NexusScholar: Research Paper Analytics and Collaboration Network

University of Pisa

• Course: Large Scale and Multi-Structured Data Bases
• Academic Year: 2025-2026
• Instructors: Pietro Ducange, Alessio Schiavo
• Team: Daniele Congiusti, Andrea Covelli, Luca Giannini

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1. Introduction (Storytelling)

NexusScholar is a platform designed to help researchers, students, and R&D departments navigate the vast landscape of scientific literature. While platforms like Google Scholar help you find papers, NexusScholar helps you understand the connections. It reveals the most influential authors in a specific field, tracks how scientific ideas evolve through citation networks, and identifies hidden collaboration pathways between institutions.

2. Architecture Overview

The system implements a Polyglot Persistence architecture, utilizing the right database for the right data structure.

• MongoDB (Document DB): Stores rich content (papers, author profiles). Configured as a replica set for high availability and read scaling.
• Neo4j (Graph DB): Manages complex relationships (citations, co-authorship) for network analysis.
• Spring Boot Backend: Provides business logic, data orchestration, and RESTful APIs.

Technology Stack

• Backend: Java 25 (LTS), Spring Boot 3.x
• Databases: MongoDB, Neo4j
• Infrastructure: Docker, Docker Compose
• CI/CD: GitHub Actions, SonarCloud, Codecov, JUnit, Testcontainers

3. Local Setup Guide

The project is containerized for easy setup.

Prerequisites

• Docker and Docker Compose installed.

Running the Application

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone [https://github.com/AndreaCovelli/NexusScholar.git](https://github.com/AndreaCovelli/NexusScholar.git)
   cd NexusScholar

2. Configure Environment Variables: Create a .env file in the root directory by copying .env.example.

   cp .env.example .env

3. Start the Services:

   docker compose --env-file .env -f deployment/docker-compose.local.yml up -d

4. Initialize the MongoDB Replica Set: (Required only on the first run). Run the initialization script to configure the MongoDB containers into a replica set.

   bash deployment/scripts/init-mongo-replica.sh

4. API Access

Once the application is running, the RESTful API documentation is available via Swagger UI:

http://localhost:8080/swagger-ui.html

A Postman collection is available at: experiments/NexusScholar.postman_collection.json.

5. Documentation Index

The complete project documentation is located in the /docs folder:

• 01 Analysis (Idea, Requirements, UML)
• 02 Architecture (DB Design, Queries, Distribution)
• 03 Implementation (Code Structure, API, CAP Analysis)
• 04 Testing and Validation