FQxI Metascience Platform

An open-source research platform that helps academics and curious minds search, map, and evaluate scientific literature with AI assistance. A Next.js web app sits on top of a Python/FastAPI engine that unifies multiple scholarly databases (ArXiv, OpenAlex, INSPIRE-HEP, NASA ADS) and modern AI models.

Live instance: https://metascience.fqxi.org

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✨ Features

• 🤖 Assistant — a conversational research agent (Claude) that searches, builds citation networks, analyses trends, and assesses papers, rendering rich results inline.
• 🔍 Multi-source search — one query fans out to ArXiv, OpenAlex, INSPIRE-HEP, and NASA ADS, then results are deduplicated and reranked for relevance.
• 🕸️ Citation networks — interactive citation graphs built on an OpenAlex identifier backbone, with Semantic Scholar / OpenCitations for citation data.
• 📈 Trend analysis — theme clustering plus an AI-written synthesis of how a field is evolving.
• 📝 Paper assessment — automated, peer-review-style scoring of an uploaded paper (Gemini), with per-criterion justifications.
• 🧑‍💻 Public Developer API — generate an API key and call the same engines from your own projects (see Developer API).

🏗️ Architecture

┌─────────────────────────┐        ┌─────────────────────────┐
│  frontend/ (Next.js 15) │  HTTP  │  backend/ (FastAPI)     │
│  • App Router UI        │ ─────▶ │  • search orchestrator  │
│  • /api proxy routes    │        │  • citation network     │
│  • /api/v1 public API   │        │  • trends + clustering  │
└───────────┬─────────────┘        │  • AI paper review      │
            │                      └───────────┬─────────────┘
            │ auth + per-user data             │ literature + AI
            ▼                                  ▼
   ┌──────────────────┐            ArXiv · OpenAlex · INSPIRE-HEP
   │  Supabase        │            NASA ADS · Semantic Scholar
   │  (Postgres+Auth) │            Anthropic Claude · Google Gemini
   └──────────────────┘

• Frontend (/frontend) — Next.js 15 (App Router) + HeroUI/Tailwind. Hosts the UI, thin /api proxy routes to the engine, and the public /api/v1 Developer API.
• Backend (/backend) — Python/FastAPI engine that orchestrates the literature sources, citation-network builder, trend clustering, and AI review.
• Supabase — authentication and per-user data (chat history, saved reviews, API keys, feedback) under row-level security.

🚀 Quick start

Prerequisites

• Node.js 18+ and pnpm (or npm)
• Python 3.11+ (3.13 supported)
• A Supabase project (free tier is fine)
• Anthropic API key (Assistant, query understanding, trends)
• Google AI API key (paper review + embeddings)

1. Clone

git clone https://github.com/Kernel-Science/Metascience_Platform.git
cd Metascience_Platform

2. Backend

cd backend
python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate           # Windows: .\.venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1
pip install -r requirements.txt

cp .env.example .env                # then edit .env (see table below)
uvicorn app.main:app --reload       # http://localhost:8000

3. Supabase (database & auth)

In your Supabase project's SQL editor, run the migration files in frontend/ (order doesn't matter, but run all four):

supabase_migration_feedback.sql
supabase_migration_chat.sql
supabase_migration_reviewer3.sql
supabase_migration_api_keys.sql

For profile avatars, create a public Storage bucket named avatars. Enable the Email and (optionally) Google auth providers under Authentication > Providers.

4. Frontend

cd frontend
pnpm install
cp .env.example .env.local          # then edit .env.local (see table below)
pnpm dev                            # http://localhost:3000

For production: pnpm build && pnpm start.

🔑 Environment variables

Backend (backend/.env)

Variable	Required	Purpose
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY	✅	Claude — query understanding, trends, rerank fallback
GOOGLE_API_KEY	✅	Gemini — paper review + embeddings
ANTHROPIC_MODEL	–	Override the Claude model (default claude-sonnet-4-6)
GEMINI_REVIEW_MODEL	–	Override the review model (default gemini-flash-latest)
OPENALEX_MAILTO	–	Email for OpenAlex's polite pool (higher rate limits)
SEMANTIC_SCHOLAR_API_KEY	–	Lifts Semantic Scholar rate limits
ADS_API_TOKEN	–	Enables the NASA ADS source
RERANK_PROVIDER	–	auto / google / anthropic / none
REVIEWER3_API_KEY, REVIEWER3_USER_ID	–	Optional Reviewer3 multi-reviewer integration

Frontend (frontend/.env.local)

Variable	Required	Purpose
NEXT_PUBLIC_SUPABASE_URL	✅	Supabase project URL
NEXT_PUBLIC_SUPABASE_ANON_KEY	✅	Supabase anon key (auth)
NEXT_PUBLIC_SITE_URL	✅	Base URL for auth callbacks (e.g. http://localhost:3000)
NEXT_PUBLIC_BACKEND_URL	✅	FastAPI engine URL (e.g. http://localhost:8000)
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY	✅	Assistant (chat) calls Claude from the Next.js server
SUPABASE_SERVICE_ROLE_KEY	✅*	Server-only; verifies public API keys. Required only for the Developer API.

🚀 Deployment notes

Paper review and the Reviewer3 integration upload PDFs (multipart). If a reverse proxy sits in front of the app (nginx, etc.), its body-size limit must be raised or uploads are rejected before reaching the app — nginx's default client_max_body_size is 1 MB, which rejects almost every academic PDF with a 413 HTML error page (the app then sees the cryptic “Unexpected token <”).

# in the server { } block(s) that proxy to the frontend and backend
client_max_body_size 100m;

Reload after changing it: sudo nginx -t && sudo systemctl reload nginx.

🧑‍💻 Developer API

Signed-in users can create API keys at /developer and call the platform's engines over HTTP at https://<your-host>/api/v1:

Endpoint	Method	Description
/api/v1/search	GET	Multi-source paper search
/api/v1/citation-network	POST	Build a citation graph from a DOI
/api/v1/trends	POST	Trend clustering + AI synthesis for a topic
/api/v1/review	POST	AI paper assessment (multipart file upload)

Authenticate with Authorization: Bearer <key>. Full reference and code samples live on the in-app Developer page. See frontend/README.md for implementation details.

📁 Repository structure

Metascience_Platform/
├── frontend/                 # Next.js web app
│   ├── app/                  # routes (research, citation, review, docs, developer, api)
│   ├── components/           # UI components
│   ├── lib/                  # stores, supabase clients, api gateway helpers
│   └── supabase_migration_*.sql
├── backend/                  # FastAPI engine
│   └── app/
│       ├── routes/           # HTTP endpoints
│       └── services/         # search, citations, trends, review, clustering, cache
└── README.md

📚 Component docs

• Frontend documentation
• Backend documentation
• Search subsystem

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md and the Code of Conduct.

📄 License

MIT.

🛡️ Security

To report a vulnerability, see the Security Policy.