Paperpal, An AI-powered Assistant for Researchers, Crosses 200K Users Worldwide

Paperpal, the CACTUS brand offering AI-powered assistance for language and technical compliance checks and translation for research manuscripts, crossed the 200K user mark worldwide on 20th May, 2023. This milestone took only 8 weeks after Paperpal hitting the 100K mark in March 2023. This can be attributed to the growing engagement around AI tools on various social platforms and signifies that researchers are enthusiastically adopting Paperpal for its relevance in academic writing.

Abhishek Goel, CEO, and Co-Fborounder, CACTUS, said, "We launched Paperpal to help researchers write better papers, edit them on the go, and make them publication ready within a very short duration. This tool is convenient; it can be plugged into MS Word and provides suggestions that are relevant to academic research. It gives us great joy when we find researchers praising Paperpal for helping them get published and recognising it as a tool specifically purpose-built for them.”

With over two decades of experience in delivering high-quality academic language editing services to researchers across the globe, CACTUS launched Paperpal, the AI-powered manuscript screening tool to facilitate researchers’ academic writing journey, in October 2020. Paperpal’s AI has been trained on millions of published articles and manuscripts edited by professional academic editors who have extensive experience enhancing manuscripts to meet the requirements of top journals. Paperpal helps improve authors’ chances of publication by flagging common errors and omissions in language and technical reporting prior to journal submission.

Nishchay Shah, Chief Technology Officer, CACTUS said, “Language solutions based on artificial intelligence (AI) are transforming the scholarly communication landscape. Academic writing assistants are witnessing a revolution with the exponential advancements in AI, especially with the explosion in Large Language Models (LLMs) due to the commercial success of chatGPT. Presently, authors have at their disposal a multitude of language editing tools or academic writing assistants that can aid them in their journey of writing a research paper. However, researchers have to use many different tools to get their paper ready for publication, which involves writing; translating; checking for technical journal compliance; reviewing the paper for clarity, style, and consistency; etc. At Paperpal, we blend the best AI tech developed inhouse and leverage bleeding-edge language models from the open-source community to build an integrated solution that seamlessly guides the author in their publication journey.”

Language editing is an essential part of the manuscript preparation process, and AI tools can greatly enhance the quality of academic texts. While AI language editing tools are increasingly being used to ensure clear, error-free writing, there are very few tools that are specifically designed for academic writing, such as Paperpal.

To know more, please visit: https://paperpal.com/

Paperpal is developing superpowers for academic researchers. We believe that brilliant product design and advanced machine learning can help researchers find, write, and submit better science faster. Paperpal is backed by Cactus Communications (cactusglobal.com), a science communications and technology company. CACTUS solves problems for researchers, universities, publishers, academic societies, and life science organizations through innovative products and services developed under the brands Editage, Cactus Life Sciences, Researcher.Life, Impact Science, Paperpal, and Cactus Labs. CACTUS has offices in Princeton, London, Aarhus, Singapore, Beijing, Shanghai, Seoul, Tokyo, and Mumbai; a global workforce of over 3,000 experts; and customers from over 190 countries.

Founded in 2002, Cactus Communications (cactusglobal.com) is a science communications and technology company that aims to advance society by making science accessible globally through innovation and technology. CACTUS solves problems for researchers, universities, publishers, academic societies, and life science organizations through innovative products and services developed under the brands Editage, Cactus Life Sciences, Researcher.Life, Impact Science, Paperpal and Cactus Labs. CACTUS has offices in Princeton, London, Aarhus, Singapore, Beijing, Shanghai, Seoul, Tokyo, and Mumbai; a global workforce of over 3,000 experts; and customers from over 190 countries. CACTUS is considered a pioneer in its workplace best practices and has been consistently ranked a great place to work over the last several years.

R Discovery and Springer Nature Partner to Create An Open-access Content Bank for Global Researchers

The partnership will enable researchers to access Springer Nature’s content in the form of daily recommendations on R Discovery 

R Discovery, a Cactus Communications (CACTUS) brand, has partnered with Springer Nature, global academic publisher, to help broaden the reach of open access (OA) content to the global researcher community. The inclusion of Springer Nature’s OA portfolio into R Discovery means that the platform offers its over 1.4 million researchers access to high-quality OA content in over 32,000 journals worldwide across a breadth of subject areas.

Commenting on the partnership, Abhishek Goel, CEO & Co-founder, CACTUS, said, “Helping the scientific community with access to a vast bank of content is one of our top priorities. Our aim is to bring the most relevant and recently published scientific literature to the fingertips of researchers across the globe. By providing access to full-text open-access papers, we can facilitate content discovery and help save reading time. With this association, researchers will now have access to some of the most valuable OA research published in Springer Nature via the R Discovery app.”

Till Moepert, Vice President Indirect Channels at Springer Nature said, “Researchers are at the heart of what we do and ensuring access and engagement with high-quality content is central to the advancement of knowledge and discovery. With a long history in OA, we are committed to supporting researchers with streamlined routes to high-quality content in the fields of science, technology, medicine and the humanities and social sciences, alongside our wider commitment to supporting open data and open research, for example by creating the largest linked open data set in SciGraph and supporting FAIR data projects through our Text and Data Mining API’s. Partnering with the Cactus Communications R Discovery App enables us to continue this rich tradition of making open research accessible through new platforms and avenues and supporting the research community with access to the widest possible content, tools, and services.”

Among a host of CACTUS products, R Discovery is used by researchers regularly for literature search via the app or the web version. It currently has over 32,000 journals covering over 9.5 million research topics across subject areas such as life sciences, biology, medicine, philosophy, political science, environmental science, social sciences, and psychology. With more than 30 million open access articles available and access to paywalled articles with one’s university credentials, R Discovery is one of the largest repositories of research that is accessible on the go.

Springer Nature is one of the first major publishers to make their content available to R Discovery. By combining Springer Nature’s expertise in publishing high-quality research with R Discovery’s online platform for millions of researchers, both organizations aim to deliver an upgraded and seamless experience for the communities they serve.

To know more please visit- R Discovery (Web | Android | iOS)

Cactus Communications (cactusglobal.com), a technology company accelerating scientific advancement. CACTUS solves problems for researchers, universities, publishers, academic societies, and life science organizations through innovative products and services developed under the brands Editage, Cactus Life Sciences, Researcher.Life, Impact Science, UNSILO, PaperPal and Cactus Labs. CACTUS has offices in Princeton, London, Aarhus, Singapore, Beijing, Shanghai, Seoul, Tokyo, and Mumbai; a global workforce of over 3,000 experts; and customers from over 190 countries. CACTUS is considered a pioneer in its workplace best practices and has been consistently ranked a great place to work over the last several years.

About Springer Nature

For over 180 years Springer Nature has been advancing discovery by providing the best possible service to the whole research community. We help researchers uncover new ideas, make sure all the research we publish is significant, robust and stands up to objective scrutiny, that it reaches all relevant audiences in the best possible format, and can be discovered, accessed, used, reused, and shared. We support librarians and institutions with innovations in technology and data; and provide quality publishing support to societies. As a research publisher, Springer Nature is home to trusted brands including Springer, Nature Portfolio, BMC, Palgrave Macmillan, and Scientific American. For more information, please visit springernature.com and @SpringerNature.

Cactus Venture Partners, an Early-Stage VC Fund That Invests in D2C Brands, Raises 350 Crores in the Initial Close of Its Debut Fund

The fund will primarily invest in clean-tech, health-tech, and B2B SaaS, companies in India

Cactus Venture Partners (CVP) today announced raising INR 350 crores in the initial close of its maiden fund. The fund will focus on investing primarily in clean-tech, health-tech, and B2B SaaS companies in India. The fund is in active discussions with several domestic and international institutional investors and anticipates the final close of its fund target of INR 750 crores by December 2022. With a significant 15% commitment from the General Partners, the fund plans on deploying this capital over the next 3-4 years.

Anurag Goel, General Partner, Cactus Venture Partners, said, "The CVP team is unique in bringing together a mix of founders, investors, and operational experts to help start-ups that have crossed the PMF stage accelerate their growth journey. Very strongly driven by our core values, we are patient investors and impatient business builders. The fund’s capital raise has proceeded at an exceptional pace, and we are grateful to the support received from our early LPs in India and internationally.”

Founded by Anurag Goel (co-founder of Cactus Communications, global science communication, and technology company), Amit Sharma (a seasoned venture investor), and Rajeev Kalambi (a former investment banker and early-growth private equity investor), CVP has been investing in technology and direct-to-consumer (D2C) start-ups in the early growth stage since 2021. With this initial close, the Partners aim to leverage their complementary capabilities and capital to enable new-age purpose-driven companies to achieve their true potential. Cactus Venture Partners has previously invested in Rubix Data Sciences, a technology and analytics-driven B2B risk management and monitoring platform, Auric, an Ayurveda brand targeting millennials; AMPM, a global lifestyle brand with a modern Indian aesthetic; and Vitraya Technologies, a SaaS health tech platform.

Cactus Venture Partners (CVP) is a purpose-driven, early-growth stage venture fund with a particular focus on technology start-ups (with particular focus on clean-tech, health-tech and B2B SaaS, and select direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands. Its goal is to help entrepreneurs build sustainable, fulfilling businesses that scale rapidly. The fund works with founders and teams that are motivated by both purpose and financial success. CVP provides portfolio companies with active founder support, business building best practices, and access to its combined network, international markets, relationships and talent.

To know more, please visit: https://www.cactusvp.com/

THINK Academia, the World’s 1st Global Initiative Against Bullying in the Academic Community

Today Cactus Communications (CACTUS), a science communications and technology company, launched ‘THINK Academia’, an initiative that envisions a global academic culture that is free from all forms of bullying. THINK stands for Thoughtful, Humane, Inclusive, Nurturing, and Kind­— all the qualities that we believe are necessary to create a better, safer, and more welcoming work environment for researchers globally.

Commenting on this initiative, Abhishek Goel, CEO & Co-founder, CACTUS said, “The CACTUS Mental Health Survey was only the beginning of our quest to support researchers and the academic community. Over the past few years, a growing body of evidence has pointed to an alarming incidence of bullying within academia and academic institutions. To address this issue and bring it to the fore, CACTUS is launching the THINK Academia initiative. We believe that the vast majority of researchers are willing to declare their support for best practices and also fully inform themselves on what constitutes academic bullying. THINK Academia will work towards creating a better academia – one where bullying is no longer ignored.”

In 2020, the CACTUS Mental Health Survey – with over 13,000 responses from researchers globally –found that over one-third (37%) of survey respondents had experienced some form of bullying or discrimination at the workplace. Also, nearly 40% of respondents indicated that their organizations lacked stringent policies to avert or act against such hostile behaviours in the workplace. The data further showed that bullying is one of the major factors negatively affecting the mental health and wellbeing of researchers.

One of the main goals of THINK Academia is to spread awareness on what academic bullying looks like, including certain acts and behaviours that might be subtle, non-verbal, and invisible. We are encouraging researchers and academics to embody more positive behaviour, to lead with kindness and empathy in their interactions, and to be more mindful of their actions and behaviour. CACTUS is also urging academic institutions to create safer channels of communication and to implement policies that prioritize their people’s safety, health, and holistic wellbeing.

This initiative is calling several stakeholders within academia, including individual researchers and academics, universities, research institutions, academic societies, research-related organizations, and others, to sign the THINK Academia pledge and join us in our mission towards creating a global academic culture that is free from bullying.

To extend your support and get involved, sign the THINK Academia Pledge today – https://cactusglobal.com/think-academia

About Cactus Communications

Founded in 2002, Cactus Communications (cactusglobal.com) is a science communications and technology company. CACTUS solves problems for researchers, universities, publishers, academic societies, and life science organizations through innovative products and services developed under the brands Editage, Cactus Life Sciences, Researcher.Life, Impact Science, UNSILO, Paperpal and Cactus Labs. CACTUS has offices in Princeton, London, Aarhus, Singapore, Beijing, Shanghai, Seoul, Tokyo, and Mumbai; a global workforce of over 3,000 experts; and customers from over 190 countries. CACTUS is considered a pioneer in its workplace best practices and has been consistently ranked a great place to work over the last several years.