A Cross-platform Mobile Application to Read Research Articles on the Go
The availability of biomedical literature has increased in the last decade, PubMed holds about 30 million papers with an additional million papers added annually. However, the enormous resources being produced make it hard to find relevant documents from databases, without the right skillset, traditional databases like PubMed might seem difficult to use. The REGO mobile application is designed to provide research papers to users in real-time, with a graphical user interface designed with React Native and functionality provided through Node JS and Mongo DB, it uses GraphQl as the middleware, data is retrieved from NCBI using E- search and E-summary, from NCBI E-Utilities API. REGO can: recommend papers based on user’s keywords; run queries; allow the user to save favourite papers; provide abstracts and produce full-text publications, if they have open access. REGO is also equipped to store user data information and preferences in the local application state using Redux, this ensures a more personalised user experience.
- Frontend (user-interface) built with React and React Native
- Backend (web-server) built with Javascript
- Graphql used as an API to connect the frontend and backend
- MongoDb used as a Database of choice
- Research papers to be obtained using the NCBI’s Entrez utils API.
The packaged android version 1.0 of the application is available for download here.
To package your own version of the application:
- Set up a react native development environment using this guide
- Clone the repository locally and navigate into the Rego directory in the frontend directory and run the following commands
cd ./src/frontend/Rego
npm install
npx react-native run-android # for debug mode android application
npx react-native run-ios # for debug mode iOS application
npx react-native run-android --variant=release # for production ready android application
npx react-native run-ios --variant=release # for production ready ios application
- Docs:
- Contains project documentation and wiki files
- Output:
- Contains the screen-captures of the rego app in use
- Scripts:
- Contains utility scripts for the project
- Src:
- Workflow:
- Contains the workflow and implementation description of the project
- Affiliation:
- Bioscience Research Center,Pwani University, P.O. Box 195-80108, Kilifi, Kenya
- Roles/Contribution:
- Team lead
- Technical lead
- Affiliation:
- Public Health Biotechnology Unit, Institute of Child Health, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria
- Roles/Contribution:
- Lead writer
- Team co-lead
- Affiliation:
- Molecular Biology and Biotechnology Department, University of Dar es salaam
- Roles/Contribution:
- Technical contribution