⭐ ORION Research Dashboard

ORION is an open-source web dashboard for exploring research institutions and funders from the CWTS OpenAlex dataset — without writing any SQL.

Built on FastAPI + React, deployed on Google Cloud Run, and powered by Google BigQuery.

Live demo: https://orion-app-kp52msbgxa-ew.a.run.app

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What it does

• Browse thousands of research institutions and funders, searchable by name, country, or type
• Filter by publication year range
• Build baskets of institutions or funders and run cross-queries:
  • Total works (no double counting)
  • Co-occurring institutions
  • Co-occurring funders
• Visualise networks — open a co-occurrence network directly in VOSviewer Online with one click
• Export SQL — copy the underlying BigQuery query for any result to run independently
• Export CSV — download any result table

BigQuery query costs are billed to the user's own GCP project, not the host. Most users stay within BigQuery's 1 TB/month free tier.

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Stack

Layer	Technology
Backend	Python · FastAPI · Google Cloud BigQuery
Frontend	React SPA (Create React App)
Auth	Google OAuth 2.0 (identity only) · signed cookie sessions
Deployment	Google Cloud Run · Docker · Cloud Build
Data	cwts-leiden.openalex_2025aug (BigQuery public dataset)

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Getting started

Prerequisites

• A Google Cloud project with billing enabled
• The BigQuery API enabled on that project
• A Google OAuth 2.0 client ID configured for your domain (see docs_for_ai_agents/SETUP_AUTH.md)
• Access to Google Cloud Shell for deployment

Deploying from Cloud Shell

# 1. Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/jpbascur/orion-app.git
cd orion-app

# 2. Make sure Cloud Shell is using your deployment project
gcloud config set project YOUR_PROJECT_ID

# 3. Deploy to Google Cloud Run
bash DEPLOY.sh

# Or deploy the dev/staging service
bash DEPLOY.sh --dev

See docs_for_ai_agents/SETUP.md for first-time deployment instructions.

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Project structure

orion-app/
├── main.py                  # FastAPI app entrypoint
├── backend/                 # FastAPI backend modules
├── requirements.txt
├── Dockerfile
├── DEPLOY.sh                # Cloud Run deployment script
├── deployment/              # Cloud Build configs
├── frontend/
│   ├── public/
│   └── src/
│       ├── App.js           # Root component, routing, shared state
│       ├── api.js           # Fetch wrapper, CSV export, VOSviewer helper
│       ├── bytesInfo.js     # BytesTag component (data usage display)
│       └── pages/
│           ├── Institutions.js
│           ├── Funders.js
│           ├── InstBasket.js
│           ├── FunderBasket.js
│           ├── BasketPage.js    # Shared basket logic
│           ├── EntityList.js    # Shared browse/search logic
│           ├── BasketShared.js  # Shared components + SQL query builders
│           ├── Overview.js
│           ├── Guide.js
│           ├── LoginGate.js
│           └── ErrorPage.js
├── docs_for_ai_agents/      # AI-agent notes and detailed setup docs
└── LICENSE

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Data

ORION queries the CWTS OpenAlex 2025 August snapshot, a processed and enriched version of OpenAlex data made available as a public BigQuery dataset by CWTS Leiden as part of the ORION (Open Research Information on BigQuery) initiative.

• Dataset: cwts-leiden.openalex_2025aug
• Institution–work links: via work_affiliation_institution (authorship-level affiliation)
• Funder–work links: via work_grant (funding acknowledgement-level)

Note on coverage: Funder–work links are derived from funding acknowledgements in PDFs and metadata feeds. Coverage is uneven, particularly for older publications.

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Acknowledgements

ORION Research Dashboard builds on the work of several open research infrastructure projects:

• ORION — Open Research Information on BigQuery — the initiative that makes the CWTS OpenAlex dataset available as a public BigQuery dataset, making tools like this possible.

• CWTS Leiden Ranking / CWTS at Leiden University — for producing and maintaining the OpenAlex dataset snapshot used by this dashboard.

• OpenAlex — the open catalogue of the global research system, maintained by OurResearch. OpenAlex data is released under a CC0 licence.

• VOSviewer / VOSviewer Online — developed by Nees Jan van Eck and Ludo Waltman at CWTS, Leiden University. Used here for co-occurrence network visualisation.

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Contributing

Contributions, issues and feature requests are welcome. Please open an issue on GitHub before submitting a pull request.

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License

MIT © 2025 Juan Pablo Bascur Cifuentes

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Contact

Juan Pablo Bascur Cifuentes — juanpablobascurcifuentes@gmail.com

GitHub: github.com/jpbascur/orion-app