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Open-Reposit

What should we build?

The problem

Research papers, theses, articles, and other intellectual work are scattered across journals, repositories, university websites, personal websites, blogs, and many other places.

Finding good work can be difficult. Information is often organized differently from one platform to another, and the work itself can become disconnected from the people, researchers, and institutions behind it.

OpenReposit is an attempt to solve this.

What we're trying to build

OpenReposit aims to provide a structured place where people and institutions can publish, organize, discover, and discuss intellectual work.

People could have profiles and publish things such as:

Institutions could have verified profiles and affiliations, making it possible to distinguish verified institutional identities from ordinary personal accounts.

Work could also be organized by fields and types, making it easier to browse and discover rather than simply searching through disconnected repositories.

We also want the platform to make published work more interactive.

For example, someone could publish an ongoing research idea or thesis, and other people could read it, discuss it, contribute their own thoughts or work, and express support through mechanisms such as voting.

But we have not decided exactly how any of this should work yet.

What should we build?

This discussion is about figuring that out.

We want to hear from researchers, students, developers, designers, institutions, and anyone who has an opinion about how a platform like this should work.

Things worth discussing include:

Don't feel limited to these questions.

If you think our approach is wrong, say so. If you have a better idea, propose it.

The goal is to figure out what is actually worth building before we lock the platform into a particular design.

Creative direction

OpenReposit is also being developed openly from a creative and branding perspective.

We want to hear ideas about:

You can post concepts, sketches, mockups, or complete designs.

What about the name?

OpenReposit is currently the working name.

We are open to better names if someone has one.

If you think the project should have a completely different name, suggest it here and explain why.

How you can contribute

You don't have to be a developer.

You can contribute by:

For code, use issues and pull requests once an implementation direction has been established.

For ideas and direction, start the conversation here.

Open question

If you were building OpenReposit from scratch, what would you build first?

What would make you actually want to use it?

Contact

Discussion