The Universal Research Paper Standard
We ❤️ research… but research papers are a pain.
Research should be beautiful, open, and effortless.
We love research — the thrill of discovery, the rigor of method, the joy of a result that holds up. But let's be honest: publishing it is a nightmare. Bloated word processors, fragile LaTeX, broken citations, locked-in formats, and reproducibility that quietly evaporates.
OpenResearch is the Universal Research Paper Standard — a single, open, machine-readable package that treats your paper as living, portable, beautiful source. Feed the specification to your AI and get beauty back.
One standard. One package. Every platform. Pure beauty.
- 📦
.rdpackages — a zipped, platform-agnostic archive of content + metadata - 🤖 AI-native — hand the spec to any model and generate compliant papers instantly
- 🍎 Native Mac apps — OpenWriter, OpenPaper & OpenDeveloper, built in Swift
- ♿ Accessible by design — built-in conformance & accessibility validation
- 🔓 Open formats only — no proprietary lock-in, ever
| App | What it does | Vibe |
|---|---|---|
| OpenWriter | Distraction-free, focus-first editor. Raw markup hidden behind beautiful inline cards. | ✍️ Write in flow |
| OpenPaper | Read-only viewer with print, PDF, HTML & LaTeX export. | 📖 Beauty in reading |
| OpenDeveloper | Split-pane power workspace: raw source + live preview + CLI command center. | 🛠️ For builders |
The full lifecycle, in one elegant pipeline:
OpenDeveloper ──▶ OpenWriter ──▶ OpenPaper ──▶ Vector PDF
A Universal Research Paper (URP) is a .rd ZIP package (MIME application/vnd.urp+zip) containing:
[paper-name].rd (ZIP Container)
├── paper.rd.md # Structured, human-readable document
└── urp.yaml # Machine-readable manifest metadata
Open, portable, and built to last decades. Every asset is restricted to open formats only — .svg, .png, .webp, .jpeg for images; .webm, .mp4 for video; .flac, .wav, .opus for audio. No .tiff, no .mov, no lock-in.
Semantic XML elements (<urp>, <variables>, <claim>) make papers machine-readable and reproducible — perfect for AI ingestion and automated validation.
Real-time conformance against 18 rules (URP001–URP018):
- Required metadata & sections (Title, Abstract, References)
- Unique equation & claim identifiers
- Alt-text on every image (accessibility)
- Open-format-only media enforcement
- Heading-hierarchy & asset-size warnings
OpenResearch ships as a native macOS application suite.
git clone https://github.com/caraveo/OpenResearch.git
cd OpenResearch
# Open OpenWriter.xcodeproj / OpenPaper.xcodeproj / OpenDeveloper.xcodeproj in XcodeOr grab the latest release:
We ❤️ research and we ❤️ contributors. Issues, ideas, and pull requests are welcome.
Code under MIT. Documentation & papers under CC-BY-4.0.
OpenResearch — feed the specification to your AI and get beauty back.