Welcome to Outbreak Science Rapid PREreview!

What is it?

Outbreak Science Rapid PREreview is an application for rapid, structured reviews of outbreak-related preprints. The platform allows any researcher with an ORCID iD to provide a quick high-level evaluation of preprints via a series of questions to assess the originality and soundness of the research findings. Aggregated data from these reviews is visualized to allow readers to identify the most relevant information. This tool has the capacity to be transformative for on-the-ground health workers, researchers, public health agencies, and the public, as it can quickly unlock key scientific information during an outbreak of infectious diseases.

Our team

Outbreak Science Rapid PREreview is a project born from the collaboration of PREreview and Outbreak Science.

PREreview is an open project fiscally sponsored by the non-profit organization Code for Science & Society. PREreview's mission is to increase diversity in the scholarly peer review process by empowering all researchers to engage with preprint reviews.

Outbreak Science is a non-profit organization aimed at advancing the science of outbreak response, in particular by supporting early and open dissemination of data, code, and analytical results.

Funding

This collaborative project is mainly funded by the Wellcome Trust Open Research Fund, but has also received support from the Mozilla Foundation.

Information about this repository

Outbreak Science Rapid PREreview focuses on providing the best infrastructure to request / provide / analyze feedback (structured reviews) on existing preprints relevant to the outbreak community.

The feedback should be of use to:

1. the outbreak community (academics)
2. workers, editors, journalists (visualization etc.)

Outbreak Science Rapid PREreview does not focus on:

• coordinating research effort / data analysis / calling for research during emergency situations
• becoming / being a preprint server

Join PREreview Slack Channel

Development

Getting started

Required software

1. git is used for versioning in this project.

2. Docker is used to manage services for local development.

This repo also contains configuration files for Visual Studio Code's Remote Containers which reduces the need to manually execute Docker commands; see the Visual Studio Code manual for more information about how to use these.

Creating the environment

1. docker-compose -f .devcontainer/docker-compose.yml up --build

This command will keep running in the shell to display log output from all services; you can stop the server by typing Control+C.

Running commands in the container

1. docker-compose -f .devcontainer/docker-compose.yml exec web bash

The source folder will appear in the container as /workspace; change to that directory before running any npm commands. You can edit these files with your preferred editor and the container will stay updated.

Viewing logs

1. docker-compose -f .devcontainer/docker-compose.yml logs

You can optionally name a service whose logs you want to view; the default is to show logs for all services. Service names are defined in docker-compose.yml and include 'web', 'cache', 'db'.

You should have everything needed to follow the rest of this README.

Dependencies

At the root of this repository run:

npm install

Troubleshooting

If you are having permission issues with npm checkout https://docs.npmjs.com/resolving-eacces-permissions-errors-when-installing-packages-globally

App (web server)

Please note the section above labelled 'Running commands in the container.'

npm run init

to setup the databases.

To seed the app with some data run:

npm run seed

After, run:

npm start

and visit http://127.0.0.1:3000/

If you want to start from an empty state (or reset the DB to an empty state) you can run:

npm run reset

Web extension

Development

To work (or test / demo) the extension you can:

1. start a dev server (run npm start)
2. follow the instruction below depending on whether you want to work with Chrome or Firefox.

Chrome

1. Run npm run extension:watch that will build and watch the extension in the extension directory. ! DO NOT EDIT THE FILES THERE or do not tack them on git, with the exception of manifest.json, fonts/, icons/ and popup.html.
2. Navigate to chrome://extensions/, be sure to toggle the "developer mode", click on "load unpacked" and select the content of the extension directory.

Firefox

1. Run npm run extension:watch-firefox that will build and watch the extension in the extension directory. ! DO NOT EDIT THE FILES THERE or do not tack them on git, with the exception of manifest.json, fonts/, icons/ and popup.html.
2. Navigate to about:debugging, and click on "Load Temporary Add-on" and select the extension/manifest.json file.

Troubleshooting

Never run npm run extension:watch and npm run extension:watch-firefox at the same time as they will overwrite each other. If you did:

1. kill all the node processes (ctr+c in each shell)
2. run killal node to be sure you no longer have node processes running
3. restart the web server npm start and one of the extension watcher npm run extension:watch OR npm run extension:watch-firefox

Production (publish to web stores)

Chrome

1. Run npm install
2. Set the version property of the extension/manifest.json file
3. Run npm run extension:build
4. Run npm run extension:pack
5. Upload the created extension.zip file to the Chrome web store

Firefox

1. Run npm install
2. Set the version property of the extension/manifest.json file
3. Run npm run extension:build-firefox
4. Run npm run extension:pack-firefox
5. Upload the created extension-firefox.zip file to the Firefox web store

Note: to include the unbundled source code of the extension (asked by Mozilla add on) run npm run extension:pack-src and include the following text when you upload the generated extension-src.zip:

The extension is built with webpack (config is webpack-extension.config.js). See more details on the README.md file. The source code is also available on GitHub: https://github.com/prereview/rapid-prereview/

Demoing the platform

This supposes that you have followed the instruction from the rest of this README.

First time

Suggested steps:

1. Start the local services using docker-compose -f .devcontainer/docker-compose.yml up.
2. In a shell attached to the 'web' container:
   • run npm run seed or npm run reset to either seed the database with sample data (or start from a clean state)
   • run npm start to start the web server
3. In another terminal, run npm run extension:watch and update the extension in your browser (see section above for instructions)
4. You can now visit http://127.0.0.1:3000/ and give a demo

When you are done with the demo you can use docker-compose down to shut down the server.

Updating your local install

1. cd into this repository
2. run git fetch followed by git merge origin/master
3. Connect a shell to the web container and run npm install
4. Follow the First time instructions (see above)

Storybook (components playground)

If you want to work on component in isolation run:

npm run storybook

and visit http://127.0.0.1:3030/.

To add stories, add a file that ends with .stories.js in the ./src/components directory.

Tests

Once cloudant and redis are running run:

npm test

Usage stats

Several CouchDB views can give access to usage statistics. For instance, logging in to Cloudant and visiting /rapid-prereview-docs/_design/ddoc-docs/_view/byType?group_level=1 will report a breakdown of the counts per types.

Deployments

We use Azure and IBM Cloudant.

Architecture

We use Azure App Service and run 2 apps:

• rapid-prereview for the web server
• rapid-prereview-service for a process that takes care of:
  • maintaining our search index (listening to CouchDB changes feed)
  • updating the "trending" score of preprints with reviews or requests for reviews on a periodical interval

These 2 apps are run on the same service plan (rapid-prereview-service-plan).

The databases are hosted on IBM Cloudant (CouchDB) and are composed of 3 databases:

• rapid-prereview-docs (public) storing the roles, reviews and requests for reviews
• rapid-prereview-users (private) storing all the user data (and the links user <-> role)
• rapid-prereview-index (private) storing the preprint with reviews or request for reviews search index

We use Azure Cache for Redis to store:

• session data
• cached data for the payload of the public API.

We use Sendgrid (from the Azure marketplace) for emails.

Process

Cloudant

Be aware that all the following will source the production environment variables (see the Azure section below for information to get them).

1. Run npm run cloudant:init to create the databases and push the design documents
2. Run npm run cloudant:set-security to secure the databases
3. Run npm run cloudant:get-security to verify the security object

To update the design documents run: npm run cloudant:ddocs.

To seed the production database (for demos only) run: npm run cloudant:seed (!! note that this performs a hard reset and delete all data in the databases before seeding).

To reset the production database (for demos only) run: npm run cloudant:reset (!! note that this performs a hard reset and delete all data in the databases).

Azure

Visit https://portal.azure.com/ All the resources we used are defined in a rapid-prereview resource group.

1. Install Azure CLI (see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cli/azure/?view=azure-cli-latest)
2. Run az login to login to the CLI
3. Get the private files not checked in to GitHub: ./get-private.sh (if you later update those files, run ./put-private.sh to upload them back)
4. Run npm run build (after having run npm install)
5. Run ./deploy-app.sh to deploy the app and ./deploy-service.sh to deploy the service

To see the logs, run ./log-app.sh or ./log-service.sh. We use pino for logging.

Apps can be restarted with ./restart-app.sh and ./restart-service.sh.

To reset the redis cache run: npm run azure:reset-cache. Be aware that this will source the production environment variables.

To reset all redis data (including sessions) run: npm run azure:reset-redis. Be aware that this will source the production environment variables.

Some basic info about the service health can be found at https://rapid-prereview-service.azurewebsites.net/

Backups

Backups are stored in a blob storage container on azure.

1. Install Azure CLI (see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cli/azure/?view=azure-cli-latest)
2. Run az login to login to the CLI
3. Run npm run backup Be aware that this will source the production environment variables.