An initial effort on building a platform for the Community-driven Open Research Ecosystem (CORE) has finally come to life: a development site at GitHub.org and a phase-1 MVP deployment at openarxiv.org. Here is the README.md file about the project:

CORE: Community-driven Open Research Ecosystem

OpenArxiv (CORE) as a live instantiation of CORE, is a novel platform for the ePrint service backed by rigorous, community-based evaluation of scientific research leading to a self-sustaining research ecosystem — built with vanilla PHP 8+, MySQL/MariaDB, and modern MVC techniques.

🌟 Why CORE?

A deep structural crisis in academia requires a complete reform for continued scientific innovation. CORE is designed to ensure fairness, transparency, and efficiency in knowledge dissemination, resource allocation, and career advancement, creating the conditions for a new era of innovation in basic research.

• The overarching principle is the Diversity Principle — advocating for a merit-based system that constantly cultivates diverse ideas and directions to foster innovation.
• Community-driven — engaging the entire community so that participation is all-inclusive, voices are democratic, and diverse ideas and directions in research are
  preserved and actively promoted; also implying that it mirrors the structure of a
  healthy society with built-in monopoly-breaking measures against the top and a ro-
  bust safety net for the bottom.
• Open — indicating an open-ended, open-minded, open-to-risk, and dynamically calibrated system that maintains transparency of the procedure and process while protecting each individual’s will and privacy, constantly evolving to meet new challenges and resist gaming.
• Research — requiring scientific, rigorous, and merit-based ethos and approaches.
• Ecosystem — implementing healthy, self-correcting feedback loops and proper incentive mechanisms in a living, self-regulating system.

CORE introduces a Rigorous Dual Evaluation System for STEM and other research fields to implement proper incentives and complete the feedback cycle:

• Three research activities — original research, indirect contributions (e.g., peer review), and funding/resource requests — are evaluated using quantitative, continually refined metrics.
• Quality over quantity — the community-based evaluation system rewards the quality, not the quantity, of accomplishments (AL).
• Credit-based incentives — members earn credits (ECP) and advance in roles as they accumulate experience and contributions.
• High-risk, high-reward research — gets a better chance of being funded through sophisticated incentive mechanisms.

🚀 Features (Phase 1 — MVP)

💡 Upcoming Major Features

• Evaluation system — rating, review, and comment workflows
• Achievement Levels (AL) — quantified researcher accomplishments
• Earned Credit Points (ECP) — credit-based incentive system
• Committees — governance and moderation bodies
• Document types — 19+ document categories (o-doc, r-doc, a-doc, f-doc, p-doc, etc.)
• Collaboration — value-added features for collaborations / teams
• Member Organizations — sponsoring member institutions, foundations, etc.
• Funding system — allocation of research resources
• Job/Hiring system — using the new evaluation system
• Voting system — election and award workflows
• Tagging system — fraud / user-defined tags
• API & theming — plugin architecture and custum themes

🛠️ Tech Stack

No frameworks. No Composer. No dependencies. Pure vanilla PHP.
Custom MVC Architecture. Front Controller. Responsive UI.

🔒 Security

• CSRF protection — tokens validated on all POST requests
• XSS prevention — htmlspecialchars() on all user-generated output
• SQL injection — PDO prepared statements exclusively
• Password storage — password_hash() / password_verify()
• Visibility & access — Guest (1) → Member (10) → Rater (20) → Reviewer (30) → Moderator (40) → Leader (50)
• Admin roles — Viewer (100) → Updater (200) → Editor (300) → Senior Editor (400) → Chief Editor (500) → Administrator (600)

📂 Project Structure (MVC Architecture)

core/
├── public/                  # Web root (only public entry point)
│   ├── index.php            # Front controller
│   ├── js/                  # Javascripts
│   └── css/                 # Stylesheets
├── app/
│   ├── controllers/         # Business logic (skinny controllers)
│   │   ├── admin/           # Admin controllers
│   │   ├── api/             # Ajax lookups
│   │   └── XxxController.php
│   ├── models/              # Database interactions (fat models)
│   │   ├── Xxx.php
│   │   ├── evaluations/     # Evaluation models
│   │   ├── lookups/         # Lookup/Dictionary tables
│   │   ├── parameters/      # Model parameters
│   │   └── system/          # System utilities
│   ├── views/               # HTML templates
│   │   ├── partials/        # Shared partials (header, footer)
│   │   ├── errors/          # Error pages (400, 403, 404, 500)
│   │   ├── auth/            # Login, register, ORCID
│   │   ├── member/          # Member profiles
│   │   ├── repository/      # Document views
│   │   ├── admin/           # Admin dashboard
│   │   └── home/            # Home page
│   ├── engine/              # System mechanics (ErrorHandler)
│   └── config/
│       └── routes.php       # Route definitions
├── config/
│   ├── config.php           # Global settings
│   └── Database.php         # PDO singleton connection
├── database/
│   └── mysql.txt            # Full database schema with seed data
├── storage/
│   ├── uploads/             # Secure PDF/Zip storage
│   └── logs/                # Error logs
├── plugins/                 # Extensibility (MathJax support)
├── themes/                  # UI themes (high-contrast)
└── references/              # Reference articles (read-only)

📦 Requirements

• PHP 8.0+
• MySQL 8.0+ / MariaDB 10.4+
• Web server (Apache/Nginx) or PHP built-in server for development

⚙️ Installation & Setup

• Local installation and development

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/wtannd/core.git
cd core

# Create the database
mysql -u root -p < database/mysql.txt

# Copy and edit configuration
cp config/config.example.php config/config.php
# Edit config.php with your database credentials and settings

# Start the development server
php -S localhost:8000 -t public/

Visit http://localhost:8000 in your browser.

• Deployment on web hosting service
  • Upload your entire repository (excluding any local config.php) to the server.
  • Create DB on Host using the host’s control panel (like cPanel)
  • Run Intall Script by navigating to https://yourdomain.com/install.php.
  • Enter the database credentials you just created and your desired admin login.
  • Delete the install script once it succeeds.

📄 License

This project is licensed under the GNU GPLv3 License – see the LICENSE file for details.

📌 Links & References

• Website: openarxiv.org
• ORCID: orcid.org
• MirrorUniverse: mirroruniverse.org
• References: Original_Motivation, Example_OePRESS, CORE