The PDS-PPI Web Application to Better Facilitate Remote Dataset Peer Reviews

Peer reviews are a critical part of the archival process for planetary data. They ensure that the archived data products are formatted properly, the content of the data is easily discernible, and that the data themselves are useful. Members of the Planetary Plasma Interactions (PPI) Node within the NASA Planetary Data System (PDS) usually perform reviews remotely through an internally accessible website as it allows for both a greater opportunity for collaboration on the review process, but also to help save time as any applicable data, comments, et cetera are all available in one place. Historically there has been a lack of standardization for the creation of these websites, leading to one-off implementations, arduous periods of development in manually editing website code for any changes, and a reliance on tribal knowledge.

PPI has worked on developing a new standardized review web application to address these shortcomings. This has been built from the ground up using Wagtail (a Django derivative). All future reviews will be accessible from the same location on the web, and proper authentication has been set up to deny unauthorized access. For review site creators, sites can be generated in minutes, and are easily maintained and edited by using a clean user-interface. For end-users, the review sites are easily navigable and accessible by using most modern devices and browsers. A new comment system is built in (for logged in users) so that all pertinent updates and information for a given review can stay in the same place, and all reviewers can stay better informed on the current status of the review. This web application has been packaged as a Docker container for easy deployment within preexisting web infrastructures.