How it works in five minutes

ARIADNE has four parts. Only the first one is the record; the other three can be rebuilt by anyone from it.

Part	What it does	Who runs it
The ARIADNE contract on Algorand	keeps the record: articles, versions, reviews, votes, comments, flags, reputation	nobody: it cannot be modified or deleted
IPFS	stores the text and files of every article, review and comment	the authors’ pinning services, ARIADNE’s own node, anyone who keeps a copy
The ARIADNE indexer	reads the record and builds the feed, profiles, inbox, search, citations and the seal	ARIADNE at `api.ariadne.press`; anyone can run one
The web app	shows all of it and prepares transactions for your wallet to sign	ARIADNE at `ariadne.press`; anyone can build another

you ── your wallet signs ──▶ ARIADNE contract on Algorand   (the permanent record)
                                     │
                                     ▼  every ARIADNE transaction
                              ARIADNE indexer ◀── reads and checks the texts ── IPFS
                                     │
                                     ▼  feed, profiles, search, citations, seal
                              web app (ariadne.press) ── what you see

The four parts

The contract on Algorand

Algorand is a public blockchain: a shared record that thousands of computers keep identical. Once an action is written there, it has a date, an author and an order that nobody can change afterwards. The ARIADNE contract (a smart contract, a program that lives on the blockchain) stores, for every article: its number, its author, its fields, its type, its status, its version number, the fingerprints of its current and previous versions, its dates, its votes, its declared co-authors, its reviews, comments and flags.

The contract cannot be modified or deleted: it has no update path, and the account that deployed it has no privileges left. A single governance account can only register new fields and resolve disputes. Each publication also creates an article token, a non-transferable token that proves authorship in any wallet; claiming it is optional. See What is on the blockchain, and what is not.

Articles on IPFS

An article is a folder: index.md (the text, in Markdown with LaTeX formulas, starting with a header) and an optional assets/ folder with figures and data, at most 20 MB in total. IPFS finds a file by a fingerprint of its content, its CID, instead of its location. The blockchain stores the CID, so any change to the text would be detected immediately.

The author makes sure the folder is pinned (kept online), usually through a pinning service such as Filebase or Pinata. The indexer keeps a second copy of everything it validates and serves it through ARIADNE’s gateway (https://ipfs.ariadne.press), which serves only content ARIADNE holds. Anyone can add another copy. See Storage: IPFS, pins and copies.

The indexer

The indexer reads every ARIADNE transaction and builds what the website shows: the feed, profiles, the inbox, search, citations and the Peer-reviewed seal. It downloads each article from IPFS, checks that it is complete and that its header matches what was declared on the blockchain (a mismatch is shown as a warning, never hidden), and keeps a second copy. It also checks declared ORCID iDs and DOIs against ORCID, Zenodo and DataCite. Anyone can run an indexer and recompute the same results. See Run an indexer.

The web app and your wallet

The website prepares each transaction and shows its exact cost; your wallet signs it. There is no account and no password: your wallet is your signature and your address is your identity.

The life of an article

Status	Meaning	How it gets there
preprint	first public version	publishing
under review	the author invites reviews	the author, from preprint
closed version	the author closed it: no more versions (it says nothing about review; the seal does)	the author, from under review
disputed	enough flags were raised; under examination	automatically, by flags
retracted	withdrawn; still readable, permanently marked	the author, from preprint, under review or closed version; or governance, after a dispute

New versions are possible while the article is a preprint or under review; each one changes the CID and keeps the previous ones on record. An amendment is a separate publication that points to the article it corrects. Nothing is ever deleted. See Articles and their statuses.

Reviews, votes and reputation

Reviews. Anyone except the article’s confirmed authors can review it once, with a recommendation (accept, minor revision, major revision, reject) and a written report. A review cannot be edited; a reviewer who changes their mind comments.
Votes. There are only upvotes. Each person votes once per article, review or comment, and a vote can never be changed or withdrawn.
Weight. Every vote and every flag weighs 1 + ⌊√reputation⌋ (one plus the whole part of the square root), using the voter’s reputation in the article’s primary field: a newcomer weighs 1, someone with reputation 100 weighs 11.
Reputation is a whole number per address and per field. It comes from other people: votes for your articles (which each author claims), reviews marked useful, votes for your comments, and comments the author resolves. It never decreases, and an address can gain at most 50 per field per day.

See Reputation and vote weight and Claim your reputation.

The Peer-reviewed seal

Publishing is free and immediate; the Peer-reviewed seal tells reviewed work apart. An article holds it while at least two reviews that count recommend it (accept or minor revision) and they outnumber the reviews that count asking for major revision or rejection. A review counts when its author knows the field (reputation 10 in the article’s primary or secondary field, or a verified ORCID iD with 3 works in its area), has no conflict of interest with the authors, and writes at least 200 words.

The indexer computes the seal and the article page shows which reviews count and why the others do not. The seal is alive: later reviews can take it away, it is suspended while the article is disputed and gone if it is retracted. See The Peer-reviewed seal.

Citations and Thread Score

An ARIADNE article cites another when it links to its page, writes its DOI or the CID of one of its versions, or amends it. Each article shows how often it is cited and by which articles; retracted articles are not counted.

The Thread Score (0 to 100, 50 is typical) places each article among the ARIADNE articles of its field, two at a time and at the same age, by the citations each received from other people. A person’s Thread Score is the mean of their articles’ scores, each weighted by their share of it, with one typical article added so that a single lucky article does not make 100. See Citations and Thread Score.

Flags and disputes

Someone with at least 10 reputation in an article’s primary field can flag it as plagiarised, fabricated or spam. When the flags of the current round add up to 30, the article becomes disputed: votes and reputation claims pause, and governance decides to clear it or retract it. See Flags, disputes and governance.

What costs money

Reading costs nothing. Acting costs two kinds of small amounts, both paid by the person who acts; the platform takes nothing.

Network fee. Algorand charges about 0.001 ALGO per transaction (a publication is three transactions). This is spent.
Storage deposit. An action that creates a record pays for the space it takes on the blockchain. Deposits are not paid to anyone: they stay locked in the protocol for as long as the record exists, which is forever, so they are not refunded.

Action	Storage deposit (ALGO)
Publish	0.2122, plus 0.0293 per declared co-author
Vote for an article	0.0289
Vote for a review or a comment	0.0321
Review	0.0911 the first time in a field, then 0.0658
Comment	0.0818 the first time in a field, then 0.0565
Follow, link an ORCID iD, declare a DOI	0

Every Algorand account also keeps 0.1 ALGO as its own minimum balance. The website reads the exact amounts from the network and shows the total before your wallet asks you to sign. The full table is in Costs and deposits.