Welcome to the SnowballR project! This page will give you a quick overview over the project.
SnowballR is a web-based tool supporting Systematic Literature Reviews (SLR). The goal of SnowballR is to automate reference retrieval, facilitate transparent inclusion/exclusion decisions, and maintain a clear audit trail of the review process.
Users can create dedicated projects and invite other collaborators to participate. Each project follows a structured paper selection process based on the snowballing methodology, which helps to identify relevant literature through citation networks.
Papers within a project are processed through multiple review stages. In each stage:
- New papers are discovered and added.
- Multiple reviewers assess each paper independently.
- Papers are accepted or declined based on consensus.
- Accepted papers proceed to the next stage.
This iterative process continues until a final, curated set of papers is selected that satisfies the project's research criteria.
The platform ensures transparency, collaboration, and efficiency in literature selection — making it especially suitable for systematic reviews, thesis preparation, and research group coordination.
SnowballR consists of the following components. For a more detailed introduction into the single components, follow the links to the according repository:
- The frontend implements a graphical user interface (GUI) for interacting with the application. It communicates with the backend via gRPC to fetch data, trigger actions, and update the interface based on the system state.
- The API exposes the implemented backend functionality and provides a structured, type-safe gRPC interface for communication between clients and the backend.
- The backend listens for incoming gRPC requests, processes the requested operations, and responds with appropriate gRPC messages based on the application logic.
For a comprehensive overview of the project, see Getting Started.