Snowreads

Snowreads is a decentralized repository of open-license scientific papers, maintained as a Walrus site. This project does not support a backend, meaning that the application only includes a frontend, utilizing pre-formatted and computed data from JSON files.

Requirements

For details on setting up and using Walrus, including configuration and examples, visit Walrus Setup Documentation.

Deployment Instructions

Follow these steps to deploy Walpapers:

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/MystenLabs/wal-papers.git

2. Navigate to the app directory:

   cd wal-papers/app

3. Run pnpm install

   pnpm install

4. Publish to walrus

   site-builder --config $WALRUS_SITES_CONFIG publish ./dist/ --epochs $N_EPOCHS

Functional Details

All the app's logic is contained in Walrus and Walrus-sites.

Each paper consists of two files stored in Walrus.

1. Its metadata.json which includes information about authors, published-date, abstract etc. Also stores the blob-id of the corresponding pdf file.
2. Its pdf. The actual paper.

Both these two files are stored in Walrus and the metadata.json blob-ids are also included in index.json which is a file under app/public directory. This way the app can fetch metadata for every paper.

Metadata from arXiv are parsed to group papers into categories. This grouping is stored in app/public/papers.json.

There is also app/public/collections.json, which stores a manual grouping of some papers to display on the landing page.

Directories

app

The React application that builds into the Snowreads site.

data

• abs

  Includes paper metadata in json. These files are also uploaded to walrus and fetched from Snowreads to facilitate paper navigation.

• arXiv_<xxx>_manifest.xml

  Arxiv manifest files

• oai-metadata.json

  A subset of the Kaggle arXiv Dataset

scripts

Various scripts that run during the process of moving papers and paper-metadata from arXiv Dataset and various APIs to Walrus.

These scripts were developed during different stages of publishing Snowreads and during different designs. Many of them might be out-dated.

• append-abs-json.sh: Appends blob-id and pdf-size to a metadata.json file
• calc-size.js: Calculates the size of paper categories and edits papers.json to include this information
• check-license.ts: Checks that the license of a paper is among some creative-commons one.
• collection-size.ts: Similar to calc-size.js but for collections.
• combine-datacite-arxiv.ts: Merges files created with metadata-mashup into a single json.
• combine-oai.ts: Merges output of the above script with oai-metadata.json.
• parse-category.ts: "Renames" arXiv encoded category to a human readable name. eg. corr -> Computing Research Repository
• pre-publish.sh: Unpacks arXiv pdfs downloaded from S3 and uploads papers with a creative-commons license. Outdated.
• remove-duplicate-papers.ts: Removes duplicate entries from app/public/papers.json in case of miss-handling.
• store.sh: Stores papers to Walrus
• trim-metadata.js: Removes metadata from papers not having a pdf in PDF_DIR.
• untar-check.sh: Unpacks papers downloaded from arXiv S3 buckets and keeps papers with a creative-commons license.

add-paper

CLI app to add a new paper to a Snowreads collection. Edits app/public/papers.json, app/public/collections.json and creates the paper-metadata json file.

Does not include uploading the paper and its metadata to Walrus.

abs-indexer

Calculates the blob-id of the paper metadata jsons and produces index.json linking paper arxiv-id to its metadata blob-id.

metadata-mashup

Calls arXiv metadata API and DataCite API to collect paper metadata.

healthcheck

Manual tests for checking paper and paper-metadata availability and correctness.

prebuilt

Converts app/public/index.json to a walrus-site ws-resources.json: prebuilt property in order to facilitate fetching arxiv-metadata by url. 🚧 WIP 🚧

Note

Ensure that you have reviewed the Walrus documentation for details on usage, setup, and configuration: Walrus Setup Guide.