storage is 100% secure and reliable, and we cannot guarantee its absolute security.
Links to Other Sites
Our Service may contain links to other sites. If you click on a third-party link, you will be directed to that site. Note that these external sites are not operated by us. Therefore, we strongly advise you to review the Privacy Policy of these websites. We have no control over, and assume no responsibility for the content, privacy policies, or practices of any third-party sites or services.
Children's Privacy
Our Services do not address anyone under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect personal identifiable information from children under 13. In the case we discover that a child under 13 has provided us with personal information, we immediately delete this from our servers. If you are a parent or guardian and you are aware that your child has provided us with personal information, please contact us so that we will be able to do necessary actions.
Changes to This Privacy Policy
We may update our Privacy Policy from time to time. Thus, we advise you to review this page periodically for any changes. We will notify you of any changes by posting the new Privacy Policy on this page. These changes are effective immediately, after they are posted on this page.
Contact Us
If you have any questions or suggestions about our Privacy Policy, do not hesitate to contact us.
Jarrett Thibodeaux received a Ph.D in Sociology from Vanderbilt University and
had a brief academic career during which he published
9 (7 sole authored) peer reviewed academic articles.
He has had a long term interest in making scientific research more accesible to the public, see especially
his article "Production as Social Change".
In 2019 he decided to move to the private sphere to expand his Computer Engineering & Data Engineering/Modelling/Science skills to
address practical issues.
Jarrett Thibodeaux developed the
LAUSR.org backend (automated ETLs & Data Science & NLP methods with Python) and frontend (Wordpress + API ETLs with HTML + PHP, SQL, & Javascript) and founded LAUSR in 2022.