The Journal Hub is a community-focused project that aims to give its users a place to gather and discuss research that interests them and their communities. Using the Journal Hub, a user can:

• Create a discussion space (aka showcase) based on article or publication metadata from open-source databases, such as arXiv or PubMed
• Create private groups for their communities.
• Assign new showcases to public discourse or private conversations where only group members can participate.

If you have received an invitation URL, you should check the 'Manage Groups' page that you may find by clicking on your user avatar on the navigation bar. There, you may find a pending invitation for the group that generated the invitation URL that you have used. After accepting, you may browse the group's showcase via the Explore tab in the navigation bar, selecting the group name in the 'Scope' field.

The first thing to do is to create a group in Journal Hub. You can do that in the 'Manage groups' page found by clicking your user avatar in the navigation bar. Then, click 'Create group' and define the name and description appropriate for your community. After you have created the group, you may create a discussion space (showcase) in the Showcase tab of the navigation bar. To limit the showcase's discussion to only members of the new group, make sure to only select that group in the 'Showcase Scope' checkboxes. After successful showcase creation, group members will be able to find the showcase in the Explore tab. Each such showcase's comments will only be available only to members of the group.

There are two ways to invite someone to a group, inviting via e-mail or via a group invitation URL. The first method is encouraged for single person invites, and the second for en-masse invites.

• Email invite: Assuming that an e-mail has previously signed-in to Journal Hub, it can be used to invite the user. However, please note that if an email has been used for more than one oauth providers, all accounts will be invited to the group.
• Invitation URL: By clicking the 'dots' icon in a group card in the 'Manage groups' page, a group invitation URL can be generated. This can then be shared as a hyperlink to collaborators. When clicked, this hyperlink will redirect them to Journal Hub, and generate a pending group invitation for them to join the group.

You may currently delete a showcase via the options in the upper right of the paper's card in the discussion space. Work is on-going to better handle this also with moderation.

Not at the moment. You may currently access Journal Hub from your mobile device's browser.

For security and discourse quality reasons, the Journal Hub does not allow for custom user registration. Instead, users can use an oauth provider to sign-in. Please contact [email protected] if you wish to use another provider.

Currently, each version of a publication or pre-print will correspond to a separate independent discussion space (showcase) in Journal Hub. Therefore, comments left in one version are not integrated in another. This issue is being considered in updates to the application.

Currently, you may find each group's showcases in the Explore tab. Simply select the group in the 'Scope' filter and you will get all the group's showcases as a result. From there, you can filter with further criteria such as the paper's identifier. You may also use the 'More Groups' button in each card to go to another group's showcase of the same publication or pre-print.

If you encounter a bug, let us know at [email protected]. All reported bugs will be handled by order of severity.

Most likely, this happened because the user is not logged in during the donation process. We allow for donations from non-users as we do not want to force account creation for contributors. If this issue has occurred to you, please let us know at [email protected] and we will cross-check donation records.

Hosting sensitive data for work that has been published or that is work-in-progress raises several legality and security issues that we are still investigating. Currently, it is only allowed to create discussions for publications or pre-prints available in the sources integrated into Journal Hub, as found in the Showcase tab in the navigation bar.

We are actively considering several sources to integrate into Journal Hub. However, we urge contacting us at [email protected] for sources that are desired. We will prioritize working towards integrating sources that are actively being requested by the Journal Hub community.

For security reasons, the Journal Hub is currently not open-sourced. However, this is being considered for the future.

Currently, Journal Hub's single developer is iokarkan. Regarding UI/UX and usage scope, a small group of volunteers is already providing feedback for various aspects of the project. If you are interested in supporting the Journal Hub as a developer, please contact us at [email protected].

The Journal Hub is currently self-funded, but is accepting donations from supporters. Check out the Contribute tab for more details.