auther.

Putting women-led research front and center, Auther aims to provide users access to verified female authors through an intuitive platform that amplifies voices that are often overlooked.

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Inspiration

We were inspired to build a platform that challenges gender bias in academia by amplifying research led by women. Women are consistently credited less in academic research, with less visibility despite significant contributions. Based on our research, we found that 43% women are reported to be excluded from authorship on papers they contributed to compared to 38% of men. Additionally, men are also almost twice as likely (21.17%) to be recognized as being an author or inventor compared to women (12.15%) (Ross, M.B., Glennon, B.M., Murciano-Goroff, R. et al.).

What drove us to investigate this further were two websites. citeblackauthors.com is a database of research papers produced by black authors. The site aims to emphasize research produced by black scientists, an often underrepresented minority in academia and industry. Furthermore, disabledwriters.com is another database that connects journal editors to disabled writers in order to give the disabled community a greater voice. With these websites as another major point of inspiration, we wished to provide a similar service for women researchers and scholars – a similarly underrepresented minority.

What it does

auther. is a research web platform dedicated to amplifying women’s contributions in academia. In a world where women’s contributions are often overlooked, under credited, and underrepresented, we decided to build a tool that transforms academic representation by boosting visibility and recognition of women-authored research. auther. makes finding women-led academic work simple, giving users access to research and voices that deserve recognition. Built for students, researchers, or lifelong learners, auther. helps users find academic work led by women with an intuitive and modern design with curated search results. Built with accessibility in mind, auther. offers both a clean and modern interface with both dark and light mode for a more inclusive experience. Upon opening the app, users can search research topics and authors to receive curated results that feature women authors. Users can also view their recently viewed research articles as well, where clicking on the cards takes the user directly to the research article. Results include research titles, abstracts, authors, and a verification tag highlighting research where women are the primary authors or contributors.

How we built it

Backend: Django, Django Caching, Python
Frontend: Next.js, Tailwind CSS, TypeScript, Framer Motion
Figma: for logo and UI mockups
APIs used:

  • Semantic Scholar API – Academic paper search and metadata
  • OpenAlex API – Author metadata expansion and name resolution
  • Genderize.io – Name-based gender inference
  • LocalStorage – Storing recent searches on the client

Challenges we ran into

  • Incomplete author data: Many research papers only list initials, which made gender detection unreliable without expansion logic.
  • Rate limits and speed: Combining APIs slowed down early responses, so we had to optimize with caching and fallback mechanisms.
  • Strict TypeScript rules: ESLint and TS slowed early progress but forced us to write more maintainable code.
  • With only one experienced coder in our group, we encountered several issues while developing the backend, which required us to revise our original idea and designs during frontend development.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Designing an accessible and modern interface by integrating dark and light mode
  • A majority of us are first-time hackers, so getting a taste of the hackathon environment and challenges was a learning experience.
  • Strengthened our skills in design, development, and research
  • Turning an idea to a working prototype in just one weekend!

What we learned

  • Layered verification > single source: Using multiple data sources (Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Genderize) gave us higher-confidence gender tagging.
  • Fallbacks improve UX: Showing “possibly women-led” instead of blank results made the product feel more thoughtful.
  • Caching saves the day: Local caching made repeated queries much faster without compromising accuracy.

What's next for auther.

We would like to implement saved libraries for users to curate organized collections of articles tailored to their interests or projects, making it easier for users to revisit or share work. Additionally, we would also like to implement profiles for women researchers and scholars where they can showcase their publications, share insights on their research, and ultimately gain more visibility and recognition for their work.

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