Infrastructure

In the world of academic research, the dissemination of knowledge and collaboration among scholars are fundamental drivers of progress. While traditional peer-reviewed journals have been the traditional method for sharing research findings, they often entail lengthy publication timelines and restricted access. In contrast, the preprint servers are instrumental in advancing scientific communication and rapid dissemination of research findings. However, they also come with concerns related to quality, credibility, and ethical considerations.

When we consider research, our minds often gravitate towards conventional research publications, and it's undeniable that there are countless accredited research articles spanning every conceivable field of study worldwide. As it is said that "tradition is the illusion of permanence", this idea of conventional research publications is so deeply rooted in our minds, that we almost never wander towards those pieces of research works that are published unconventionally yet are equally impactful.

In continuation to our previous blog on open access research platforms offered by non-profit organizations, this blog is dedicated to those open access research platforms that are owned and managed by the for-profit organizations like Google and Clarivate Analytics, among others. The aim of this article is not to evaluate these platforms, but rather to give an overview on the availability of different research platforms. 

As humans, we thrive to make our lives easy and with Google in place, we are half-way through finding solutions to almost all our hardships. However, finding millions of solutions on the internet is not always a blessing. Sorting the results that best serve the problem is a tedious task. For researchers, this time-taking process of finding the most relevant idea on the internet is an everyday saga. On top of it, several resourceful platforms charge expensive fees owing to their intellectual property laws.  

The European Commission launched OpenAIRE in 2010 as both an online portal (infrastructure) and a network of helpdesks and experts  (34 National Open Access Desk (NOADs). Its original objective was to support the implementation of the European open access policies: the ERC Scientific Council Guidelines for Open Access (2007) and the Open Access (OA) pilot in FP7.

Zenodo was launched within the frame of the OpenAIRE project, which was commissioned by the European Commission to provide open access to research outputs financed by public funding in Europe. Not all researchers necessarily have access to an institutional repository. Zenodo was designed to help them to comply with the open access requirement. 

The Berkley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) is an open source software platform for computing that uses volunteered resources.  

The BOINC platform was developed at the University of Berkeley and started in 2002. BOINC makes it possible to use the unused computing power of many thousands of computers available over the Internet or any Intranet.