Purdue Libraries and School of Information Studies News

Chao Cai receives Emerging Technologies Section (ETS) Best Emerging Technology Application Award

April 22nd, 2025

Libraries faculty member Chao Cai has won the 2025 ETS Best Emerging Technology Application (BETA) Award from the American Library Association’s Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) for his app, dedupr. The app is an open-source R package and Shiny app designed to streamline citation deduplication for systematic reviews. 

dedupr automates a widely-adopted, trusted deduplication method (Bramer’s), helping researchers save time, reduce errors, and produce cleaner, more reproducible results. It’s available both as an R package and a simple web app, so it’s accessible to users at all levels—no coding required. The award committee praised dedupr as a user-friendly, freely available tool with a significant impact. It noted how helpful it is for anyone doing systematic reviews, since it does not require programming knowledge. 

By offering a free alternative to costly reference tools, dedupr helps level the playing field for researchers at all institutions. Plus, it’s designed be accessible, making it an excellent option for students, librarians, and teams in low-resource settings.

Learn more about the award on the RUSA website.