CORE - Short Review

CORE (COnnecting REpositories) is a comprehensive and innovative service dedicated to promoting open access to scholarly literature worldwide. Here is an overview of what CORE does and its key features:

Mission and Purpose

CORE’s primary mission is to index all research worldwide and deliver unrestricted access to it. This not-for-profit service, based at The Open University in the UK, aims to aggregate open access content from various repositories and journals, enrich this content using advanced text and data mining technologies, and provide free access through a range of services.

Key Features and Functionality

Content Aggregation and Access

CORE aggregates and indexes a vast collection of open access research papers, currently boasting over 125 million harvested research outputs. This content is made accessible through various channels, including a searchable database, allowing users to find, access, and download research papers free of cost with limited re-use restrictions.

Programmable Machine Access

One of the distinguishing features of CORE is its programmable machine access to data. Users can access metadata and full texts of research papers through the CORE API, which provides real-time machine access. Additionally, the CORE Dataset allows users to download all of CORE’s data for analysis and processing in their own infrastructure. The FastSync service ensures that users can maintain an always-up-to-date copy of all CORE data.

Content Discovery Tools

CORE offers several tools to enhance content discovery:

• CORE Search: A powerful search engine for open access papers, enabling researchers to stay updated on the latest scientific literature.
• Recommender: A plugin for repositories and journal systems that suggests similar articles based on semantic analysis.
• Discovery: Available as a browser extension and repository plugin, this tool helps users find freely accessible copies of research papers.

Content Management

CORE provides several services to manage and validate content:

• CORE Membership: Offers tools and benefits such as technical support, compliance checking, and participation in community governance to help build a fairer open research ecosystem.
• Repository Dashboard: A service for data providers, offering an online interface with valuable technical information and statistics. It is integrated with Institutional Repository Usage Statistics (IRUS-UK) to help manage and validate repository collections.

Data Enrichment and Analytics

CORE enriches scholarly data using state-of-the-art text and data mining technologies to aid discoverability. The service also supports data providers in adopting good practices by providing tools for metadata validation, content management, and OA compliance.

OAI Identifiers and Bespoke Services

CORE offers an OAI Resolver to make OAI identifiers resolve directly to the user’s repository, creating free-to-mint unique persistent identifiers (PIDs) for open access papers. Additionally, Consultancy services are available to help organizations analyze and derive value from large amounts of research data.

User Benefits

CORE serves a wide range of stakeholders, including researchers, the general public, academic institutions, developers, funders, and companies from diverse sectors. It facilitates scalable access to a vast and comprehensive collection of data, supporting various use cases such as search ranking improvements, trends visualization, and the development of new tools and services on top of the CORE platform. In summary, CORE is a robust platform that not only aggregates and provides access to a massive collection of open access research but also offers a suite of tools and services to enhance discoverability, manage content, and support the development of new applications and use cases.