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ScienceBrief

Dates: 2017-2022

ScienceBrief was built by researchers to keep up with the topical issues of climate change science and make sense of ever-expanding publications.

The ScienceBrief platform was launched in 2017 in response to the rapidly expanding scientific literature on climate change. Researchers later redeveloped it to increase usability.

Uniquely, the platform was able to show, rather than tell, the scientific consensus on topical issues of climate change science, such as the effect of climate change on wildfires, extreme rainfall, or carbon sinks.

Each of these issues was set up as a Brief (see image below), consisting of a title and short abstract, outlining the latest scientific understanding. Evidence was crowd-sourced by researchers uploading their peer-reviewed papers with a summary of the key findings, and setting the level of consensus between the paper and the Brief, ranging from refutes to supports.

Example of a ScienceBrief: a Brief on climate change and wildfires
Example of a Brief on wildfires.

The explorer tool within ScienceBrief (see image below) positioned evidence within a visualisation of consensus on the x axis and publication year on the y axis. This showed any convergence over time if more evidence appeared on the right. Evidence was tagged upon upload with keywords and geographic location, so the explorer tool was a quick way to access evidence relating to specific issues. By hovering over the publications (shown by self-organising bubbles), the reader could see the details of the paper and read the summary of the key findings.

Example of the ScienceBrief explorer tool (consensus visualisation) for wildfires, showing 208 peer-reviewed publications were linked, with 173 summaries of key findings.
Example of the explorer tool (consensus visualisation) for wildfires, showing 208 peer-reviewed publications were linked, with 173 summaries of key findings. An automated metric determined the level of consensus, which was “Clear” in this case.

The overall ambition for this type of technology was to support authors of major scientific assessments (e.g. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] and Intergovernmental Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services [IPBES]) to quickly identify, classify and summarise the literature, focusing their attention on the synthesis of information.

Current status of ScienceBrief

A detailed account of ScienceBrief and the vision for utilising information technology to support the aims of IPCC assessment process was given in a peer-reviewed paper in 2023, published by npj Climate Action. Within this paper, the rising potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to support a future development of a ScienceBrief-like tool is also discussed. Important investments are needed to provide AI-based tools that help authors of future assessment reports to comprehensively assess and synthesise an exponentially growing literature. 

ScienceBrief Reviews

Utilising the platform to gather and synthesise evidence on some of the most popular Briefs at times of high societal interests, the team developed short briefing notes called ScienceBrief Reviews. ScienceBrief Reviews were written by small teams of international authors who worked intensely over short periods of time (typically two to three weeks) to outline the evidence and synthesise the findings. ScienceBrief Reviews were independently reviewed by an expert in the field, before being self-published. The eight ScienceBrief Reviews formed a collection published ahead of COP26 in Glasgow, in 2021. 

CLICK ON THE IMAGES TO DOWNLOAD THE SCIENCEBRIEF REVIEW

Interested to know more?

Read our peer-reviewed journal paper that documents our experience with ScienceBrief and outlines our vision for information technology to assist future IPCC authors to synthesise and assess climate change information.

Car driving along dusty road, surrounded by trees and thick smoke, with text overlaid that reads: 'Climate change increases the risk of wildfires'    Night scene of wildfire burning through woodland, with text overlaid that reads: 'Climate change increases the risk of wildfires'

   Satellite image of extreme weather formation building, with text overlaid that reads: 'Climate change is probably increasing the intensity of tropical cyclones'Two people sitting down in armchairs and engaged in policy discussions at a high-level function, with microphones in front of them. Text overlaid reads: 'Independent expert advisory bodies facilitate ambitious national climate policy responses'

Nighttime scene of cars in traffic, with headlights reflecting in the puddles caused by the rainy weather. Text overlaid reads: 'Climate change increases extreme rainfall and the chance of floods'   Forest dappled with golden sunlight, with text overlaid: 'Climate change will weaken carbon sinks and further amplify climate change'

Image of icebergs surrounded by water, with text overlaid: 'Arctic warming amplifies climate change and its impacts'   Underwater image of a coral reef and fish, with text overlaid: 'Climate change increases marine heatwaves harming marine ecosystems'

Funding of ScienceBrief

ScienceBrief was set up with funding from the UK Natural Environment Research Council under its International Opportunities Fund (2016-2019; grant no.NE/N013891/1). It also received funding from the European Horizon 2020 CRESCENDO (grant no. 641816), 4C (grant no. 821003) and VERIFY (grant no. 776810) projects, and the UEA’s Global Carbon Budget internal research grant.

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