Our project has two layers: protocol (Fractopus) and product (Copus). While Fractopus incentivizes source attribution for all types of information on the Internet, Copus is an open-source publishing platform designed for interconnected content.
We developed a "bi-directional linking" feature on Copus that can link any part of a piece of content to its exact source, and from the source to every exact place this piece of content is used. The content can be as specific as a text character, an image, an audio or video piece, or a file.
After speaking to friends from DeSci Sino and combining it with our own experience writing papers, we believe "bi-directional linking" can make creating citations, and bibliographies much easier.
The author's experience will look like this:
1. Search for any paper on our platform
2. Copy any part of the paper (any element)
3. Paste it into our platform's content editor, and a "bi-directional link" is automatically created
4. Export to a PDF with citations and a bibliography ready for traditional publishing if needed
5. A reader can go to the source of the cited/quoted part with one click and visit every place it is cited.
Roadmap:
1. September 2024 - Connect to an open paper database (OpenAlex, Semantic Scholar)
2. September 2024 - Convert PDF format papers to MarkDown (using MinerU or Marker)
3. September 2024 - Store MarkDown data to a DA blockchain (i.e. Arweave, 0G)
4. October 2024 - Turn existing citations into bi-directional links
5. November 2024 onward- Invite authors of the papers to claim their works. Encourage authors to invite their co-authors to claim their works too. Educate authors about the writing with bi-directional linking.