New tool searches UK's repositories

A new search engine should help academics, students and the general public navigate papers held in the UK’s open-access repositories. The COnnecting REpositories tool (CORE) enables people to search the full text of items held in all approved open-access repositories in the country.

Once they’ve found what they’re looking for, the CORE system stores these downloads, so that people can still get access to the papers they have found useful even if the original repository is offline.

CORE is accessible via an online portal, via users’ mobile devices or through repositories and libraries that have integrated CORE with their own search features.

Senior research fellow at the Open University, Zdenek Zdrahal, who led the project, said: ‘The Open University is at the forefront of producing new and innovative advancements in educational resources. CORE is an exciting addition to this history and we believe it will be beneficial to the academic research community and to the OU. There are plans to develop systems further, to aid research.’

CORE is already integrated into The Open University’s research repository, Open Research Online (ORO) which includes more than 18,900 research publications.