ResearchHub product update — 3/14/22
Redesigning our homepage, brainstorming on peer review, and improving the paper upload flow
Homepage Redesign
We recently refreshed our homepage to increase the information density within the feed. To do this, we made the cards smaller and we condensed the information they display which allows us to show more items above the fold. When viewing the homepage from a standard desktop size, this change almost doubled the number of papers available to six.
Card changes:
- Removed abstract preview-text
- Hubs were moved to the top of the card and the Hub preview image was removed
- “Submitted by” was moved to the top of the card
- Metadata was moved to the bottom of the card
In addition to these UI changes, we also improved how content is filtered within the homepage feeds. We used to place an emphasis on filtering by the type of content, but we shifted toward filtering by a piece of content’s attributes.
- The main homepage filters shifted from [Papers|Hypotheses|Posts] -> [Trending|Most Discussed |Newest |Top Rated]
This allows users to filter by engagement, rather than by post-type, which will help make community engagement more discoverable through the homepage. Also, the post-type filters are now on the right side of the post’s homepage card.
Finally, we also built a new algorithm to show the best & most trending papers. It is not fully released yet (hopefully over the next two weeks!), but for anyone who wants to preview it feel free to click this link: https://www.researchhub.com/?hot_v2=true
Improved RSC Withdrawal System
We overhauled the RSC Withdrawal System by adding more transparency within the profile page’s “transactions” tab and building in-app notifications that ping each user whenever their transactions are completed.
Before, it was unclear exactly how and when someone earned RSC. We decided to expose a user’s whole RSC translog, so now every RSC earned, or spent from your account is in your transactions tab under your profile.
We are still iterating on improving this flow — like showing the paper or comment you upvoted/supported to give you the most transparency around where you earned your RSC, who you earned it from, or who you gave it to.
Peer Review Design & Product Work
We have been considering adding a peer review feature to ResearchHub. The UX of this feature is quite complex for a number of reasons:
- Peer reviews are generally “anonymous”
- Peer reviewers usually aren’t paid for their work
- Finding peer reviewers is a time-consuming process
Here are some early designs we created to help inform our thought process:
If you are passionate about reforming peer review and would like to contribute to how this feature is developed — check out our community’s discussion on this feature here: https://github.com/ResearchHub/researchhub-web/discussions/1083
Improved Paper Upload Flow
We received a ton of bug reports around the paper upload flow over the past few weeks so we took some time this sprint to identify the issue. It turns out one of the services we use to fetch a paper’s metadata can take a long time. When this API call is too long it can break the upload flow.
We are also making the paper upload flow asynchronous. This will keep our main backend service free from long-running tasks, which allows the user to browse ResearchHub while they wait for their new paper submission to be uploaded.
Unfortunately, this UX is a little tricky — so we are currently doing some product work on deciding how to best display this new asynchronous upload flow on the front-end.
Referral Program Updates
We updated our referral program so editors can now earn RSC for referring users to the ResearchHub! We used to have a robust referral program but it was spammed by malicious users who did not add value to our platform. By gating this program to editors, we can prevent spam while also incentivizing our most dedicated community members to help ResearchHub grow.
Other Updates
- Brainstorming around integrating scientific NFT into ResearchHub — there are a number of different approaches projects in the space are taking towards NFTs, so the design space is fairly large.
- Improving our login flow — we plan to remove the requirement for 3rd party cookies and are considering adding new social logins to ResearchHub
If you are interested in contributing to ResearchHub’s mission of accelerating the pace of scientific research — join us by signing up at https://www.researchhub.com/
