PhD student from School of Theology, Philosophy and Music receives 2021 President¡¯s Award for Innovation

Congratulations to PhD student Mohammad Hosseini from the School of Theology, Philosophy and Music who was a stand-out winner at the 2021 President¡¯s Awards for Innovation. We also extend our congratulations to all of those nominated in this year's awards across the faculty.

New digital tool MyCites

Mohammad created MyCites, a digital tool that uses online annotation capability to mark and map inaccurate citations and notify stakeholders when it finds citation inaccuracies. 

About the Awards

The President¡¯s Awards encourage and recognise innovative and impactful achievements by DCU students, staff and researchers. This year the awards were presented by Professor Daire Keogh, President of DCU, at a virtual ceremony which was addressed by the Minister for Community Development and Charities, Joe O'Brien. 

Driving research and innovation

Dr Brad Anderson, Head of School, said: ¡°Mohammad's commitment to accuracy in scholarly citations is evidence of his larger concern for fairness and justice in academia. This project is at the forefront of research exploring the ethical dimensions of scholarship and academic publishing.¡±

Identifying the problem

The project started with an observation by Mohammad that many citations in academic literature are inaccurate. Following his own research and analysis, the conclusion was that 11.9% of citations have major errors and an additional 11.5% have minor errors. 

Developing an innovative solution

MyCites allows users of ORCID to make assertions about inaccurate citations, explaining why they are inaccurate and to what degree. These assertions then travel with the digital version of the document and are visible on all websites that host peer-reviewed articles.

MyCites automatically emails various subscribed parties about inaccurate citations such as authors of the cited and citing articles, editors of journals where inaccurate citations are published and future readers of journal articles.

You can read more about this year's award winners for innovation here.