We are very excited to announce the release of the totally renewed ReviewBase, which you can find in the menu above. We launched the original ReviewBase in 2022 as an easy-to-access overview of ALD, ALE and ASD review papers and book chapters (see blog). While the original ReviewBase was basically a collection of Excel files that we would update periodically (see blog), the revamped ReviewBase is much more modern, interactive and functional! But, before we get to the features, let’s first introduce the broader project that we started for rewriting the various AtomicLimits bases.

Revamping the AtomicLimits.com bases

While we started the AtomicLimits.com blog already in 2016 (time flies!), over the years we expanded with various “Bases” to serve the community.

• ALD Database (2019)
• ALE Database (2019)
• ImageBase (2020)
• ReviewBase (2022)

We are happy to see these bases really seem to have been picked up by the community, judging from the traffic but also from the fact that they are often referenced in (conference) presentations.

While successful, we have many ideas for improvements and functionalities that are simply not possible in the current situation. The different bases rely on different techniques, ranging from ReactNative/SQL for the ALD/ALE Database, to a WordPress plugin for the ImageBase and simple Excel files for the ReviewBase. Last year, I (Bart Macco) took on the challenge to rewrite the bases completely into one uniform platform that we can really tailor to our wishes.

While work is in progress on renewing all the bases, now we release the ReviewBase as the first installment. In the near future, you can expect also a totally revamped ImageBase and a bit further down the line the new ALD and ALE databases. No promises yet on deadlines, it mostly depends on how much spare time I find to work on it 😊 Also no spoilers yet on the new features for the other bases, let’s for the rest of this blog focus on the new ReviewBase!

Introducing the new ReviewBase

While you can of course find out about the new ReviewBase yourself simply by clicking the ReviewBase logo in the menu above, I think it is nice to highlight some of the main new features here.

1. Crowdsourcing: submit reviews

For the old ReviewBase, we had to keep track of new reviews ourselves, where sometimes someone would email us a new entry. In the new ReviewBase, you submit entries yourself! When submitting an entry, you can conveniently enter the DOI and it will autofill most of the fields for you. We would however like to ask you to check the fields carefully before submitting to ensure high data quality in the database. We have a team of voluntary reviewers (Joost Maas, Arthur de Jong and myself) who can accept or reject the submission, and also curate the data if needed. Moreover, anyone can suggest changes to existing entries, such that we can improve the quality of the data over time.

• Like your favorite reviews!

You can like a review (the heart symbol). Try it and you will see a cool animation that took me more time to make than it should have 😊 This is also particularly useful for keeping track of your favorite reviews, because you can also list your liked reviews (see next point).

• Searching, filtering and sorting

The search bar lets you search the title, authors and abstract, while you can also filter entries for the various topics (ALD – Atomic Layer Deposition, ALE – Atomic Layer Etching and ASD – Area-Selective Deposition). The book icon lets you filter between book chapters or review articles in regular journals.

The “filter and sort” submenu gives you some more control: For example, show only the reviews you submitted or liked, and sort by most citations, publication date or number of likes.

• Top contributors

The “Top contributors” panel (accessible via the hamburger menu) lists the users who have contributed most to the various renewed bases, which for now only tracks the ReviewBase. The list is still very empty now of course, but we hope to see it fill up nicely in the future with people competing to be #1!

Some statistics from the current ReviewBase entries

With the current database, it becomes rather straightforward to query and extract useful information. A simple example is shown below, where I plot the number of reviews on ALD, ALE and ASD over the years. Not surprisingly, ALD is still very much the dominant topic in terms of review papers. This is of course a very simple example, but if you have any nice ideas for relevant data we could extract, let us know!

We’d love your feedback

Of course, we are very eager to receive feedback from you! Do you have ideas for new functions, did you run into a bug, or … Let us know!

As a final remark, I would like to thank Joost Maas, Arthur de Jong and Erwin Kessels for contributing not only to the original ReviewBase but also for assistance and thinking along in creating this new ReviewBase!