ReadCube is a reference management tool that has web, desktop, and mobile incarnations. ReadCube allows for a more interactive experience when reading academic research papers as the pdf files when viewed in ReadCube allow annotations to be made, citations can be hyperlinked, and author names now become clickable. ReadCube also boasts a high-resolution figure browser, recommendations for related articles, and altmetrics. It has a full-text search function to help researchers find papers in their personal library and also has an integrated search feature allowing users to find articles via PubMed and other scholarly search engines. In the past, many publishers have collaborated with ReadCube, including Springer Nature, Taylor and Francis, and Highwire.
Springer Nature established a trial collaboration with ReadCube in 2014 which it later expanded and re-branded as SharedIt. SharedIt allows publishers to make their content directly available to subscribers who can then legally share papers with their colleagues. Taylor and Francis’ partnership with ReadCube use their publishing technology to make more than four million academic research articles and book chapters searchable and present as references on ReadCube’s platform. As of July 2016, all of Highwire’s online content was made available via ReadCube.
Earlier this week, ReadCube announced yet another partnership, this time with the largest general scientific society in the world—the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). This partnership allows ReadCube to enhance the collection of articles available on its reference management system. This is because all six Science titles are now discoverable on ReadCube’s web, desktop, and mobile apps, search engines, and ReadCube’s related article and recommendation feeds. This broadens the access audiences have to Science titles and should help researchers stay up to date in their fields. Papers published in any of the six Science journals that are accessed via ReadCube will now have additional features. These include:
- Tools for Annotation
- Actionable in-line citations
- Access to supplementary material
- Actionable author names
- Related articles feed
- High-resolution figure browser
- Associated altmetrics.
This will enhance the reading and learning experience for members of the research community who choose to access these papers via ReadCube. The authors of these papers should also benefit from their work being discoverable by an even larger audience and possibly the research being recommended to even more researchers around the globe. The AAAS should also benefit from its articles since it will now be present in the related and recommended article feeds of ReadCube users. The partnership between AAAS and ReadCube should, therefore, benefit readers and help them have a more interactive experience with academic research articles. It should also benefit AAAS and those who choose to publish in its associated journals since their work is now discoverable to a wider audience.
