Grow the library: topic search and people you follow

Add metadata parents for works you do not have yet. Filling PDFs is a later step on Wanted. Snowball proposes; you keep, skip, then apply.

Outcome

You will have searched a topic (or followed an ORCID), reviewed the queue, and created catalogue parents for the rows you kept — without fetching PDFs in the same click.

Starting point

Workbench at http://127.0.0.1:8765. A collection chip is helpful (new parents can land there) but topic search itself does not require one.

The screenshots are the Discover page on a live ocean/BBNJ chip.

What you’ll do

  1. Open Discover.

  2. Search a topic; review Keep / Skip.

  3. Preview apply, then Add selected.

  4. Optionally follow people by ORCID on the same page.

  5. Fill PDFs jumps to Wanted for the new parents.

Walkthrough

Topic

  1. Open Discover. Topic is a keyword search (snowball search, dry-run queue).

  2. Type a query (for example area based management) and Search. Per-row Keep / Skip marks the queue. Nothing is written to Zotero yet.

Discover: topic filled, ready to search or follow people

  1. Preview apply, then Add selected. That is snowball apply (metadata only). A stale preview refuses if the library changed.

  2. Optional on the same panel: Briefing / Digest write briefing.md / digest.md on the queue (shown on the page; not auto-created). Keep an eye on this saves a topic watch only when a snowball profile is chosen.

  3. Fill PDFs opens Wanted. Continue with First fill.

Advanced (toggle, cookie only) adds crawl kinds (hybrid / DOI / ORCID / collection), hop knobs, profile save/run, refs gap, and ingest-dois. Those are the research pack and snowball surfaces, not the first click.

People

Same page, lower panel. This is authorwatch — people you already follow, not a keyword hop.

  1. Create a named list.

  2. Follow with an ORCID (optional backfill date). Name-only rows stay unresolved until you confirm an iD.

  3. Check again re-runs the list. Inbox rows use the same Preview → apply pattern as topic.

  4. Get suggestions ranks people already in the collection chip (suggest -C). Tick Accept to put them on the list.

Discover People: suggestions ticked, members already on the list

Paperful does not live-scrape ResearchGate or LinkedIn. Save a follows page and Import. Details: Author watch.

What to notice

  • Discover creates parents. Wanted fills PDFs. Do not conflate them with run.

  • There is no scheduler. Check again is the re-run.

  • snowball watch (saved keyword profile) is not authorwatch and not the PDF inbox watch.

You should now have…

A reviewed queue, new metadata parents for the rows you applied, and a clear next step on Wanted.

CLI equivalent

docker compose run --rm paperful snowball search "area based management" --gate dry-run
# review state/snowball/<run-id>/
docker compose run --rm paperful snowball apply <run-id> --apply -C ocean/BBNJ
docker compose run --rm paperful authorwatch save ocean-people
docker compose run --rm paperful authorwatch add ocean-people --orcid 0000-0002-1825-0097
docker compose run --rm paperful authorwatch run ocean-people

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