SciAstro¶
SciAstro is a package for academic websites built on Astro, for individual researchers, research groups and courses. Maintain your content in Markdown, YAML and BibTeX; Astro generates a static website, with the structure, themes and content validation supplied by SciAstro.
Install regular releases from npm using sciastro@latest. Review the changelog
and any migration instructions when upgrading. The public documentation is deployed with releases,
so unreleased changes on main appear only in local previews and CI artifacts.
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An individual website
Biography, research, supervision, teaching, software and a downloadable CV.
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A research-group website
A brief overview, research areas, faculty, active students and alumni.
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A course website
A syllabus, lesson index, scientific notes, notebooks and downloadable materials.
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Live examples
Explore the profiles, themes and layouts in complete example websites.
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Your own presentation
Three themes, bilingual content, icons, composed pages and component extensions.
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Integrate and extend
CLI commands, configuration fields, TypeScript exports and Astro components.
What is included¶
| Need | SciAstro provides |
|---|---|
| Academic structure | Automatic Home/About, Research, Team/Supervision and selected Publications pages |
| Teaching | A course starter with an overview, syllabus, lesson hierarchy and computational materials |
| Additional content | Markdown pages or explicit pages composed from ten section types |
| Scientific writing | Markdown articles and saved notebooks, highlighted code, callouts, numbered equations, figures and tables |
| Interactive figures | Plotly graphs from local JSON or notebook outputs |
| Article exports | Notebook downloads and PDF printing, configured globally or per article |
| Page hierarchy | Nested menus, configurable depth, breadcrumbs, automatic article indexes and links by page identifier |
| Presentation | classic, modern, lncc; top/sidebar and contextual layouts; optional motion; persistent light/dark preference |
| Languages | Portuguese and English, individually or together; translated content is checked |
| People | Faculty, researchers, students by configurable level, separate alumni |
| Citations | Local BibTeX, APA or Vancouver, linked citations and page bibliographies |
| Visual identity | Logo, favicon, navigation icons, BR/GB flags, colors and typography |
| Distribution | npm-compatible package, CLI, static output, root or subdirectory hosting |
| Quality checks | Content validation, automated package tests, installed-consumer tests and browser tests |
Two ways to author¶
Automatic pages are the shortest path. Edit research.yaml, team.yaml,
pages.yaml and their Markdown files. The same research record creates a short
homepage card and a detailed research section, avoiding repeated text.
Composed pages give you control over every page and section. Set pageFiles
and write YAML pages containing profiles, cards, timelines, figures, logos and
other sections. This replaces automatic pages; the team and bibliography data
remain reusable. See the composition guide.
Scope¶
SciAstro is a static-site package, not an online content editor or a hosting service. It does not fetch ORCID/Lattes records, generate a CV PDF, manage user accounts, receive contact forms or establish the scientific accuracy of a publication. Bring your own images, PDFs and metadata. Only Portuguese and English currently have built-in interface and bibliography localization. Examples contain fictional people and institutions.
Start with installation, then choose a tutorial. If you already have a website, use the migration recipe.
Licenses¶
SciAstro's code, documentation and fictional example content are released under the MIT License, copyright Diego Tavares Volpatto. The license text includes the required notices and terms for reuse and redistribution.
Third-party dependencies and bundled resources retain their own licenses:
| Resource | License and notices |
|---|---|
| Astro, Citation.js, markdown-it, Zod and sanitize-html | MIT; see each dependency's license file |
| Plotly.js | MIT; see its bundled dependency license and upstream license |
| YAML parser | ISC; see the dependency's license file |
| Lucide icons | ISC, with MIT notices for icons derived from Feather; see icon notices |
| Circle Flags | MIT; see icon notices |
| Manrope and Newsreader fonts; STIX Two Math outlines in the SciAstro identity | SIL Open Font License 1.1; see font notices |
| MathJax rendering code and New Computer Modern equation glyphs | Apache-2.0 (code); GUST Font License (glyphs); see notices |
Your website's texts, photographs, publications, institutional logos and other supplied materials retain their own licensing conditions. Using SciAstro does not automatically place those materials under MIT or grant permission to reuse third-party content.