Freescience
Description
Freescience allows any researcher to share his scientific papers (as well as notes, data and designs draws, ecc...) into a P2P OAI-PMH compliant network, by mean of which your works will be instantly available to hundred of thousands researchers worldwide. You can also browse the huge OAI archive (about 1 million documents from the best research institutes) and download their full text for free.
Furthermore, the Freescience software is completely free, as is access to documents in the dA network.
It offers three domains of action:
- Search and download of full-text scientific documents
- Sharing documents in the OAI network
- Science community
Download it here and install it in your own PC.
Sharing in the OAI network
Freely sharing scientific documents on the internet with over 100,000 researchers (dA and OAI users) means a 336% increase in the number of times your work is quoted by other researchers (Steve Lawrence, Online or invisible?, Nature, vol. 411, n 6837, pag 521, Year 2001). This sharing also gives value to the scores of scientific documents "left to rust" on hard disks and in drawers; documents which are not suitable for publication in magazines and periodicals (data charts, projects, results of experimental campaigns, technical reports, degree and doctorate theses, etc.), but which nonetheless represent a rich source of valuable scientific research and which have until now been completely unused. Any researcher can surely think of how many documents are in their computer, excellent works which will however never be published but which could well be useful to other researchers.
A genuine "treasure" which dA can bring to light
The right of an author to republish a copy of their own work online (self-archiving) is assured by the law. This right is overruled only in the contracts of certain publishers, a list of these publishers is posted (and constantly updated) here.
Science community
Thanks to dA, it will be possible to contact the authors of interesting documents directly, using instant messaging, offering new possibilities for collaborative working between scientists who may be separated by great geographical distances.