Technical roadmap

DESTINY is developing a technical roadmap to provide a structured overview of software development activities within the scope of DESTINY and associated projects. The roadmap will show the current state of software capabilities, planned developments, and longer-term technical ambitions for our open data infrastructure and Digital Evidence Synthesis Tools (DESTs).

The roadmap is intended to support transparency, coordination, strategic planning and community engagement around the development of open and sustainable software infrastructure for evidence synthesis.

The roadmap focuses on software and technical capabilities developed through DESTINY and recognises important contributions made by associated projects. It reflects the collective impact ambition of the Evidence Synthesis Infrastructure Collaborative (ESIC) and recognises the dependencies of other community projects on the technology which DESTINY is developing.

The roadmap will be reviewed and updated at least twice a year to reflect completed developments, changing priorities, emerging opportunities and lessons learned through implementation. Updates will be added to this page, summarised in news items, and sent to our newsletter subscribers.

Latest updates

At least twice a year, we will publish a news item and send a newsletter summarising the updates we have made to this technical roadmap. Those news items will be catalogued here for quick reference.

DESTINY technical roadmap update – August 2026

August 24, 2026

Welcome to the first update to the DESTINY technical roadmap! Updates will be published twice a year on the roadmap webpage. Changes will be summarised in news items here and sent … Read More

Current state of development

Each feature is described using our software readiness taxonomy; a set of categories that tell you how ready it is, who can use it, and what kind of support to expect. 

Living evidence repository

DESTINY is developing open-source living evidence database software that continuously ingests new evidence from different data sources. We are applying this software to offer a repository containing the relevant scientific evidence in the field of climate and health, while related projects are using the same software to develop repositories of evidence on other topics. The repository ingests evidence data from structured bibliographic databases such as OpenAlex, and will also ingest evidence from a variety of less structured β€œgrey literature” sources.

Abstract retrieval

Availability Internal
Validation Developer-tested
Maturity Pilot
Portability Adaptable
Interaction mode Command-line tool
Support
Theme
Systematic review stage
Planned release
Bulk importer

A way to import records in bulk from OpenAlex snapshots

Availability Internal
Validation Real-world Evaluated
Maturity Production
Portability General-purpose
Interaction mode Command-line tool
Support
Theme Ingestion
Systematic review stage General infrastructure
Planned release
Climate & Health classification pipeline

An automated pipeline which searches for, assesses relevance of, and tags with taxonomy terms climate & health literature

Availability Beta
Validation Developer-tested
Maturity Pilot
Portability Domain-specific
Interaction mode Embedded Component
Support Supported
Theme Enrichment
Systematic review stage Study identification and selection
Planned release Sept-26
Climate & Health relevance classifier

A classifier which predicts whether a title & abstract are relevant to the domain of Climate & Health

Availability Beta
Validation Benchmark-tested
Maturity Pilot
Portability Domain-specific
Interaction mode Code Library
Support Best effort
Theme Enrichment
Systematic review stage Study identification and selection
Planned release Sep-26
Climate & Health taxonomy tagger

A process which will predict tags from the DESTINY taxonomy which describe a title and abstract

Availability Beta
Validation Benchmark-tested
Maturity Pilot
Portability Domain-specific
Interaction mode Code Library
Support Best effort
Theme Enrichment
Systematic review stage Study identification and selection
Planned release Sep-26
Closed-access abstract mining

A way to retrieve and mine closed-access abstracts for inclusion within repository search, classification and evaluation

Availability Partner
Validation Developer-tested
Maturity Pilot
Portability General-purpose
Interaction mode Embedded Component
Support Best effort
Theme Ingestion
Systematic review stage General infrastructure
Planned release Sept-26
Community administration UI

An administration interface which allows the configuration of the component parts of a community and its repositories (annotations, automations, taxonomies)

Availability Internal
Validation Developer-tested
Maturity Pilot
Portability General-purpose
Interaction mode Web Application
Support Best effort
Theme
Systematic review stage General infrastructure
Planned release Dec-26
Core ontology 🌐

A developed core ontology which supports the basic elements of evidence synthesis

Availability 🌐 General
Validation Developer-tested
Maturity Pilot
Portability General-purpose
Interaction mode Code Library
Support Best effort
Theme Storage
Systematic review stage General infrastructure
Planned release Dec-26
CSV importer

Bespoke importers which allow bibliographic, taxonomic, and extraction data to be imported to the repository as “raw” enhancements

Availability Internal
Validation
Maturity Pilot
Portability Project-specific
Interaction mode
Support
Theme
Systematic review stage
Planned release
Deduplication toolkit

A highly accurate, tested deduplication algorithm packaged as a python library for integration into robots and the repository

Availability
Validation
Maturity In Development
Portability General-purpose
Interaction mode
Support
Theme
Systematic review stage
Planned release
Demonstrator UI

Deprecating the initial Demonstrator UI delivered in 2025 in favour of the user interface components built more recently

Availability
Validation
Maturity Deprecated
Portability Domain-specific
Interaction mode Web Application
Support
Theme
Systematic review stage
Planned release
Faceted search

Allows the dynamic filtering of search results using taxonomy tags

Availability Partner
Validation
Maturity Pilot
Portability Project-specific
Interaction mode
Support
Theme
Systematic review stage
Planned release
Granular permissions 🌐

Access control which limits a user’s ability to interact with resources from other communities

Availability 🌐 General
Validation Developer-tested
Maturity Pilot
Portability General-purpose
Interaction mode Embedded Component
Support Supported
Theme Storage
Systematic review stage General infrastructure
Planned release Dec-26
Import API

Import of data from external sources (including OpenAlex, extracted data, bibliographic data)

Availability Internal
Validation Developer-tested
Maturity Production
Portability General-purpose
Interaction mode API Service
Support
Theme Ingestion
Systematic review stage Study identification and selection
Planned release
Incremental importer

Daily updates to the repository based on new records in OpenAlex

Availability Internal
Validation
Maturity Production
Portability General-purpose
Interaction mode Web Application
Support
Theme Ingestion
Systematic review stage General infrastructure
Planned release
Integrated deduplication 🌐

Records are automatically deduplicated across the entire repository on import. Deduplication is non-destructive.

Availability 🌐 General
Validation Developer-tested
Maturity Production
Portability General-purpose
Interaction mode Embedded Component
Support Supported
Theme Ingestion
Systematic review stage Study identification and selection
Planned release Sept-26
Python SDK 🌐

A software development kit which makes it easier to build against the repository infrastructure

Availability 🌐 General
Validation
Maturity Production
Portability General-purpose
Interaction mode Code Library
Support
Theme
Systematic review stage
Planned release
Relevance classifier

Classifier which determines whether a reference is relevant to the “Climate & Health” domain based on title and abstract

Availability
Validation
Maturity Prototype
Portability Project-specific
Interaction mode
Support
Theme
Systematic review stage
Planned release
Relevance robot

A robot which integrates the relevance classifier with the repository using the robots protocol

Availability
Validation
Maturity Prototype
Portability Project-specific
Interaction mode
Support
Theme
Systematic review stage
Planned release
User-driven full text uploading

A way for users to upload relevant full texts not fetched by automated processes for analysis

Availability Partner
Validation Developer-tested
Maturity Pilot
Portability General-purpose
Interaction mode Web Application
Support Best effort
Theme Ingestion
Systematic review stage General infrastructure
Planned release Dec-26

Data extraction evaluation toolkit

The Data Extraction Evaluation Toolkit (DEET) is an open-source toolkit for evaluating AI-assisted data extraction in evidence synthesis. Extracting structured information from research studies is one of the most time-consuming stages of the synthesis process, and robust evaluation is essential to ensure AI tools are reliable and fit for purpose. DEET enables users to compare AI-generated outputs against human-created reference datasets using reusable, modular workflows built on findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR) principles.

Automated taxonomy extraction and evaluation 🌐

DEET, the data extraction evaluation toolkit, can use taxonomy/vocabulary hierarchical structure to optimise prompts for large taxonomy extraction

Availability 🌐 General
Validation Developer-tested
Maturity Pilot
Portability General-purpose
Interaction mode Command-line tool
Support Experimental
Theme Evaluation
Systematic review stage Data extraction
Planned release Sept-26
DEET UI 🌐

DEET, the data extraction evaluation toolkit will have a web UI that allows users to build and evaluate automated data extraction pipelines interactively

Availability 🌐 General
Validation Developer-tested
Maturity Pilot
Portability General-purpose
Interaction mode Web Application
Support
Theme Evaluation
Systematic review stage Data extraction
Planned release Dec-27
Evaluation of classification with LLMs

DEET, the Data Extraction Evaluation Toolkit can be used to classify documents using LLMs, and to evaluate how well LLMs can classify documents. Classification is useful for screening, or coding study themes

Availability Beta
Validation
Maturity Pilot
Portability General-purpose
Interaction mode Command-line tool
Support
Theme Enrichment
Systematic review stage
Planned release
Evaluation of data extraction for evidence synthesis with LLMs

DEET, the Data Extraction Evaluation Toolkit can be used to extract attributes of interest from published research documents using LLMs, and to evaluate how well LLMs can extract data. Data extraction is required for analysis of evidence

Availability Beta
Validation
Maturity Pilot
Portability General-purpose
Interaction mode Command-line tool
Support
Theme Enrichment
Systematic review stage
Planned release
Evaluation of subgroup- and treatment-level data extraction using LLMs 🌐

DEET, the data extraction evaluation toolkit, will provide users with the means to test, develop and evaluate automated approaches to extracting subgroup- and treatment-level data from intervention studies

Availability 🌐 General
Validation Developer-tested
Maturity Pilot
Portability General-purpose
Interaction mode Command-line tool
Support Best effort
Theme Evaluation
Systematic review stage Data extraction
Planned release Sept-26

Enhancements

Enhancements are automated processes that help keep records in the living evidence repository complete, consistent and up to date. Users can also contribute enhancements back to the repository so that others can benefit from that work, for example, human-coded labels created using existing evidence synthesis tools.

EPPI-Reviewer importer

Availability Internal
Validation
Maturity Pilot
Portability Project-specific
Interaction mode
Support
Theme
Systematic review stage
Planned release
Full text retrieval

A robot which fetches full texts and abstracts from additional databases to supplement those gathered from OpenAlex

Availability Internal
Validation Developer-tested
Maturity Pilot
Portability Adaptable
Interaction mode Command-line tool
Support
Theme
Systematic review stage
Planned release
Generic robots

The ability to deploy a single robot whose behaviour can be determined by parameters supplied in the enhancement request

Availability Partner
Validation Developer-tested
Maturity Pilot
Portability General-purpose
Interaction mode Embedded Component
Support Supported
Theme Enrichment
Systematic review stage General infrastructure
Planned release Dec-26
Geolocation robot

A robot which annotates references with mentioned geographic entities using the mordecai3 model.

Availability
Validation
Maturity In Development
Portability General-purpose
Interaction mode
Support
Theme
Systematic review stage
Planned release
Import search results

The ability to import results from a search in another database as bibliographic metadata into the repository, marking these as in-scope for a particular community.

Availability Partner
Validation Developer-tested
Maturity Prototype
Portability General-purpose
Interaction mode Web Application
Support Best effort
Theme Ingestion
Systematic review stage Study identification and selection
Planned release Sept-26
Integrated full text fetching

A process which will fetch as many full texts as are available given publisher constraints given a user’s credentials

Availability Partner
Validation Developer-tested
Maturity Pilot
Portability General-purpose
Interaction mode Embedded Component
Support Best effort
Theme Ingestion
Systematic review stage General infrastructure
Planned release Dec-26
References API

Fetch enhancements associated with references

Availability Partner
Validation
Maturity Production
Portability General-purpose
Interaction mode API Service
Support
Theme Interaction
Systematic review stage General infrastructure
Planned release
Robots API

Integration of enhancing processes to classify/enrich references in the repository

Availability Partner
Validation
Maturity Production
Portability General-purpose
Interaction mode API Service
Support
Theme
Systematic review stage
Planned release
Scaling enhancement storage 🌐

Ensure that the storage of enhancements can scale effectively across multiple communities without limiting the ability for communities to experiment.

Availability 🌐 General
Validation Developer-tested
Maturity Production
Portability General-purpose
Interaction mode Embedded Component
Support Supported
Theme Storage
Systematic review stage General infrastructure
Planned release Jun-27
Streamlined EPPI imports

Easy import of data from EPPI reviewer which is aligned with a supported taxonomy

Availability Partner
Validation Developer-tested
Maturity Pilot
Portability General-purpose
Interaction mode Web Application
Support Best effort
Theme Enrichment
Systematic review stage Data extraction
Planned release Dec-26
Transferability model

Model for determining whether a reference is relevant to policy-makers in Cameroon

Availability
Validation
Maturity Pilot
Portability Project-specific
Interaction mode
Support
Theme
Systematic review stage
Planned release
Transferability robot

A robot which implements the transferability model as part of the repository ecosystem

Availability
Validation
Maturity In Development
Portability Project-specific
Interaction mode
Support
Theme
Systematic review stage
Planned release

User interfaces

Data from the living evidence repository is served to users through bespoke user interfaces (UI) and a variety of APIs. DESTINY’s bespoke user interface for our climate and health repository, the agentic map builder, is an agentic AI tool that speeds up the process of building evidence gap maps while keeping a human expert in control of the key decisions.

Agentic mapping backend

Backend functionality that supports: a) agentic decomposition and transformation of a plain-language user query into a search (free-text, taxonomy, snowballing); b) agentic execution of search(es), formulation of screening criteria, and screening of search results; c) mapping of search results against either agentically derived or taxonomy terminology

Availability Internal
Validation Untested
Maturity Prototype
Portability General-purpose
Interaction mode Command-line tool
Support Experimental
Theme Interaction
Systematic review stage Study identification and selection
Planned release
Agentic mapping interface

Natural language system & interface to allow users to navigate the mapping and faceted search interfaces

Availability Beta
Validation Developer-tested
Maturity Prototype
Portability
Interaction mode
Support
Theme
Systematic review stage
Planned release Sept-27
Keyword search interface

An interface over the repository which allows boolean search over titles and abstracts, with short summaries of results shown in a paginated interface

Availability Partner
Validation
Maturity Pilot
Portability General-purpose
Interaction mode Web application
Support
Theme Interaction
Systematic review stage
Planned release
Mapping interface

A machine interface which presents published vocabularies for use in UIs, repository storage, and robots

Availability Partner
Validation
Maturity Pilot
Portability General-purpose
Interaction mode
Support
Theme
Systematic review stage
Planned release
Reference display

A rich display of the enhanced data of a result, including taxonomy tagging and extracted data

Availability Partner
Validation
Maturity Pilot
Portability Project-specific
Interaction mode
Support
Theme
Systematic review stage
Planned release
Search API

Keyword search and annotation filtering of references within the repository (including segmenting by sub-repository/domain)

Availability Partner
Validation
Maturity Production
Portability General-purpose
Interaction mode API service
Support
Theme
Systematic review stage
Planned release
Vocabulary builder interface

Tools for building simple OWL ontologies and SKOS taxonomies to form a vocabulary which defines linked data within the repository. Also includes an MCP to allow LLM assisted vocabulary construction

Availability Partner
Validation
Maturity Pilot
Portability General-purpose
Interaction mode
Support
Theme
Systematic review stage
Planned release
Vocabulary reader interface

An interface to present SKOS taxonomies to users and solicit feedback on them

Availability Beta
Validation
Maturity Pilot
Portability General-purpose
Interaction mode
Support
Theme
Systematic review stage
Planned release