What is the Scientific Score?
ZAGENO’s Scientific Score is a comprehensive product rating system, specifically developed for evaluating research products. It incorporates several aspects of product data, from multiple sources, to equip scientists with a sophisticated and unbiased product rating for making accurate purchasing decisions.
Intuitive 0-10 Ranking
Category-Specific
Calculated Relative of Other Products
Extensive User Behavior Analytics from the ZAGENO Marketplace
Metric Data Provided by Scientists, Suppliers and ZAGENO
How Does the Score Evaluate Research Products?
An application-specific evaluation
We apply sophisticated machine-learning algorithms to accurately match, group, and categorize millions of products. The Scientific Score accounts for these categorizations, as each product’s score is calculated relative to those in the same category. The result is a rating system that scientists can trust — one that is specific to both product application and product type.
A fusion of useful product data
Standard product ratings are useful to assess products quickly, but are often biased and unreliable, due to their reliance on unknown reviews or a single metric (e.g. publications). They also provide little detail on experimental context or application.
The Scientific Score utilizes a scientific methodology to objectively and comprehensively evaluate research products. It combines all necessary and relevant product information into a single 0—10 rating to support our customers in deciding which product to buy and use for their application — saving hours of product research.
A neutral and straightforward guide
To ensure no single factor dominates, we add cut-off points and give more weight to recent contributions. The sheer number of factors we take into account virtually eliminates any opportunity for manipulation. As a result, our score is an objective measure of the quality and quantity of available product information, which supports our customers’ purchasing decisions.
Where Can I Find a Product's Scientific Score?
A quick glance to the top right corner of any product will reveal its Scientific Score.
How Can I Contribute?
Scientific Score FAQ
- The underlying concept for the Scientific Score is based on a comparison of similar products, and then a ranking of each of those products relative to each other along various dimensions, called sub-scores. The total score is derived by weighting the different sub-scores, resulting in a percentile-based ranking ranging from 0.1 to 10.0. The algorithm itself depends on a harmonized database assembled by ZAGENO, which is integrated with various data sources, consistently checked for duplicates, and regularly normalized to accommodate for the needs of the biotech industry.
- The factors contributing to the final score of a product include, among others:
Product specifications provided by the manufacturer and supplier (as well as product-specific resources, i.e. handbooks and SDS documents) Scientists’ validation resultsUtilization in published methods (such as those found in a product’s resources section) The popularity of the product amongst scientistsThe performance of the product’s brand (based on performance across the whole brand range)The product's commercial success on ZAGENO
We believe that only a combination of various types of data can provide an accurate rating that accounts for the complexity of scientific products. - The Scientific Score is updated once a month, using data collected from the previous six months. This ensures that the Scientific Score is kept relevant and up-to-date, on par with the fast pace of Life Science research.
- Manufacturers and suppliers do not have a way to manipulate or "buy" points counting towards the score. The only way for them to improve their product’s score is to provide further information considered valuable to our scientific users (e.g., detailed specifications, citations, etc.)
- Publications found in the ‘Resources’ section of a product page are the ones that currently influence the Scientific Score. These are often provided by the manufacturer or supplier as examples of where the product has been used in relevant studies. In addition, scientists can contribute to the ‘Resources’ section, and thus influence the score, by providing links to their publications which cite products on ZAGENO, or by providing relevant antibody validations. In the future, we aim to include more publications listed on major indexing sites, such as PubMed and Google Scholar.
- The Scientific Score is a relative guide, comparing products to their peers. The score reflects the quality and quantity of all relevant information that is available on ZAGENO and from reputable public sources. We are continuously collecting more information, provided by users, suppliers, the scientific community, and our marketplace analytics.
- Products recently added to the ZAGENO catalog are not included in the last monthly calculation update, and so will have no score. This information usually gets updated in the following month, when the score calculations are refreshed.
- Products with the same score likely have similar information available contributing to the algorithm--this is particularly true for products from the same brand. As more product information is added over time, the Scientific Scores of these products will begin to differ as well.
If you have additional questions, you can reach us at scientificscore@zageno.com