jxtse/scientific-research-skills/social-media-paper-triage

Social Media Paper Triage

Turn social media paper recommendations into actionable research items.

When to Use

• User forwards a 小红书 post about a paper
• User shares a WeChat公众号 article discussing papers
• User shares a Twitter/X thread about a paper or method
• User asks "find the original paper from this link"
• User shares any blog post / newsletter that references academic papers

Workflow

Step 1: Extract Content from Platform

Use platform-specific tools to fetch the full content:

Step 2: Identify Papers

From the extracted content, identify all referenced papers:

• Look for: paper titles, arXiv IDs, DOIs, author names + year citations
• Distinguish between: the main paper being discussed vs. papers cited in passing
• Note: social media posts often use informal titles or translated titles

Step 3: Find Original Sources

For each identified paper, find the authoritative source:

1. arXiv search: Check if it's on arXiv (most ML/AI papers are)
2. Semantic Scholar: Search by title for metadata + citation count
3. Google Scholar (via web search): Fallback for non-arXiv papers

Priority: arXiv PDF > conference proceedings > journal version

Step 4: Summarize for Decision

Present a concise summary to the user:

📄 Paper: [Title]
👥 Authors: [First author] et al., [Year]
🏛 Venue: [Conference/Journal]
📊 Citations: [N]
🔗 Original: [arXiv/DOI link]
📱 Source: [social media link]
 
TL;DR: [2-3 sentence summary of what the paper does and why it matters]
 
Relevance to your work: [brief assessment based on user's research context]

Step 5: User Decision → Action

Based on user's response:

• "Add to reading queue" → Add to Zotero 30_Reading Queue with appropriate tag
• "Not relevant" → Done, no action
• "Read it now" → Switch to paper-reading skill
• "Save for later" → Add to Zotero with lower priority tag

Key Principles

1. Always find the original paper — don't just summarize the social media post
2. Don't auto-add to Zotero — summarize first, let user decide
3. Preserve the social media link — add as a note/attachment in Zotero for provenance
4. Assess relevance — use knowledge of user's active projects to judge fit
5. Batch processing — if the post mentions multiple papers, triage all of them at once

Common Gotchas

• WeChat articles often translate paper titles to Chinese — search by original English title
• 小红书 posts may summarize methods inaccurately — always verify against the original
• Twitter threads may reference preprints that have been updated/published since
• Some posts discuss methods without naming specific papers — ask user for clarification