R Discovery, a brand of Cactus Communications (CACTUS), recently announced that they had partnered with Springer Nature, a reputed global academic publisher, to help broaden the reach of open access (OA) content to the global researcher community. The main aim behind this partnership was to combine Springer Nature’s repository of high-quality OA published research with R Discovery’s online platform used over 2 million of researchers, and deliver a better way for researchers to find and share content.
Over the past decades, science has experienced rapid growth in the volume of data available for research. Identifying relevant literature and interpreting available data is a key skill that researchers across different career stages must develop. It has been estimated that scientists spend 23% of total work time reading,1 highlighting the need for structured support with reading scientific literature. This is where access to OA sources is useful as they help researchers save time and effort and can accelerate their research progress.
The partnership will enable researchers to access Springer Nature’s content in the form of daily recommendations on R Discovery. The literature search and reading app provides its members with a personalized reading feed based on their research interest, recommending the top three papers to read every day without them having to undertake tedious online searches. In fact, R Discovery’s AI engine understands researchers’ reading interests and suggests relevant topics in their own and related fields that may otherwise be easy to miss.
Commenting on the partnership, CACTUS CEO and Co-founder Abhishek Goel said, “Helping the scientific community with access to a vast bank of content is one of our top priorities. Our aim is to bring the most relevant and recently published scientific literature to the fingertips of researchers across the globe. By providing access to full-text open-access papers, we can facilitate content discovery and help save reading time. With this association, researchers will now have access to some of the most valuable OA research published in Springer Nature via the R Discovery app.”
R Discovery simplifies and optimizes literature search and reading by bringing together more than 100 million publications covering over 9.5 million research topics across subject areas such as life sciences, biology, medicine, philosophy, political science, environmental science, social sciences, and psychology. Now, with more than 30 million open-access articles available and access to paywalled articles with one’s university credentials, R Discovery has one of the largest repositories of research that is accessible on the go.
“Researchers are at the heart of what we do and ensuring access and engagement with high-quality content is central to the advancement of knowledge and discovery. With a long history in OA, we are committed to supporting researchers with streamlined routes to high-quality content,” said Till Moepert, Vice President Indirect Channels at Springer Nature. “Partnering with the Cactus Communications’ R Discovery App enables us to continue this rich tradition of making open research accessible through new platforms and avenues and supporting the research community with access to the widest possible content, tools, and services.”
Springer Nature is one of the first major publishers to make their research content available through the R Discovery platform. This partnership allows both organizations to deliver an upgraded and seamless experience for the communities they serve.
References:
- Hubbard, K. Dunbar, S. Perceptions of scientific research literature and strategies for reading papers depend on academic career stage. PLOS One, December 2017. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0189753
