Technology

Open Reviews Association maintains Mangrove, the open-source infrastructure behind the dataset. Detailed developer documentation and the Mangrove Review Standard live with the Mangrove project at mangrove.reviews and its sub-domains.

All implemented components are available under Apache License 2.0 and you can inspect or contribute to their code.

How can I integrate Open Reviews into my website or app?

There are multiple ways to integrate Open Reviews into your project:

• REST API Integration: Interact directly with the REST OpenAPI, which allows for easy submission and retrieval of reviews from the open dataset.
• Client Libraries: Use our client-side JS or TypeScript library which has the same capabilities as the API and assists in management of reviewer identity.
• Web Widget: Make use of our web widget by pasting in an HTML snippet on your site. It will allow your users to read and write Open Reviews, while the customisation tools give you control over what and how things are displayed.
• Mobile Design Example: Download PDF showing a complete mobile app interface design that demonstrates how Open Reviews can be integrated into mobile applications.

For apps built on Mangrove — user-facing and integrator tools — see the ecosystem.

How does it work?

• Technical standard including the data format to ensure interoperability and allow for reviews to be analyzed programmatically.
• Implementations including the server and all components which rely on it.
• Open-source probabilistic aggregation algorithm to ensure reliability of the data.
• Every review is stored in an Open Dataset licensed under CC-BY-4.0. You can download and make use of the dataset freely, as long as you agree to protect user privacy and copyright laws.

Principles

For the Open Reviews Ecosystem to succeed and the infrastructure to be maintainable by the community, we believe the underlying technology has to ensure three main qualities:

• The data format has to be useful for as many parties as possible, so that the dataset is valuable and attractive to use.
  • Capture as many aspects as necessary for different use cases
  • Open and free-of-charge access
• The infrastructure needs to be easy to integrate into websites and apps for reading and writing reviews, so that the ecosystem gains integrators and the dataset grows.
  • Clear technical standard that ensures interoperability
  • Easy-to-use and well-documented APIs
  • Clear legal framework to provide confidence in the integration
• The infrastructure needs to be easy to maintain at low cost and little overhead.
  • Reliable and persistent database server
  • Open source development to allow for redundancy and open innovation
  • Effective governance structures to ensure the infrastructure can evolve as the needs of the ecosystem participants change