My name is samruddhi kulkarni, and I’m a Computer Science student with a strong interest in software engineering and Java development. I’m planning to apply for GSoC 2026 with JabRef.
I’ve started exploring the repository and will be setting up the project locally to understand the architecture and contribution workflow. I’m particularly interested in improving code quality and working on backend-related features.
I would appreciate any guidance on beginner-friendly issues that would be good to start with. Looking forward to contributing and learning from the community.
I am a first-year Computer Science Engineering student at Dayananda Sagar University. I write code in Java study DSA and occasionally solve problems on leetcode.
I have already set up JabRef in my local laptop. Previously I worked on a issue of Pseudonomyzation. Although I managed to solve it by the end but it was not upto industry standards and hence the PR was not closed. But this gave me the fuel to understand more about APIs, LLD, OOP, Multithreading & Concurrency and how to write cleaner, scalable and well architectured code. I built Github repos and projects on above mentioned topics, so that my knowledge does not remain only theoretical.
Now I think I am ready to contribute for OCR integration project for GSoC.
Why I chose this particular project—I specifically chose the OCR integration project because it aligns with a long-term goal. I previously tried to build an application to extract data from scanned pathological test reports and convert it into structured metrics for doctors. I could not build it because I lacked the knowledge and tools to handle image-based text extraction. Contributing to this JabRef project allows me to finally learn how to process these types of documents.
I am highly motivated to work upon a project that I really want to solve which aligns with my long term goal.
I would really be grateful if this project is assigned to me.I am ready to read documentation, write code, and learn from your feedback.
Following our contributing guide, generally it’s possible to assign yourself to an issue, but if you were really interested in this issue and you had read through the OCR meta-issue thread, you would have known that for this particular issue (and all other GSoC issues) you need to provide a formal application through GSoC.
I wanted to ask another question. In GSoC guides on how to write a proposal, it is mentioned that Deliverables section should also be there. Since it is the first step to write a proposal and make a proper timeline when I should deliver what elements of the project. It is well within the possibility that some milestones take some more or less time. So should I try to make rough Deliverable plan or should I meticulously estimate which part would take how much time?
Hi JabRef community! I’m Sudeep, a 2nd year B.Tech student from Savitribai Phule Pune University,Pune, India. I have JabRef v100.0.0 running locally on Linux, have explored the codebase.
I’m planning to submit GSoC 2026 proposals for:
JabRef components as native images (GraalVM) or
PostgreSQL as full GUI data backend
I have experience with Java, SQL, and GraalVM. Looking forward to connecting with mentors!