The open source p2p desktop science library that puts users in control.
We've released :balloon: v1.0 :balloon:! But we're just getting started. Check out the roadmap to see where we're headed.
How we access, read and reuse scientific literature is largely controlled by a few vast publishing organisations. Many wonderful innovations are being explored outside those organisations, but they are rarely integrated into the platforms where people actually access science.
We have a vision of a different, better, future for science. A future that's more fair, inclusive and open. A future where people can explore and innovate and where users control and customise their experience.
ScienceFair aims to help pave the road to that future. The main thing that sets it apart? Freedom from centralised control.
We're creating a desktop experience for discovering, tracking, collecting and reading scientific articles that:
You can download installers or bundled apps for Windows, Mac and Linux from the releases page.
If you find a bug, please report it in the issue tracker.
Some of the things that ScienceFair does differently:
We use the beautiful Lens reader to render JATS XML to a reading experience optimised for scientific papers.
Instant search of your local collection and remote datasources, only downloading the data requested.
A ScienceFair datasource can be a journal, a curated community collection, a personal reading list... anything you like.
v1.0 comes with the eLife journal by default, and more will follow very soon.
Datasources are append-only feeds of JATS XML articles, signed with public-key encryption and distributed peer-to-peer (using dat). This means:
And importantly, datasources you create are private unless you decide to share them, and nobody can ever take a datasource offline.
Basic bibliometrics are built-in in v1.0
.
Full analysis and data-mining tools, alt-metrics and enriched annotation will be coming soon.
ScienceFair also follows a few simple design principles that we feel are missing from the ecosystem:
This project uses node v8
, ideally the latest version. It also uses the two-package.json
structure (what??).
To get a local copy working, clone this repo, then run
npm install
to install dev dependenciescd app && npm install
to install regular dependenciescd .. && npm run dev
to start in development modev1.0
proof of concept:
1.0.x
releases will be bug fixes and non-breaking improvementsv1.1
focus on datasources:
v1.2
focus on enrichment:
v2.0
focus on user customisation: