Creating a collaboration platform for the US scientific community — Dropcite

Invetment check size
$50,000
Project Duration
Ongoing project
Team members involved
  • PM
  • Full Stack Devs x3
  • QA expert
Tech stack / Front-end
  • React (context API, hooks API)
  • Redux
  • Redux-thunk
  • Reselect
  • CSS modules
  • Socket.io-client
  • Pdf.js
Tech stack / Back-end
  • Node.js
  • Express
  • MongoDB
  • Socket.io
Job Story

Market challenges

Dropcite’s mission is to simplify and improve the scholarly review of pre-publication scientific articles. While facilitating discussion of the articles by the entire scientific community through a custom-built platform.

The process of gaining and advancing an academic degree in the US is time-consuming and overburdened with article editing and publishing complications.
Dropcite helps streamline the process of locating, collaborative annotating, and evaluating critical, emerging research in an academic field.

A basic version of Dropcite’s article share and review software will be available for all members of the academic community for free.

Now, AlephOne and Dropcite work in close cooperation to deliver more advanced features to this interactive system and form subscription plans.

Tech Challenges

  • Implementation of PDF-based reviews and comment navigation

    AlephOne team uses PDF.js to render PDF files as HTML to let users read and select the text. Over the library, we have implemented some annotating functionality. It makes users able to select a text and leave a comment exactly to the selected text. We save positions of the commented text to show other users the highlights and comments for them.

    Users can click on comments to see the commenting text, the page will scroll down to the related content text and the text will be highlighted. Also, it works backward – if a user clicks on the content text we show related comments.

Solution

PDF drag and drop feature

AlephOne team uses PDF.js to render PDF files as HTML to let users read and select the text. Over the library, we have implemented some annotating functionality. It makes users able to select a text and leave a comment exactly to the selected text. We save positions of the commented text to show other users the highlights and comments for them.

Users can click on comments to see the commenting text, the page will scroll down to the related content text and the text will be highlighted. Also, it works backward – if a user clicks on the content text we show related comments.

Delivery

For the MVP stage we implemented

  • custom interactive Dropcite platform
  • a tool for parsing academic articles and researches from two sources: www.biorxiv.org, www.medrxiv.org, and converting them into HTML format after loading on Dropcite web platform
  • user accounts and integrated login options
  • features for commenting and discussions, including quoting, hashtags, kudos
  • article recommendation system based on subjects of interest
  • in-built search engine
  • PDF drag and drop feature.

Next steps in Dropcite product development

  • Adding the ability for users to comment exactly to the selected text
  • Creating virtual space and functionality for article reviewing during a teamwork process
  • Advancing platform’s search engine algorithms and filter system; Creating private journal community paid membership.

We fund and build tech products to scale

Let’s work together to build something amazing. Share your project details and our team will reply to figure out the next steps to your success.

We fund and build tech products to scale

Let’s work together to build something amazing. Share your project details and our team will reply to figure out the next steps to your success.
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