For more than 15 years, KMi has provided the environment in which an ambitious research idea has grown into a global scholarly infrastructure: how can the world’s research literature be made more accessible and useful to both humans and machines?
That idea became CORE: COnnecting REpositories. Launched at KMi in 2010, CORE began as a research initiative exploring how open access research distributed across thousands of repositories could be brought together, enriched and made available at scale. Over time, through sustained research, technical development and engagement with the global scholarly community, CORE has grown into one of the world’s most significant open scholarly infrastructures.
Today, CORE provides access to a comprehensive bibliographic database of scholarly literature. It indexes hundreds of millions of research outputs and serves millions of users worldwide. Its services range from research discovery and machine access to scholarly information to tools helping repositories and journals improve metadata quality, manage content and monitor open access compliance. Many academic institutions support CORE through its membership programme.
Beyond its direct services, CORE enables other organisations to develop innovative applications and services using its data and infrastructure, spanning areas such as plagiarism detection, research discovery, digital libraries and AI-powered research tools. CORE’s large-scale scholarly corpus also underpins academic research in areas including artificial intelligence, text and data mining, and research analytics.
Beyond scale, CORE’s mission has remained consistent: to support open access to research and enable scholarly knowledge to be used by both people and machines. As a mission-driven, not-for-profit scholarly infrastructure, CORE is committed to reinvesting its income into its operations and long-term sustainability rather than distributing profits. CORE is also committed to the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI), emphasising transparency, community governance and sustainability.
The latest stage in CORE’s development is the creation of a dedicated spin-out company. The spin-out establishes an organisational foundation for CORE’s long-term sustainability and continued development, while preserving its open scholarly mission and enabling closer alignment with POSI.
One of the things I have always valued about KMi is its intellectually stimulating environment and its ability to recognise the potential of emerging technologies long before they become mainstream. When I started CORE, the vision was to open up scholarly knowledge not only to humans, but also to machines. At the time, I often had to explain outside KMi why anyone would want to text-mine research literature. Today, with the rapid development of AI, the significance of that vision has become increasingly apparent. Seeing CORE grow from that early research idea into a global scholarly infrastructure, and now become a dedicated legal entity to carry forward the mission I originally envisaged for it, is incredibly rewarding. CORE’s journey illustrates the value of KMi’s forward-thinking research culture, where ideas can take shape long before their wider significance becomes apparent and ultimately create impact on a global scale.” – Petr Knoth, Professor of AI and Data Science, KMi | Founder and CEO, CORE (COnnecting REpositories)
This milestone is also significant for KMi. As the University’s first ever spin-out, CORE demonstrates KMi’s ability to incubate ambitious ideas and support their development from research, through technology and service creation, to sustainable innovation with global reach.
“I am extremely proud to see the OU’s first ever spin-out born and raised in KMi. CORE’s journey from a small research project to a sustainable global open access infrastructure is a tribute to the skill, dedication and resilience of an exceptional team and to KMi’s can-do and innovative culture, and a true expression of the OU’s mission of openness.” – Harith Alani, KMi Director
CORE’s journey therefore represents more than the success of an individual research project. It demonstrates how sustained research and innovation within KMi can create infrastructure used across the world and establish the foundations needed for that infrastructure to continue developing for the benefit of the global research community.
Related links: