Paperstars
@paperstarsorg.bsky.social
130 followers 790 following 200 posts
⭐ Rate and review research papers - anonymously, with academic verification. 🧠 Not artificial intelligence. Actual intelligence. 🙌 MVP done! Come explore it 🔬 Science deserves more than summaries. 👉 paperstars.org
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paperstarsorg.bsky.social
Books have Goodreads.
Restaurants have Tripadvisor.
Science deserves the same.
Goodreads for science.
Not AI. Actual intelligence.
paperstarsorg.bsky.social
AI has no accountability.
On Paperstars, reviews are anonymous — but verified with an academic email.
Safe, credible voices.
paperstarsorg.bsky.social
If science had star ratings like Goodreads, what paper in your field would be a 5/5 - and why?
paperstarsorg.bsky.social
the flagging is simply to prevent misconduct and is on the admin-side flag for me to investigate. if the review is genuine, it stands! but as was pointed out to me, this may be a problem for sleuths, so in this thread, we have come up with potential solutions!
paperstarsorg.bsky.social
also there seems to be a misunderstanding about the platform which is what may have enraged you - i absolutely *do not* care if you think a paper was good or bad. 1-star or 5-stars... as long as they are real and honest.
paperstarsorg.bsky.social
So if you have something helpful to add I’m really, genuinely interested to hear what you have to say! I’m actively seeking feedback, but let’s try and be nice about it 😊 I’m a person too
paperstarsorg.bsky.social
Such as a flagging system, sleuth authentication, and area-specific home page (all just from this thread)
paperstarsorg.bsky.social
In terms of the potential problems: I’m super open to feedback and if you check the whole thread, you’ll see that I agree with several points and have made a note to incorporate these features
paperstarsorg.bsky.social
Oh no! I was just pointing out that your initial comment was just unhelpful to the discussion as it was simply mean, with no context of your opinion. Of course you are entitled to any opinion and if this isn’t for you, then scroll on by, but simply being rude isn’t helpful.
paperstarsorg.bsky.social
thank you for demonstrating why we have moderation for reviews 😊
paperstarsorg.bsky.social
i'm going to choose optimism here and say "yay"! 😅
paperstarsorg.bsky.social
hm i mean i'm not averse to a human approval step but this could maybe be done at the point of profile creation, instead of waiting to be reported or flagged.
paperstarsorg.bsky.social
ha i was just discussing this problem - ~science~ is a vast area with niches so narrow you really want to be able to drill down into your specific area. so yeah we want to be able to have a more "curated" homepage for logged-in users, specific to their specific areas of interest
paperstarsorg.bsky.social
maybe some kind of sleuth authentication - like an "all access pass/ override"?
paperstarsorg.bsky.social
right now, best you can do is rate them 1 star and give a valid reason in the review. just bc it's flagged doesn't mean it's necessarily malicious targeting it's just something to for us to investigate. but i'd love to think about this more for a future feature!
paperstarsorg.bsky.social
absolutely! but hopefully the community will help out there too as "recently reviewed" papers move to the top for others to see. but yeah, combatting the *internet* is a valid concern we have already been gearing up for
paperstarsorg.bsky.social
me too! behind the scenes i'm just an ECR trying to make the scientific landscape a little better 😊
paperstarsorg.bsky.social
*i.e. if a user leaves 3 negative reviews consecutively OR if they leave 3 negative reviews for any single author over time. this is to prevent author bashing or harassment. flagging system bc users are anon to us too and a new pseudonym is generated per paper
paperstarsorg.bsky.social
good point. since we currently have an admin-level flagging system for repeat negative ratings* for us to investigate. so it will be easy to implement the same for repeat positive reviews!
paperstarsorg.bsky.social
are! they are based! 🤦‍♀️
paperstarsorg.bsky.social
later we'll also have community moderation in place too
paperstarsorg.bsky.social
That’s a really fair concern and you’re right, past attempts struggled with gaming the system. We’re tackling this by requiring structured reviews (not just rating), moderation, and admin level checks for unusual patterns. The aim is to make the score harder to game and more trustworthy.
paperstarsorg.bsky.social
The “qualitative metric” comes from the community average. it’s like Goodreads, TripAdvisor, or Amazon reviews - one review matters, but it’s the aggregation across lots of thoughtful reviews that makes the score meaningful.
paperstarsorg.bsky.social
Great point! The stars aren’t based on a structured review form so the score reflects a qualitative assessment across these categories, not just a vibe check. The written review sits alongside the stars too, so the context is never lost.
paperstarsorg.bsky.social
ima jump in here - The cool bit (imo) with Paperstars is the star rating - it feeds into a visible score for the paper itself: a qualitative metric instead of a quantitative one. We’re brand new and finding our feet, so I’d love to hear your feedback if you try it 😀