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 βgrey literatureβ 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 π
A developed core ontology which supports the basic elements of evidence synthesis
| Availability | π 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 π
Access control which limits a user’s ability to interact with resources from other communities
| Availability | π 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 π
Records are automatically deduplicated across the entire repository on import. Deduplication is non-destructive.
| Availability | π 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 π
A software development kit which makes it easier to build against the repository infrastructure
| Availability | π 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 π
DEET, the data extraction evaluation toolkit, can use taxonomy/vocabulary hierarchical structure to optimise prompts for large taxonomy extraction
| Availability | π 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 π
DEET, the data extraction evaluation toolkit will have a web UI that allows users to build and evaluate automated data extraction pipelines interactively
| Availability | π 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 π
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 | π 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 π
Ensure that the storage of enhancements can scale effectively across multiple communities without limiting the ability for communities to experiment.
| Availability | π 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. DESTINYβs 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 | – |
