Science Orbit

Problem

Describe the user pain, gap, or technical challenge that motivated the work.

Solution

Science Orbit is a preprint-first open science platform where researchers can publish immediately, revise openly, collect structured public reviews, show replication attempts, and build merit-based reputation.

Tech Stack

Next.js 16, TypeScript, React 19, Tailwind CSS 4, PostgreSQL, Prisma, NextAuth.js, OpenAI, S3/R2, Vitest

Features

• Preprint publishing with metadata, licensing, co-authors, optional PDF, and DOI support
• Transparent post-publication peer review with confidence and conflict-of-interest disclosure
• Version history with changelogs and author notes
• Replication submissions with clear status signals
• AI-assisted summaries, key findings, FAQs, ethics flags, and paper Q&A
• Researcher profiles with reputation ledger, ORCID verification, and grant matching
• Research graph, topic pages, datasets, feeds, bulk export, and developer APIs

Architecture & Development Process

Challenges

• Designing a publishing flow that is fast while still preserving metadata quality and trust signals
• Making AI assistance optional, auditable, and grounded in paper content
• Supporting production concerns such as storage, rate limiting, email, auth, health checks, and database migrations

Lessons Learned

• Open review systems need clear contribution types and reputation incentives
• Research software benefits from explicit lifecycle states instead of hiding uncertainty
• Production-ready science tooling needs trust, moderation, and exportability built in from the start

Roadmap

• Expand real researcher onboarding
• Improve grant and collaboration matching
• Deepen citation, replication, and reputation signals
• Harden production deployment and storage