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The original was posted on /r/opensource by /u/nyquil-fiend on 2023-08-01 04:26:32.

I’m not sure if this is the right community for a post like this, so please direct me to somewhere more appropriate.

Is anyone aware of any software or website that compiles academic papers in such a way that the connections between them can be easily visualized/analyzed? I’m imagining something like this:

Image an open-source software to systematically compile scientific/academic knowledge, create links between topics, and visualize connections between papers and research topics, with a system for updating and review. Imagine Obsidian (note-taking app) combined with a Git (system for merging and adding new contributions), combined with a public-facing voting system to influence direction of grant funding for future research (maybe even based off of crowd-funding). The software underlying this academic system could be open-source with a very rigorous approval process for code updates. This essentially creates a public, interactive database of all scientific knowledge hosted on the Internet and accessible by anyone. A Wikipedia with modern visualization and data analytics tools built in.

Are you a young researcher? Argue your case for the level of impact of a proposed research project by finding its place in the graph of existing knowledge and how it contributes to other projects and issues of society as a whole. Something like this could even replace the current system of grant funding, publication, and peer-review. It wouldn’t actually be a structural change to how the academic peer-review process works, but rather a way of modernizing it to take advantage of modern computing technologies. There is an added benefit of making it easy to conduct meta-analysis of academic work and hold people accountable for the quality of their work.

Does a tool like this exist? If not how could someone go about making one? What obvious issues with a system like this am I overlooking? Do you think something like this would benefit academia? Why or why not?