China has recently introduced a groundbreaking initiative in the realm of academic resources with the launch of PubScholar, a public academic platform launched by the National Science Library of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). This development, as reported by China Science Daily, marks a significant move towards challenging the traditionally dominant (privately owned) CNKI, China’s premier academic database.
See also: China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI): A Vital Player in China’s Research Landscape
PubScholar, currently in its initial phase, aims to redefine the landscape by providing comprehensive services, including academic resource searching, content acquisition, exchange, and sharing. Positioned as both a domestic hub and a global index of high-quality public welfare academic resources, the platform integrates the wealth of sci-tech achievements, sci-tech publishing, and academic exchanges hosted by the CAS.
See also: The Chinese Academy of Sciences: Its Importance in China’s Research Ecosystem
Following the global movement toward Open Science, PubScholar is committed to openness, allowing academic resources to integrate services under open access conditions and agreements. This inclusive approach has already resulted in the collection of about 170 million resources on the platform. Notably, approximately 80 million of these resources, encompassing journals, dissertations, patent literature, and scientific data, are available for free, challenging the conventional subscription models.
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The platform’s emergence has garnered widespread attention and interest since its launch on November 1. It aims to uphold intellectual property rights and international norms while providing an alternative to established academic databases. The National Science Library at the CAS, overseeing PubScholar, is actively responding to the surge in public interest by upgrading the infrastructure to ensure optimal service response times and accommodate the growing user base. As PubScholar continues to evolve, it holds the potential to reshape the academic landscape, offering researchers and scholars expansive, free access to a wealth of scholarly materials. The infographic below provides a basic introduction to PubScholar and its key characteristics.
