CORE (Connecting Repositories) is a comprehensive service designed to aggregate, analyze, and provide access to the world’s open access research papers, facilitating discoverability, use, and reuse of scholarly outputs.
What CORE Does
CORE operates as a one-step search tool, aggregating metadata and full-text outputs from a global network of repositories, journals, and institutional repositories. This aggregation is aimed at promoting open access to scholarly outputs, aligning with the principles of the Budapest Open Access Initiative. The service is provided by the Knowledge Media Institute based at The Open University in the United Kingdom.
Key Features and Functionality
Access to Raw Data
- CORE API: Offers real-time machine access to metadata and full texts of research papers, enabling programmable access to the content. This distinguishes CORE from other academic search systems like Google Scholar and Microsoft Academic Search.
- CORE Dataset: Allows users to download the entire CORE data set for processing in their own infrastructure, which is useful for prototyping new methods, data analysis, and text mining.
- FastSync: Ensures an always-up-to-date copy of all CORE data in the user’s infrastructure.
Content Discovery
- CORE Search: A search engine that provides access to over 125 million open access harvested research outputs. Users can search using a faceted search and browse the collection by the date of harvesting.
- Recommender: A plugin for repositories, journal systems, and web interfaces that suggests similar articles based on semantic relationships.
- Discovery: Available as a browser extension and repository plugin, this tool helps users find freely accessible copies of research papers.
Managing Content
- CORE Membership: Offers tools and benefits such as technical support, compliance checking, and participation in community governance to members who contribute to building a fairer open research ecosystem.
- Repository Dashboard: A service for data providers, providing an online interface with technical information and statistics. It is integrated with Institutional Repository Usage Statistics (IRUS-UK).
OAI Identifiers
- OAI Resolver: Converts OAI identifiers from repositories into free-to-mint unique persistent identifiers (PIDs) for open access papers, ensuring they resolve directly to the repository.
Analytical and Innovative Solutions
- CORE-GPT: A recent development that combines open access research with large language models for credible and trustworthy question answering. Answers are backed by citations to scientific articles and links to the PDF versions of these papers.
- Data Analysis and Consultancy: CORE provides consultancy services to help organizations analyze and derive value from large amounts of research data, enabling them to understand, interpret, and build on new knowledge.
Additional Services
- Compliance and Monitoring: CORE helps funders analyze, audit, and monitor open research, ensuring compliance with open access mandates and facilitating the transition towards open science.
- Cutting-edge Solutions: The service continuously researches and develops innovative data-driven and AI solutions to enhance the use and reuse of open access content.
In summary, CORE is a powerful tool that not only aggregates and provides access to a vast collection of open access research papers but also offers a range of services and tools to enhance the discoverability, management, and analytical use of these resources.