NeuroBriefer FAQ
Answers for prospective users about weekly neuroscience article recommendations, summaries, sources, open access, privacy, and signup.
What is NeuroBriefer?
NeuroBriefer is a tool for neuroscience researchers who want a more manageable way to keep up with new papers. It creates personalized weekly briefings based on your keywords and research interests. The goal is not to replace PubMed, journal alerts, or careful reading. The goal is to help with the triage step: deciding which papers are worth opening, saving, and reading more closely.
Who is NeuroBriefer for?
It is designed for neuroscience researchers, PhD students, postdocs, lab heads, clinicians with research interests, and anyone who regularly monitors neuroscience literature. It is most useful if you already have a rough sense of your topics or keywords but find that normal alerts produce too many papers to review carefully every week.
Is NeuroBriefer free?
Yes. NeuroBriefer is currently free to use. I built it because I wanted this kind of weekly briefing for my own research, and I want other researchers to be able to try it without wondering whether they need a subscription or institutional purchase.
What sources does NeuroBriefer track?
NeuroBriefer currently focuses on peer-reviewed neuroscience literature and surfaces PubMed links and PubMed-style article metadata where available. Preprints are not currently included. NeuroBriefer is not exhaustive, and researchers should use PubMed or another appropriate database directly when comprehensive coverage matters.
Does NeuroBriefer include preprints?
Not yet. NeuroBriefer currently focuses on peer-reviewed literature. I would like to add preprint support in the future, but I think it should be optional. Some researchers want to see preprints early, especially in fast-moving areas, while others prefer to keep their weekly briefing limited to peer-reviewed papers.
How do the summaries work?
Article summaries are generated to support rapid triage. A good summary can help you decide whether a paper is likely to be relevant, but it cannot replace checking the abstract, figures, methods, limitations, and full text. The summary should be treated as a starting point for attention, not as the final interpretation of the paper.
Does NeuroBriefer replace reading papers critically?
No. NeuroBriefer supports literature discovery and prioritization. Researchers should still check the original article, methods, figures, limitations, and full text when a paper matters to their work. This is especially important for papers that influence an experiment, a grant, a manuscript, or a clinical or scientific conclusion.
How are keywords used?
Your keywords and interests help personalize which articles are ranked and shown in your weekly briefing. Good keywords often include topics, methods, model systems, cell types, circuits, diseases, behaviors, or conceptual terms. They do not have to be perfect at the start. In practice, you refine them as you see what the briefing returns.
Does NeuroBriefer show open access or full-text links?
Where available, NeuroBriefer surfaces open access and full-text links to make it easier to get from a recommendation to the original paper. Availability varies by article and publisher. When a direct open access link is not available, the PubMed or publisher record may still help you access the paper through normal institutional routes.
How does NeuroBriefer handle privacy?
NeuroBriefer uses information such as your keywords, research interests, and article interactions to personalize your briefing and provide account features. NeuroBriefer does not sell personal information and is not built around advertising. Reasonable safeguards are used to protect private account information, although no online service can guarantee perfect security. See the full Privacy Policy for more detail.
How do I sign up?
You can create a free NeuroBriefer account from the signup page and choose the keywords that should guide your weekly neuroscience briefing. If you are unsure what to enter, start with the topics you would want a colleague to send you papers about, then revise the keywords after you see a few briefings.
More detail
For a fuller explanation, see the Methodology page and Privacy Policy.
Curious to see what your own briefing looks like?
NeuroBriefer is currently free to use. Add a few research keywords, see what appears in your weekly briefing, and adjust from there. It should feel like a practical aid to your existing reading habits, not a replacement for them.
Create a free account