Science Live Platform

Transform research into FAIR nanopublications — discoverable, reusable, and properly credited.

Vision

Science Live enables researchers to create FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) nanopublications from every stage of their research — from systematic reviews to data analysis — making scientific work discoverable, reusable, and properly credited while advancing Open Science practices.

Deployed Applications

Science Live Platform

Allows anyone to browse and create signed nanopublications via a user-friendly web interface.

Visit platform.sciencelive4all.org to get started

Zotero Plugin

Allows researchers to create signed nanopublications directly from their Zotero library, as well as search and import nanopubs into their library.

Download: science-live.xpi
Compatibility: Zotero 7+
Install: Download the .xpi file, then in Zotero go to Tools > Plugins and drag the .xpi onto the Plugins window.
Auto-updates are supported via the Zotero plugin manager.
In order to publish, you need a free Science Live Platform account.

Project Status

Phase	Status	Description
✅ Step 1	Complete	Foundation setup (monorepo, React)
✅ Step 2	Complete	Database integration (PostgreSQL)
✅ Step 3	Complete	ORCID authentication and Org support
✅ Step 4	Complete	Nanopub parser and viewer with display modes
✅ Step 5	Complete	Template processing engine for NP creation
✅ Step 6	Complete	Zotero plugin V1 release
🔄 Step 7	In progress	AI tools for NP creation
🔄 Step 8	In progress	AI-powered search and info presentation
⏳ Step 9	Planned	Credit system (templates ready, awaiting first customers)

Architecture

Architecture preferences

Open Source
GDPR compliant (TBD)
Modern developer experience
Serverless and low running cost (economical scale up and down)
Option of deployment full data-sovereignty of user and app data
Avoid hard-dependency on proprietary micro-services
- Self-contained auth broker (better-auth), any OIDC provider can be added
- Plain postgres database via connection string
- Cloudflare is the default deployment but can be hosted elsewhere easily
Future potential for private enterprise self-hosted instance

graph TB
  %% ── Client layer ──────────────────────────────────────────
  subgraph clients ["User Facing"]
    direction LR
    frontend["🌐 <b>Science Live Platform</b><br/><i>Web interface (SPA)</br>React · TypeScript</i><br/>─────────────────<br/>• Search &amp; browse nanopubs<br/>• Create nanopubs using template-based forms<br/>• User account dashboard &amp; settings<br/>• Manage signing keys<br/>• Credit system <i>(TBD)</i>"]
    zotero["🔬 <b>Zotero Plugin</b><br/><i>Addon .xpi · Zotero 7+</i><br/>─────────────────<br/>• Zotero library integration<br/>• Connect via API key<br/>• Search &amp; import nanopubs<br/>• Create nanopubs using Zotero items, template-based forms"]
    homepage["📄 <b>Homepage</b><br/><i>Gatsby · Static Site</i><br/>─────────────────<br/>• Product info &amp; marketing<br/>• Landing pages"]
  end

  %% ── API layer ─────────────────────────────────────────────
  subgraph api ["Backend API — Hono"]
    direction LR
    auth["/auth/*<br/>Better Auth + OIDC"]
    profile["/user-profile/*<br/>Public profiles"]
    sign["/signing/*<br/>Nanopub signing &amp; keys"]
    notif["/notifications/*<br/>User notifications"]
    subgraph utils ["Utilities"]
      prxy["/proxy/*<br/>CORS proxy (SPARQL, etc.)"]
      orc["/orcid/*<br/>ORCID lookup"]
      hlth["/health<br/>Health check"]
    end
  end

  %% ── Data layer ────────────────────────────────────────────
  subgraph data ["Data &amp; Infrastructure"]
    direction LR
    pg[("🐘 <b>PostgreSQL</b><br/>──────────<br/>Users · Orgs · Teams<br/>Keys · Notifications<br/>App data")]
    nanopub["🌍 <b>Nanopub Network</b><br/><i>Knowledge Pixels</i><br/>──────────<br/>Decentralized RDF store<br/>SPARQL endpoints<br/>Trusty URI verification"]
  end

  %% ── External Hosting Services ─────────────────────────────────────
  subgraph ext ["External Hosting Services (Defaults, can be replaced or self hosted)"]
    direction LR
    cf["☁️ Cloudflare<br/>Workers · Hyperdrive<br/>Static Assets (SPA)"]
    neon["🗄️ Neon<br/>Database host"]
    orcid["🆔 ORCID<br/>OIDC Provider"]
    resend["✉️ Resend<br/>Transactional Email"]
  end

  %% ── Connections ───────────────────────────────────────────
  frontend -- "REST / OAUTH" --> api
  zotero -- "REST / API key" --> api
  frontend -. "SPARQL queries<br/>(via proxy or direct)" .-> nanopub

  auth --> pg
  profile --> pg
  sign --> pg
  notif --> pg
  auth -. "OIDC" .-> orcid
  auth -. "email" .-> resend
  api --- cf
  pg ---> neon
  neon --- cf

  %% ── Styles ────────────────────────────────────────────────
  classDef clientBox fill:#e8f4fd,stroke:#4a90d9,stroke-width:2px,color:#1a1a1a
  classDef apiBox fill:#fff3e0,stroke:#f5a623,stroke-width:2px,color:#1a1a1a
  classDef dataBox fill:#e8f5e9,stroke:#4caf50,stroke-width:2px,color:#1a1a1a
  classDef extBox fill:#f3e5f5,stroke:#9c27b0,stroke-width:2px,color:#1a1a1a
  classDef mainBox font-weight:bold

  class frontend,zotero,homepage clientBox
  class auth,profile,sign,notif,prxy,orc,hlth apiBox
  class pg,nanopub dataBox
  class cf,neon,orcid,resend extBox
  class clients,api,data,ext mainBox

Currently the frontend is a static SPA, with no SSR required, and client-side routing using react-router-dom. All data is pulled from the api which includes authentication and the database connection, and all dynamic content (nanopubs) are on the Nanopub Network. This keeps the UX fast and responsive, as well as being easy to deploy as serverless without edge.

Developer Quick Start

Prerequisites

Git
A Postgres database and connection string
If using the recommended devcontainer:
- vscode (or other IDE that supports devcontainer)
- Docker
If NOT using the recommended devcontainer (which has everything built in), you need to manually install:
- Node.js v24 or higher
- npm (comes with Node.js)
- Optional:
  - Zotero (if you want to develop the Zotero plugin)
  - Wrangler (if using Cloudflare)
  - Nektos act (if wanting to run pr-check script or test gh workflows)
If you want to deploy to Cloudflare:
- A Cloudflare account (free tier works fine)
  - Either log into wrangler CLI (npx wrangler login), OR set your CLOUDFLARE_API_TOKEN and CLOUDFLARE_ACCOUNT_ID in both the frontend and api .env files
  - Set up a Cloudflare Hyperdrive connection to your postgres db, and take note of its its UUID.
  - Copy each of the wrangler.jsonc.example files under both api/ and frontend/ folders to wrangler.jsonc and enter your ENVS into them where you see CHANGE_TO_....
  - Create a frontend/.env.production file which should specify VITE_API_URL= pointing to your production API url
- Build and deploy everything from project root: npm run build then npm run deploy

First-time Setup

Clone repository

git clone https://github.com/ScienceLiveHub/science-live-platform.git
cd science-live-platform

Copy environment templates:

cp frontend/.env.example frontend/.env
cp api/.env.example api/.env

Update both .env with your settings and credentials

Mainly, the variables marked REQUIRED must be changed.
Install project (choose either a. or b.)

a. Using Devcontainer (recommended): Start the devcontainer by clicking the blue icon in the bottom-left-most corner of the vscode window. Wait for the container to build for the first time and start running. The running container will automatically close when you exit vscode.

b. Manual setup: Install the Prerequisites and then run npm install.
If you are starting with a blank database, run initial database migrations

Database migrations

You will need to run this initially on a blank database to set up the schema:

npm -w api run db:migrate

Then if you change the database schema, you will need to generate the new migration and apply it to the db:

npm -w api run db:generate
npm -w api run db:migrate

Running the app for local development:

Using vscode Run Task

You can hit Ctrl + Shift + P
Type "Run Task", Enter
Select the runDevelopment task to start the frontend Vite server and backend Wrangler/Bun server.

Alternatively use the npm run dev and npm run dev:api commands.

Visit http://localhost:3000 to see the application.

Using terminal

# Option 1: Run backend using Wrangler dev
npm run dev:api
# Option 2: Run backend using Bun
npm run dev:api-bun

# Run frontend using Vite
npm run dev

Frontend UI Development

We are using shadcn, which is a tool to pull pre-made UI component code from online repositories. This allows for a high degree of customization and transparency of the UI, while still being as quick and easy to use as opaque imported UI libraries.

The components get pulled into the frontend/src/components directory ready for import e.g.: import { Button } from "@/components/ui/button";

There is a helper script to pull new components, which must be run from the frontend folder:

cd frontend
npm run ui:add popover

There are basic official components you can import and customize, or more powerful third-party composites available in other repositories.

Note that some of the components are just composites of simpler components, and you are expected to simply copy the component code into your app yourself rather than use the command.

Styling is done via tailwindcss. We should minimize the amount of custom css we need to manage. The main aspects of the theme can be edited in frontend/src/styles/index.css.

To adjust a specific UI elements style, layout, padding etc, use tailwindcss utility classes e.g.: className="pt-6" to set top padding of the element to 6.

Package updates

Currently we dont have a update manager, so use npx npm-check-updates -w in the project root to check for package updates. Run with -t minor flag to only do minor udpates where there is low risk of breaking anything. Then run it again adding the -u flag to save updates to package.json, then npm i to install them. Make sure you check everything still works, particularly after major version increments.

Note: for packages installed from a git repo (e.g."nanopub-js": "github:vijay-prema/nanopub-js" in package.json) you need to run install again e.g. npm install github:vijay-prema/nanopub-js.

Testing

Test Frontend

# Should show the homepage
open http://localhost:3000

Test API Endpoints

# Health check
curl http://localhost:3001/health

Technology Stack

Both Frontend and Backend

Node.js 24 - Runtime
TypeScript - Type safety
Vitest - Tests

Frontend

React 19 - Frontend Framework
shadcn/ui - Components
Tailwind CSS - CSS/Styling
Formedible - Form generation using Tanstack Form and Zod
Lucide/Simple Icons - Icon sets
React Router - Client-side routing
Vite - Build tool and Dev server

Backend

Hono - API endpoints
Better-Auth - Auth library and user management
Drizzle - ORM
Wrangler - Dev server and CLI for Cloudflare Serverless Deployment (optional)
Bun - Alternative Dev server

Database

PostgreSQL - Primary database
Knowledge Pixels Nanopub Network - Decentralized RDF storage

Default 3rd-party Infrastructure used (can be easily changed)

Cloudflare - Hosting and deployment
Neon - Postgres database
Resend - Email API
ORCID - An OIDC provider
GitHub - Version control

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please open an issue or pull request.

Development Team

Project Lead: Anne Fouilloux (VitenHub AS)
Technical Architecture: Knowledge Pixels + Prophet Town
Semantic Consulting: Barbara Magagna (Mabablue)
Funding: Astera Institute

License

MIT — see package.json.

Links

Platform: https://platform.sciencelive4all.org/
Website: https://sciencelive4all.org
Zotero Plugin: Download .xpi

Contact

Email: contact@vitenhub.no
Book a Call: https://calendly.com/anne-fouilloux/30min
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sciencelive

Acknowledgments

Science Live is supported by the Astera Institute with planned transition to community-driven governance. Built on the nanopublication ecosystem infrastructure deployed by Knowledge Pixels.

Name		Name	Last commit message	Last commit date
Latest commit History 233 Commits
.devcontainer		.devcontainer
.github/workflows		.github/workflows
.vscode		.vscode
agent-docs		agent-docs
api		api
docs		docs
frontend		frontend
homepage		homepage
scripts		scripts
shared/sparql-plugin		shared/sparql-plugin
zotero		zotero
.gitignore		.gitignore
AGENTS.md		AGENTS.md
CITATION.cff		CITATION.cff
LICENSE		LICENSE
README.md		README.md
codemeta.json		codemeta.json
eslint.config.mjs		eslint.config.mjs
mkdocs.yml		mkdocs.yml
package-lock.json		package-lock.json
package.json		package.json

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Science Live Platform

Vision

Deployed Applications

Science Live Platform

Zotero Plugin

Project Status

Architecture

Architecture preferences

Developer Quick Start

Prerequisites

First-time Setup

Database migrations

Running the app for local development:

Using vscode Run Task

Using terminal

Frontend UI Development

Package updates

Testing

Test Frontend

Test API Endpoints

Technology Stack

Both Frontend and Backend

Frontend

Backend

Database

Default 3rd-party Infrastructure used (can be easily changed)

Contributing

Development Team

License

Links

Contact

Acknowledgments

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