ResearchShare

Table of Content

• Introduction
• Stack
• Design
• Roadmap & Contributors
  • First Iteration
  • Second Iteration

Introduction

ResearchShare is a platform where you can publish research papers for free. It uses IPFS & Ethereum smart contracts to store and validate the papers.

You can find the motives here. One of them is to be transparent therefore you can find a very extensive doc about the processes, implementations, ..., here.

It is currently going under it's second iteration. We aim to push this project much further than a simple PoC.

Stack

• IPFS is used to store the research papers as a mean to decentralize the information.
• Ethereum & Solidity are used as backend. It allows us to run our logic in a resilient & trustless environment. However due to the current state of Ethereum (v2 is underway, huge gas fees, ...) the project may switch to another protocol in the future.
• ReactJS is used for the front.
• TruffleSuite is used to tests our contracts.
• Docker is used to deploy the platform via compose

Design

Before diving into the design, it is important to remember that the project is still a PoC. The design isn't set in stone and is very likely going to change, get more detailed, through time. You can find more details in the doc folder.

Because the platform aims to be an alternative to well known editors, we tried to reproduce and adapt one of their process to treat the submission of a paper. The following diagram is made from information we gathered and describes the big picture of what happens to a submitted paper.

And here's our version.

As you can see, they are similar. However it is important that we can't fully reproduce the editor's process as it can be hard, especially for a PoC, to describe them in terms of code. For further details, including information about the "clickable" elements of the diagram, be sure to checkout this document.

Roadmap

In this section, you'll find what each iteration brought to the project.

While the contributors changes, the project remains under the supervision of Luca George-François, who had the idea of the project, is the junior VP and manages the P2P projects within PoC.

First Iteration

It took place from September 2020 to March 2021, a first team focused on the following points:

• Draft of the process to submit a paper.
• Draft of the Contracts.
• Upload a file to IPFS & save its hash via the contracts.
• Begin the implementations of the contracts.
  • User registration (linked the to the contracts).
  • Submit/retrieve a paper.
  • Find reviewers (the best algorithm out there: random).
  • Submit a review.
• Very basic front proving components for the features we implemented

Second Iteration

While the 1st iteration got the foundations laid, they still need some work done which is why, from mid March to the end of August 2021, a new team will aim to do the following:

• Define a proper way to select Reviewers for a paper & implement it.
• Improve the submission process.
• Improve users management.
• Possibly, improve the way we use IPFS.
• Possibly, improve the front.

You can find out more precise information about the work done here

Contributors

• Adina Cazalens
• Alexandre Chetrit
• Alexandre Monier
• Lucie Philippon
• Matthis Cusin
• Quentin Veyrenc