# Rseng Discovery > Covers discovering the research landscape around a topic or project: finding relevant publications (OpenAlex, arXiv, Zenodo, JOSS, Semantic Scholar, Google Scholar) and finding related software - libraries, packages, tools, platforms and competitor or alternative projects - across software registries, archives, package indexes, public forges and curated awesome lists. Use when the user asks what exists on a topic, wants related work, prior art, alternatives or competitors surveyed, needs a state-of-the-field picture for a paper or proposal, or is about to build something whose neighbors are unknown. (RSD-based reuse suggestions with bundled snapshots are rseng-software-reuse; adoption vetting is rseng-dependency-management; verifying found references is rseng-citation-hygiene.) - Skill: `fdiblen/rseng-discovery` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 2 files) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add fdiblen/rseng-discovery` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/fdiblen/rseng-discovery/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Product & Planning - License: CC-BY-4.0 - Author: fdiblen (https://skillmd.com/u/fdiblen) - Updated: 2026-09-17 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/fdiblen/rseng-discovery --- # Discovery: publications and software around a topic Most research work begins in a landscape someone else has already mapped in part. Discovery is the deliberate survey of that landscape before building, writing or claiming novelty: the publications that define the state of the field, and the software that already solves pieces of the problem. Doing it early is cheaper than discovering a competitor in review, and the survey itself becomes reusable material for the paper's related-work section and the proposal's state of the art. ## Finding publications Work from open, keyless APIs first; they make searches reproducible and scriptable: - OpenAlex covers most of the scholarly record with abstracts, citation links and topic filters; Crossref serves DOI metadata; Semantic Scholar adds influence signals and TLDRs; arXiv covers preprints in its fields. Zenodo and JOSS matter specifically for research software: JOSS papers ARE software descriptions, and Zenodo records often carry the software itself. - Google Scholar casts the widest net (theses, reports, gray literature) but has no API and rate-limits scraping; use it interactively for coverage checks, not in pipelines. - Snowball in both directions from the two or three most relevant hits: who do they cite (backward), who cites them (forward - OpenAlex and Semantic Scholar both serve citing works). One good seed paper beats twenty keyword guesses. - Search by concept variants, not one phrasing: field synonyms, British/American spellings, method names old and new - and record the queries used, so the search is repeatable and its gaps are visible (rseng-reproducibility's spirit applied to searching). ## Finding software Cast several nets; each finds things the others miss: - Research software registries: Research Software Directory instances (rseng-software-reuse ships offline snapshots and the search discipline), domain registries (bio.tools for life sciences, ASCL for astronomy, and their field equivalents). - Package indexes for the stack (PyPI, CRAN, conda-forge, npm): search by task words and by the names publications mention; libraries.io searches across ecosystems at once. - Public forges: code search on GitHub/GitLab finds the unregistered majority - search READMEs by domain terms, filter by language and activity, and check the topics/tags of anything close. - Curated awesome lists collect a community's known tools; find the list for the domain, then treat it as a lead generator - lists rot, so verify each candidate is alive. - Software archives: Software Heritage preserves code whose forge home vanished; JOSS and Zenodo double as software discovery for peer-reviewed and archived tools. - Papers with Code links publications to implementations in ML-adjacent fields. ## From findings to decisions Discovery feeds the pack's decision skills rather than replacing them: - Candidate software worth adopting goes through the six-axis intake vetting (rseng-dependency-management); fit judgment and citation duty live with rseng-software-reuse. - Competitor and alternative surveys become an honest comparison table: what each neighbor does, its stack, license, activity and how the user's project differs - the state-of-the-field material that software papers (rseng-software-peer-review), communication (rseng-science-communication) and documentation's related-projects section (rseng-documentation) all need. Differences stated honestly build more trust than silence about competitors. - Everything found gets verified before it is repeated: resolve the DOI, open the repository, confirm the claim matches the source (rseng-fact-checking, rseng-citation-hygiene) - discovery collects leads, verification makes them citable. - Record the survey: queries, sources searched, date, and the shortlist with reasons, in the project record (rseng-project-tracking) - a documented search can be updated; an undocumented one gets redone from scratch. ## Working with this skill This skill is source-independent: its authority is the discovery services linked below. It is the front end of a chain: discovery finds, rseng-software-reuse and rseng-dependency-management judge, rseng-fact-checking and rseng-citation-hygiene verify. Learn more (verified): - https://help.openalex.org - OpenAlex API - https://arxiv.org - arXiv - https://www.semanticscholar.org - Semantic Scholar - https://scholar.google.com - Google Scholar (interactive) - https://zenodo.org - Zenodo - https://joss.theoj.org - JOSS - https://bio.tools - bio.tools registry - https://libraries.io - cross-ecosystem package search - https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome - the awesome-list index - https://huggingface.co/papers - Hugging Face Papers ## Related skills Check whether any of these applies before moving on: - rseng-citation-hygiene - verifying surveyed references - rseng-dependency-management - vetting discovered software - rseng-fact-checking - verifying claims before repeating them - rseng-science-communication - related-work narrative for audiences - rseng-software-peer-review - state-of-field for JOSS paper - rseng-software-reuse - candidate fit and citation duty