SciCommons Extension.

A Chrome MV3 extension for detecting papers on publisher/preprint pages, checking whether they already exist on SciCommons, and saving them through the SciCommons integrations API.

The extension reads metadata from the current page first. When a DOI is found but important metadata is missing, it falls back to CrossRef to fill title, abstract, and authors before saving.

Environments

The extension supports two built-in environments:

• Local: http://localhost:3000 frontend and http://127.0.0.1:8000 backend
• Test: https://test.scicommons.org frontend auth and https://backendtest.scicommons.org API routing

Use the environment selector in the popup. Changing environments clears the stored extension token.

Auth Flow

The extension no longer asks users to paste JWTs.

1. Popup sends the user to /auth/extension with a PKCE challenge.
2. The SciCommons web app uses the existing logged-in session or redirects to login.
3. The backend creates a short-lived one-time extension auth code.
4. The extension exchanges the code for API tokens.
5. Tokens are stored only in chrome.storage.local and are never sent to page JavaScript.

Architecture

• contentScript.js: reads public page metadata only.
• background.js: owns authentication, API calls, and the offline retry queue.
• popup.js: renders user confirmation controls and sends commands to the background worker.
• config.js: local/test environment configuration.

Development

1. Start the SciCommons backend on http://127.0.0.1:8000.
2. Start the SciCommons frontend on http://localhost:3000.
3. Open chrome://extensions.
4. Enable Developer mode.
5. Load this extension/ folder as an unpacked extension.
6. Open a paper page and use the popup to connect and save.

For test.scicommons.org, select the Test environment in the popup and reconnect. Test auth opens https://test.scicommons.org; paper lookup/import requests go to https://backendtest.scicommons.org.