We believe the key to enabling future innovation is to create more credible signals of a researcher’s performance. A researcher impacts science in many dimensions. It could be the knowledge they create in the form of journal articles, raw data, code, and software. It could be a discussion they create in conferences or national policy. It could even be inspiring an 8-year-old to study science.

It is impossible for someone to consume all of this knowledge. Thus, the research community relies on journals to filter the information. However, journals only recognize written articles. If we can give researchers credit for all of the aspects of their impact, then the researchers won’t be tied to only creating journal articles. We can also update our metric to include new innovations.

To make an analogy, journals are currently like a radio. Radios capture sound and transmit it to anyone that wants to listen. The listeners get valuable information but in the end, it is only sound. We want our product to be the television. We don’t only want to transmit the sound, we want to transmit a visual picture with full color that gives the audience a more complete picture of what is happening.

The core of our product are the three scores for our three pillars: Impacting Society, Advancing Science, and Promoting Openness. The scores will be presented in a report that can be accessed by website or app for tablet or phone.