Urshu - Academic Discovery

ESSAMULDEEN OBAID KHALLAWI ALMUGARE

About this app

Urshu is a powerful academic research discovery tool designed for students, researchers, and academics who need to find and organize scholarly papers efficiently. Instead of jumping between multiple websites, Urshu brings together results from over ten major academic databases in a single, unified feed.

SEARCH ACROSS MULTIPLE DATABASES
Urshu queries OpenAlex, Semantic Scholar, PubMed, EuropePMC, Scopus, IEEE Xplore, arXiv, Crossref, CORE, and NASA ADS simultaneously. Each search returns deduplicated results ranked by relevance, citations, or publication date. Filter by year range, open access status, high citation count, research methodology, or medical filter.

SMART DISCOVERY ENGINE
The Explore tab presents papers as swipeable cards — like a feed for research. Like papers to build a preference profile, skip irrelevant ones, and the algorithm adapts. Each paper card shows title, authors, journal, abstract preview, citation count, and open-access status.

PERSONAL LIBRARY
Save papers to your device, organize them into custom collections (shelves), and add personal notes with rich templates. Search your notes to quickly find papers you've read. The research impact dashboard visualizes your saved papers by citations, year, source, and methodology.

AI SUMMARIES
Tap "AI TL;DR" on any paper to get a plain-language summary of the abstract, generated on-device. Understand the core contribution without reading the full abstract.

CITATION EXPLORER
Visualize the citation graph for any paper — see what references it and what it cites. Navigate forward and backward through the research lineage to discover foundational and derivative works.

CITATION EXPORT
Export any paper in BibTeX format, ready for LaTeX, Overleaf, Zotero, or any reference manager.

READING COMFORT
Dark mode, dyslexia-friendly font (OpenDyslexic), and adjustable line spacing make extended reading sessions easier on the eyes.

PRIVACY FIRST
No account is required — use the full app in guest mode. If you sign in with Google (via Auth0), your email and name are used only for authentication. All library data stays on your device. No ads, no trackers, no data sold. Only the INTERNET permission is used.

Account deletion is available in-app or via the web deletion page.

PERFECT FOR:
• Literature reviews and systematic reviews
• Thesis and dissertation research
• Staying current with new publications in your field
• Building a personal reference library
• Collaborative journal clubs

Urshu is not affiliated with OpenAlex, Semantic Scholar, or any of the data sources it aggregates. All paper metadata is accessed via public APIs and is subject to each provider's terms of service.

What’s new

- Fixed filter & sort window transparency - fully opaque design
- New scrolling news ticker on home page showing latest papers
- Fixed abstract HTML tags appearing in text (, etc.)
- Improved feed freshness with updated API date windows
- Home page title updated to "Urshu - Academic Discovery"
- Simplified About screen