colwiz (''col''lective ''wiz''dom) is a free web, desktop and mobile based research management software, designed by researchers from the University of Oxford. colwiz incorporates reference management, collaboration and networking tools, as well as productivity features. In 2011, colwiz entered into Oxford University's Isis Software Incubator and won the University’s Challenge Seed Fund (UCSF). Following private beta testing, colwiz was launched to public in March 2013, and is now being used globally in research-based companies and institutions including:

GlaxoSmithKline GSK plc, formerly GlaxoSmithKline plc, is a British multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company with global headquarters in London, England. Established in 2000 by a merger of Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham. GSK is the ten ...

, P&G, IBM,

Philips Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), commonly shortened to Philips, is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, it has been mostly headquartered in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarters i ...

Disney Research Disney Research is a network of research labs supporting The Walt Disney Company. Its purpose is to pursue scientific and technological innovation to advance the company's broad media and entertainment efforts. It has facilities in Los Angeles, Z ...

, as well as numerous top-tier universities. In March 2013, colwiz announced a development partnership and strategic investment from the

American Chemical Society The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a scientific society based in the United States that supports scientific inquiry in the field of chemistry. Founded in 1876 at New York University, the ACS currently has more than 155,000 members at all d ...

( ACS), the world's largest scientific society. At the same time, colwiz powered the launch of ACS ChemWorx, a virtual research environment for more than 200,000 ACS members worldwide. In December 2013, colwiz partnered with Royal Society Publishing and

Taylor & Francis Taylor & Francis Group is an international company originating in England that publishes books and academic journals. Its parts include Taylor & Francis, Routledge, F1000 (publisher), F1000 Research or Dovepress. It is a division of Informa ...

to launch HTML5 Interactive PDF Reader, which allows researchers to annotate and save PDF articles directly from the publishers' website. In 2017, after collaborating together for several years, Colwiz was acquired by

History

Colwiz was conceived by Tahir Mansoori (

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

and

Founder Founder or Founders may refer to: Places *Founders Park, a stadium in South Carolina, formerly known as Carolina Stadium * Founders Park, a waterside park in Islamorada, Florida Arts, entertainment, and media * Founders (''Star Trek''), the ali ...

), during his doctoral research in

computational biology Computational biology refers to the use of data analysis, mathematical modeling and computational simulations to understand biological systems and relationships. An intersection of computer science, biology, and big data, the field also has fo ...

at the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

. colwiz entered Isis Innovation Software Incubator in March 2011, and launched the first version of the software in private

beta Beta (, ; uppercase , lowercase , or cursive ; grc, βῆτα, bē̂ta or ell, βήτα, víta) is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 2. In Modern Greek, it represents the voiced labiod ...

, available to researchers in British and US universities. During the

testing colwiz gathered feedback from the research community and worked on developing industry partnerships. The beta phase culminated with the announcement of a collaborative partnership between colwiz and ACS, and the launch of colwiz-powered ACS Chemworx and ACS Active View PDF, on 27 March 2013. A day later, colwiz officially came out of

and entered the

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work A creative work is a manifestation of creative effort including fine artwork (sculpture, paintings, drawing, sketching, performance art), dance, writing (literature), filmmaking, ...

. Joint ventures with Royal Society Publishing, and

, saw release of the colwiz HTML5 Interactive PDF Reader in December 2013.

Features

Library

The colwiz Library is an application that allows users to find, read, annotate, save and share research articles. Articles can be archived in the Library in customisable folders. The colwiz Import Wizard can automatically add publications to colwiz Library from other common reference libraries (including reference only from

EndNote A note is a string of text placed at the bottom of a page in a book or document or at the end of a chapter, volume, or the whole text. The note can provide an author's comments on the main text or citations of a reference work in support of th ...

whereas references and PDFs from

Mendeley Mendeley is a reference manager software developed by Elsevier. It is used to manage and share research papers and generate bibliographies for scholarly articles. History The company Mendeley, named after the biologist Gregor Mendel and chemist D ...

and

Zotero Zotero () is a free and open-source software, free and open-source reference management software to manage bibliographic data and related research materials, such as Portable Document Format, PDF files. Features include web browser integration, ...

) or individually from folders, supporting several different file formats (e.g.

BibTeX BibTeX is reference management software for formatting lists of references. The BibTeX tool is typically used together with the LaTeX document preparation system. Within the typesetting system, its name is styled as . The name is a portmanteau ...

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

and RIS). New research articles can be found with the in-built search engine, which provides users direct access to references from over 30 different databases and file repositories (including ISI Web of Knowledge,

Google Scholar Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in beta in November 2004, the Google Scholar index includes p ...

PubMed PubMed is a free search engine accessing primarily the MEDLINE database of references and abstracts on life sciences and biomedical topics. The United States National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the National Institutes of Health maintain the ...

Science Direct ScienceDirect is a website which provides access to a large bibliographic database of scientific and medical publications of the Dutch publisher Elsevier. It hosts over 18 million pieces of content from more than 4,000 academic journals and 30,0 ...

and

Scopus Scopus is Elsevier's abstract and citation database launched in 2004. Scopus covers nearly 36,377 titles (22,794 active titles and 13,583 inactive titles) from approximately 11,678 publishers, of which 34,346 are peer-reviewed journals in top-l ...

). Users can add notes, links, article and other supporting files to each reference in their colwiz Library; they can also edit reference details if required. An integrated Interactive PDF Reader allows users to take notes and highlight the article directly in the PDF, making any such annotations shareable and searchable. The free account allows users to add 5000 reference entries and 2GB of free storage for PDF files. Users can get extra storage up to 30GB by inviting colleagues.

Drive

The colwiz Drive is a cloud storage application which lets users store, share and manage their files. Users can upload files, which can then be shared with a group, project or event, by dragging and dropping to the appropriate folder. The Drive also serves as a backup for colwiz Library metadata and personal file storage.

Groups

The colwiz Web interface provides users with a free platform to collaborate on research projects and events in Groups. Each Group has its own web page with integrated shared features, including: Library, Drive, as well as a discussion panel. Besides collaborating and communicating with fellow researchers, users can also access their colwiz Library online with the same functionalities as in the Desktop application.

Web Importer

The colwiz Bookmarklet for web browsers provides a shortcut for importing publications to the Library; users can import references to their colwiz Library directly from their internet browser. The colwiz Bookmarklet is compatible with all common web browsers (including

Apple Safari Safari is a web browser developed by Apple. It is built into macOS, iOS, and iPadOS, and uses Apple's open-source browser engine, WebKit, which was derived from KHTML. Safari was introduced in Mac OS X Panther in January 2003. It was inclu ...

Google Chrome Google Chrome is a cross-platform web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macOS ...

Microsoft Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Windows line of operating systems (in W ...

and

Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current and a ...

Citation Plugin for Word Processors

The colwiz Desktop Application offers built-in support for citation plugins for Word processors. Users can insert citations in more than 6000 styles and generate bibliographies with a single click. The citation plugin is supported for

Microsoft Word Microsoft Word is a word processing software developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name ''Multi-Tool Word'' for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms includin ...

(2003, 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016), Neo Office (3.x), Open Office (3.x), Libre Office (3.x) and Star Office (9.x). Additionally colwiz also supports citation in LaTeX.

colwiz for Mobile Devices and Tablets

The colwiz Mobile Application is available through the

Apple Store The Apple Store is a chain of Retail, retail stores owned and operated by Apple Inc. The stores sell various Apple products, including Macintosh, Mac personal computers, iPhone smartphones, iPad tablet computers, Apple Watch smartwatches, Apple ...

for

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...

mobile devices, such as iPhone and

iPad The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, operating s ...

, and also on Android smart phones and Tablets through

Google Play Google Play, also known as the Google Play Store and formerly the Android Market, is a digital distribution service operated and developed by Google. It serves as the official app store for certified devices running on the Android (operating sys ...

. These applications allow colwiz Library to be accessible while the user is away from the desktop. The mobile applications are synced in real time through colwiz Web, and allow users to search and add new references to colwiz Library, and also attach article PDFs to references.

Social

colwiz Web hosts a variety of social networking features for researchers, including an activity thread, publication pinboard, and personalised research profiles.

References

{{Reflist, 30em

External links

colwiz

colwiz Desktop / Mobile / Web Importer