Research Tracker

A native Linux desktop application for researchers to organize and track papers they want to read.

Features

• Topics — Group papers by research area or theme with color-coding
• Papers — Add papers with title, authors, year, DOI/URL, and brief description
• Priority — Assign 1–5 priority ratings to papers (visualized as star ratings)
• Status — Track reading progress: Unread / Reading / Read
• Strengths & Weaknesses — Note what's good and bad about each paper
• Follow-up Ideas — Capture research ideas sparked by the paper
• Personal Notes — Add freeform private notes
• Sorting — Sort papers by priority, title, date added, or status
• Persistent Storage — All data saved to ~/.research_tracker/data.json

System Requirements

• Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble Numbat) or compatible
• X11 display server
• Dependencies: libx11-dev, libcairo2-dev, libfreetype-dev

Installation

chmod +x install.sh
./install.sh

This will:

1. Install dependencies if needed
2. Build the binary with g++
3. Install the binary to /usr/local/bin/
4. Install the icon and .desktop file for the app drawer

Running

# From terminal:
research_tracker

# Or search "Research Tracker" in your application launcher

Uninstall

chmod +x uninstall.sh
./uninstall.sh

Keyboard Shortcuts

Key	Action
Tab	Move to next form field
Ctrl+Enter	Save current form
Esc	Cancel / Go back
Scroll wheel	Scroll lists

Data Storage

All data is stored as JSON at ~/.research_tracker/data.json. You can back this up or transfer it between machines.

Building Manually

make           # Build
make install   # Install (requires sudo)
make clean     # Remove build artifacts