A FORRT project · free and open source

What's known about the paper you're reading.

FORRT ORE — the Open Research Extension — spots the papers on the page you are looking at and tells you what is known about them — replications and reproductions, retractions and expressions of concern, PubPeer discussion, and free full text.

A journal article page with an ORE pill next to the DOI and the ORE tab at the edge of the page

What you see

One small pill appears next to each paper ORE recognises. The pill keeps its shape while lookups are still running, so nothing jumps around as results arrive.

One pill, four signals

Left to right: whether the DOI was read off the page or found by search, whether a free full text exists, whether the paper is discussed on PubPeer, and how many replications or reproductions are on record. A dimmed segment can mean nothing was found, or that the check is pending or unavailable. Point at the pill to read each status and available action; click to keep it open.

The indicator pill shown closed with every signal, closed with none, and open as a panel of rows

On the article, and on every reference

On journal and preprint pages, a pill sits next to the article's own DOI and next to the references below it, so you can see at a glance which of the works a paper builds on have been replicated — or retracted.

An article page with ORE pills next to the title and each reference, one showing a retraction flag

The Meta Report panel

A draggable ORE tab sits at the edge of the page. Open it for the full picture: every known replication and reproduction colour-coded by outcome, retraction and concern notices, and which of the paper's references have their own entry in the FLoRA Replication Atlas or a PubPeer thread. If the paper you are reading is itself a replication, the panel shows the original study instead.

A report can be saved as a PDF, or shared as a link that opens it as a web page for colleagues who do not have ORE. The report travels inside the link itself — nothing is uploaded, and no server ever sees what you were reading.

The ORE Meta Report side panel listing replications with outcome badges

Where it works

ORE runs on any page that mentions papers. Three places get purpose-built treatment.

Search results: Google Scholar, Scopus, PubMed and more

Each search result gets a panel with its DOI, a one-click citation in the style you chose, open-access status, PubPeer comment count and replication count. A DOI printed on the page is shown plain; hover it and the panel says it was found there.

When a result carries no DOI at all, ORE searches Crossref and OpenAlex by title and narrows the candidates by first author and year. A DOI found that way is underlined with dots and labelled “Matched by search” — a match to check rather than trust.

ORE annotates results on Google Scholar, OpenAlex, Semantic Scholar, PubMed, Europe PMC, Scopus and EBSCOhost (the research.ebsco.com interface, e.g. PsycINFO). Where results carry no DOI on the page, ORE takes it from the site's own record of the work — OpenAlex and Semantic Scholar through their public APIs, PubMed and Europe PMC through NCBI's ID converter, and Scopus and EBSCOhost through the same requests the page itself makes to that site — so panels appear without a title search.

A Google Scholar result with an ORE panel showing a DOI matched by title
A result whose DOI was found by search. A DOI read off the page carries no underline.

Google Sheets

Open a spreadsheet of papers — a screening sheet, a reading list, a reference export — and the whole sheet is scanned, including rows below the fold, with a summary of what was found. Retracted papers and expressions of concern are named individually and linked to their notices, and the popup opens for them even when nothing in the sheet has replication data.

A Google Sheet of papers with an ORE card reporting replication data for three DOIs

PubMed, publishers, preprint servers, anywhere else

The general content script reads DOIs from meta tags, JSON-LD, links, tables and visible text, and follows single-page navigations so the pills stay in step as you click through a site. Publisher-specific placement rules keep pills where they belong on the sites researchers use most.

A journal article page showing the ORE pill next to the DOI and the ORE tab

Your controls

ORE is meant to sit quietly in the background. When it does not, you can turn it down.

Per-site switches

The toolbar popup hides ORE on the current page, disables it for the whole domain, or reports a placement problem on that site. Disabled domains are remembered in your settings.

The ORE toolbar popup with options to disable on a domain, hide on the page, report an issue, or open settings

Settings

Set or remove the API contact email sent to Crossref, OpenAlex, Unpaywall and NCBI, choose your citation style — copied with its italics intact, so it pastes into Word or Google Docs correctly formatted — cap how much cache is kept, manage the domain blocklist, and mute PubPeer commenters you would rather not see.

The settings page showing the email setup card and citation style options

Install

ORE is not on the Chrome Web Store yet, so it is installed as an unpacked extension. It works in Chrome and Edge (version 116 or later).

  1. Download flora-extension.zip from the releases page — it is built automatically from the latest code.
  2. Unzip it to a folder you will keep (deleting it uninstalls the extension).
  3. Open chrome://extensions or edge://extensions.
  4. Turn on Developer mode, top right.
  5. Click Load unpacked and select the unzipped folder.
  6. The welcome tour opens after installation. Choose Open Settings at the end, or Skip to Settings, to optionally enter a contact email. ORE needs it for title-to-DOI matching and Unpaywall lookups. Existing DOI, replication, retraction and PubPeer checks work without it. The address accompanies Crossref, OpenAlex, Unpaywall and NCBI requests.

Building from source instead? See the READMEnpm install && npm run build, then load the repository root as an unpacked extension.

Privacy, briefly

ORE has no accounts, no analytics and no tracking. What leaves your browser includes paper identifiers, article titles and the contact email you entered in settings, which goes to Crossref, OpenAlex, Unpaywall and NCBI as the address they ask for. On an article page, the address of that page goes to PubPeer with the comment lookup for the paper. Retractions are checked entirely on your own machine against a list downloaded once a week, so no DOI is ever sent anywhere to ask “was this retracted?”.

Data sources

What Source
Replications and reproductions FORRT Replication Database, surfaced through the FLoRA Replication Atlas
Retractions and expressions of concern Retraction Watch / The Center for Scientific Integrity, released with Crossref under CC BY 4.0
Title → DOI resolution and citations Crossref and OpenAlex
Open-access full text Unpaywall, plus PubMed Central for PMC-hosted articles
Post-publication comments PubPeer

Something looks wrong?

A pill is in the wrong place

Use “Report an issue on this domain” in the toolbar popup, or open an issue with the URL. Publisher layouts change often and each site is fixed individually.

A DOI matched the wrong paper

Title matches are marked with an underline and no tick precisely because they can be wrong. Please report the case — it helps tune the matching threshold.

A replication is missing

The evidence comes from the FORRT Replication Database, which is community-curated. You can contribute an entry.

Nothing appears at all

Check that an email is set in Settings, that the domain is not on your blocklist, and that the page actually names a DOI or a paper title.