PaperTrail is a cross-platform research workspace built with Expo and Firebase. Researchers can use PaperTrail to manage papers related to their project hassle-free. Additionally, this tool is open-source for the entire research community.
- Save papers to your reading list
- Organize papers by project and topic
- Fetch paper metadata from Crossref by title
- Open PDF links and copy BibTeX
- Manage todos with subtodos and drag reorder
- Edit profile data used in research workflows
- Expo React Native (iOS, Android, Web)
- Firebase Authentication
- Cloud Firestore
- Email and password
Google sign-in is not enabled on iOS.
Use your own Firebase project values in env and console settings.
- Install dependencies
npm install- Create env file for app
cp apps/app/.env.example apps/app/.env- Fill Google OAuth client IDs in
apps/app/.env
EXPO_PUBLIC_GOOGLE_WEB_CLIENT_ID=
EXPO_PUBLIC_GOOGLE_IOS_CLIENT_ID=
EXPO_PUBLIC_GOOGLE_ANDROID_CLIENT_ID=
EXPO_PUBLIC_GOOGLE_EXPO_CLIENT_ID=- Start app
npm run dev:app- Run web
npm run dev:webUse the rules from firebase.firestore.rules in Firebase Console.
- Frontend web can be hosted on GitHub Pages.
- Firebase Auth and Firestore are managed by Firebase.
- No custom backend server is required for core app features.
Google sign-in on native platforms needs proper OAuth client IDs from Google Cloud Console. If these IDs are missing, email login still works, but Google login will fail on native.
We are fully open for collaboration! Submit issues or PRs to contribute to this project.
This project is licensed under the Apache License 2.0.