metadata
license: mit
tags:
- arxiv
- metadata
ResearchIT metadata sidecar
A read-only SQLite mirror of the ResearchIT papers table (1,597,097 arXiv
papers), carrying the indexes the upstream Turso database does not have.
Consumed by ResearchIT;
the Dockerfile downloads metadata.sqlite at image build time.
Why
Turso has a single index (arxiv_id), so it serves point lookups quickly and
everything else via a full scan of 1.6M rows. Measured:
| query | Turso | sidecar |
|---|---|---|
| metadata for 50 ids | ~1,200 ms | 0.5 ms |
| trending by category | ~15,000 ms | 45 ms |
MIN/MAX(update_date) |
times out (>100 s) | 50 ms |
Schema
papers— arxiv_id, title, authors, abstract_preview, categories, primary_topic, update_date, citation_count, influential_citationspaper_categories— one row per (paper, arXiv code); 2,953,666 rows across 176 codes. Indexed on(code, citation_count DESC)and(code, update_date DESC).
Coverage: update_date spans 2007-05-23 to 2025-05-30.
Rebuild with scripts/build_metadata_sidecar.py in the ResearchIT repo.