ScholarGate: the sourced library of research methods

8,178 research methods across 236 fields, each linked to the paper it rests on. The application runs at its own address; this page gives the institutional details.

Go to the product: scholargate.app

methods: 8,178
fields: 236
searchable records: 34,634

What problem does it solve?

Method selection usually happens among a handful of familiar methods; the rest of the field often never gets seen.

The second problem is justification: when a reviewer asks "why this method", the answer needs a source, and a lecture note explaining it second hand does not close that question.

ScholarGate brings the two together: methods open by field and family, every record links to its paper, search runs over 34,634 records.

How does it work?

ScholarGate opens 8,178 research methods across 236 fields, organised into families. What each method is, how it works and which paper it comes from is written down with its source. Not a calculator, a library.

With its source

Every method record is linked to the original paper it rests on. No searching for the citation afterwards.

Family hierarchy

Ranking, causal inference, measurement, epidemiology. Methods form a tree, not a flat list.

Personal shelf

With Bookshelf and Desk, the methods you browse are collected per project and annotated.

How are the method families split?

The library is not one flat alphabetical list; methods are split into families by the type of question they answer. Four of them split out like this.

Ranking

Orders options against one or more criteria.

Causal inference

Estimates how much an effect changes the outcome, isolating the effect rather than showing it moved together.

Epidemiology

Gathers the study designs that examine how an outcome is distributed across a population.

Measurement

Turns an unobservable concept into a number, and tests that number's reliability and validity.

The family hierarchy closes a gap a search box cannot: it makes neighbouring methods and their assumption differences visible. We walk through that path from family to method in the method selection guide.

The method tree grows from root to tip, then one method family comes forward and links back to its sources.

How is the workspace set up?

Time spent in the library does not produce a page you read, it produces a record that accumulates. The application gathers this into three separate surfaces.

Bookshelf: your personal collection, useful records get shelved.
Desk: the workspace; methods and notes per project.
Review Studio: the section where a review is carried out.

Alongside these is an AI assistant; why a method was chosen or ruled out can stay written next to the record.

Open data

The method dataset was published openly under a CC-BY licence and carries a permanent DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20539026(yeni sekmede açılır). The library's content can be examined independently of the product.

CC-BY permits reuse on the condition of attribution. A DOI is a permanent identifier; even if the record's address changes, the same number leads to the same version.

Who is it for?

The product is built for three groups who have to write the method down, not just pick it once.

Researchers: see alternatives and their source papers for a question outside their field.
Graduate students: write the thesis's methods section with a citation.
Academics teaching a methods course: give students a single reference address.

Institutional use

ScholarGate is built by SCIMIND Teknoloji Yazılım Eğitim ve Danışmanlık A.Ş., based in Gaziantep. Registry details, mission and working principles are on the Company page.

We talk to university libraries, institutes and research centres about institutional licences, pilot deployments and in house training. We provide proforma invoices and technical specification support.

Institutional terms and how to reach us are on the Institutions page.