- preprint sources, bioRxiv and medRxiv, parsed and converted for review
- 2
- core features delivered in the MVP
- 7
- invested by Aleph One alongside development
- $50k
Market challenges
Dropcite’s mission is to simplify and improve the scholarly review of scientific articles before publication, and to open up discussion of those articles to the entire scientific community, through a custom-built platform.
Tech challenge
PDF-based reviews and comment navigation
Scientific articles arrive as PDFs. Reviewers needed to read them, select any passage, comment on it, and move between comments and the text they refer to, without leaving the platform.
Solution
We use PDF.js to render PDF files as HTML, so users can read and select the text. On top of it we built annotation features: users select a passage and leave a comment attached exactly to it. We store the position of every commented passage, so other users see the highlights and comments too.
Clicking a comment scrolls the page to the passage it refers to and highlights it. It works the other way too: clicking highlighted text shows the related comments. Users can also simply drag and drop a PDF to add an article.
Delivery
01The MVP
- The custom, interactive Dropcite platform
- A parser that imports academic articles from bioRxiv and medRxiv and converts them to HTML on the platform
- User accounts with integrated login options
- Commenting and discussion, including quoting, hashtags and likes
- Article recommendations based on subjects of interest
- A built-in search engine
- PDF drag and drop
02Next steps
- Commenting on precisely selected text
- A shared virtual space for reviewing articles as a team
- Smarter search algorithms and filters
- Paid membership for private journal communities
Tech stack
Bring us
the hard part.
Complex platforms, overdue rewrites, agentic workflows. That’s the work we enjoy most.