ReadCube is a

technology company A technology company (or tech company) is an electronics-based technological company, including, for example, business relating to digital electronics, software, and internet-related services, such as e-commerce services. Details According to '' ...

developing software for researchers,

publishers Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, newsp ...

, academic and commercial organizations. ReadCube’s product line includes the reference manager ReadCube Papers, Anywhere Access and custom services for publishers. It is part of the

Digital Science Digital Science (or Digital Science & Research Solutions Ltd) is a technology company with its headquarters in London, United Kingdom. The company focuses on strategic investments into startup companies that support the research lifecycle. Histo ...

's portfolio. The ReadCube Papers app suite is under development based on the original ReadCube and Papers applications. It is currently available as a web-based platform (Web App) and on Mobile operating systems

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 include ...

and Android. The page has announced that the desktop applications should be ready to launch Fall 2019. Interestingly, the legacy ReadCube and Papers applications are no longer actively developed. The original ReadCube desktop application was available for free, selling premium services such as storage on the online library. In contrast, Papers was a software sold for a one time payment. ReadCube Papers is now a yearly subscription-based model.

History

ReadCube was created by Labtiva, a Boston-based company. A desktop client was publicly launched in October 2011 with investment from

, a division of

Macmillan Publishers Macmillan Publishers (occasionally known as the Macmillan Group; formally Macmillan Publishers Ltd and Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC) is a British publishing company traditionally considered to be one of the 'Big Five' English language publ ...

. Shortly after, ReadCube Web Reader was integrated with the website of ''

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are ...

'' in November 2011. A pilot program for ReadCube Access was launched at the University of Utah in September 2012, followed by a public release on Nature Publishing Group journals in November 2012. Also in November 2012, version 2.0 of the Web Reader launched with a number of significant changes. In February 2013, ReadCube launched across over 117 journals published by Wiley. In April 2014, Labtiva released ReadCube Pro and with it a new UI with several new features. Some of these features, including SmartCite - ReadCube's citation and bibliography formatting tool, the inclusion of multiple highlighting colors, and several view options come for free with the new update. A few, including a cloud sync function which allows PDF (.pdf) files to be synced across desktop machines or to the ReadCube iPad app, a metrics pane that shows where an article is being spoken about online, and a "Watched Folders" feature that automatically imports and indexes PDFs come only with ReadCube Pro. On 2 December 2014, ''Nature'' announced that it would allow its subscribers and a group of selected media outlets to distribute links providing limited "free" access to articles from its journals through ReadCube Web Reader. While it does, to an extent, provide free online access to articles, it is not a true open access scheme due to its restrictions on users' ability to download, copy, print, or otherwise distribute the content. On March 16, 2016, ReadCube acquired Papers from Springer Nature for an undisclosed amount.

Researcher products

Papers (software) available for Mac, Windows, iOS and Android. Papers was purchased by ReadCube in March 2016. The release of the new Papers after the merger became available on the web and mobile apps on November 1, 2018. The desktop version (for Mac and Windows) will be released in the Fall of 2019. Features include: * Search & Download ** Built-in search engines ** Personalized recommendations ** Related article feeds ** Institutional proxy support ** Web importing via browser ** 1-click PDF downloads ** Advanced search filters * Organizational Management ** Easy importing tools from your desktop/other reference managers ** Auto article meta-data matching ** Full text library search ** Advanced sorted & filtering ** Manual & smart collections ** #keyword tagging, labels & article ratings * Enhanced reading and annotating ** Enhanced PDF viewing ** Hyperlinked inline references, high-res figure browsers & auto-fetched supplements ** Advanced article metrics (incl. citations, field & relative citation ratio, and

Altmetric Altmetric, or altmetric.com, is a data science company that tracks where published research is mentioned online, and provides tools and services to institutions, publishers, researchers, funders and other organisations to monitor this activity, c ...

) ** Inline and sticky notes, highlighting and drawing tools ** Text to speech tool * Collaboration ** Up to 5 private shared collections (PDFs/references) ** Collaborate with up to 30 Papers users per collection ** Share references, PDFs, notes, tags and PDF annotations ** Article discussion summary * Citation Tools
SmartCite
** Insert references from personal / shared libraries or use built-in search engine ** 8000+ citation styles supported. Customize & import your own ** Quick-copy of citations in

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 ...

, ris ** Export reference list for use in third party citation tools like EndNote and Overleaf ** Supports Word 2016+ and Google Docs * Cross-platform syncing ** Unlimited cloud storage for your personal library ** Sync your entire library including notes, lists, annotations, and highlights across all of your devices ** Supports Desktop (Mac/PC), mobile (iOS/Android) and Web. ReadCube (legacy) previously available for

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ser ...

and

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

. * Consolidated display of all imported articles into a library * Customizable lists to organize articles * Integrated search functionality with

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 ...

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 t ...

, and Microsoft Academic to find and download new research material * Personalized recommendations of literature based on searches and library content * PDF viewer with notes and text highlighting * Supplements and references in one place * Full-text search across your entire PDF library * Hyperlinked references * Easily export citations to

EndNote A note is a string of text placed at the bottom of a page (paper), 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 ...

and other reference managers * Can sync your library between multiple devices * Can manually add and edit citation data * Can watch specific folders for changes & automatically import PDFs * SmartCite allows users to format citations and create bibliographies

Publisher custom solutions

ReadCube Enhanced PDF, available on nature.com for articles published by

Nature Publishing Group Nature Portfolio (formerly known as Nature Publishing Group and Nature Research) is a division of the international scientific publishing company Springer Nature that publishes academic journals, magazines, online databases, and services in scie ...

, Frontiers and

John Wiley & Sons John Wiley & Sons, Inc., commonly known as Wiley (), is an American multinational publishing company founded in 1807 that focuses on academic publishing and instructional materials. The company produces books, journals, and encyclopedias, ...

and any articles uploaded into the ReadCube Papers cloud. * Optimized PDF Viewing * Clickable in-line references with direct links to articles * Integrated view of the supplement, associated news, and editor’s comments * DOI lookup allows users to navigate directly to articles * Includes a ReadCube Papers Web Extension, which sends articles from web browsers directly to the Papers library * Draw, highlight and take notes *Full Reference List *Figure Browser ReadCube Checkout ReadCube Checkout is a service that offers rental, cloud and downloadable article access options outside journal subscriptions. This checkout functionality is offered for the majority of journal articles on several publisher pages. Individual readers make the choice to select the level of access that best fits their needs.

Notes and references

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History

Researcher products

Publisher custom solutions

Notes and references

See also