CORE vs The Lens
CORE
core.ac.ukThe Lens
lens.orgSide by side
| Figure | CORE | The Lens |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $83.33/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 11 | 7 |
| Spec score · Academic Research Databases | 8.8 (#3) | 7.7 (#17) |
| Founded | The Open University records the CORE project period as February–July 2011, and contemporary OU news says the service launched in 2011. | The Lens says it launched in 2001, while its predecessor Patent Lens work began in 1999. |
| Headquarters | Milton Keynes, United Kingdom | West End, Queensland, Australia |
| Support | Starting members receive general support, while Supporting and Sustaining members receive increasing levels of technical support. | The Lens lists [email protected] and [email protected] as contact emails and provides a support request form. |
Plans
CORE
- StartingPriced on request
- SupportingPriced on request
- SustainingPriced on request
- CORE APIFree
- CORE API — free access without registrationFree
- Institution and Enterprise API trialFree
- Starting membershipFree
- Starting membershipFree
- CORE API — registered accessPriced on request
- Supporting membershipPriced on request
The Lens
- Academic / non-commercial accessPriced on request
- Individual commercial use$1,000 a year
- Academic WorkspaceFree
- Anonymous accessFree
- API TrialFree
- Individual Professional Workspace$1,000 a year
- API Member | Custom AccessPriced on request
In their own words
CORE
CORE is a multidisciplinary discovery service for scholarly work gathered from repositories, preprint servers and journals. Its search covers research papers, journal articles, preprints, theses, dissertations, conference proceedings, reports and books. CORE says its collection holds 449 million searchable papers, including 57 million full texts. Researchers and the public can search this material; developers can use the API for real-time access to metadata and full texts. The CORE Dataset supports downloading data for analysis and text mining on an organisation’s own infrastructure, though access is limited to users representing organisations registered in non-sanctioned countries. Individuals can use the API instead. CORE Discovery is available as a browser extension, repository plugin and API, and CORE Recommender suggests related articles in repositories, journal systems and web interfaces. Free API access costs nothing, subject to rate limits of one batch request or five single requests per 10 seconds. Starting membership costs nothing for data providers. The service describes itself as not-for-profit and community-governed.
The Lens
The Lens connects scholarly literature and patent records for discovery, analysis, decision-making, and partnering. Patent search offers Boolean, structured, biological, and classification queries, alongside filters and sorting. The Lens says its scholarly collection contains more than 200 million records and links scholarly works to patents through citations. PatSeq tools search, analyze, and share biological sequences disclosed in patents. Search results can be visualized in charts and dashboards, which users may save and share. Registered users can save collections and queries, add notes, and receive notifications when new indexed results match them. Lens Profiles combine author and inventor records and support ORCID linking and synchronization. Anonymous browsing is free, as is a non-commercial academic workspace for users with an academic institutional email. Individual commercial users need commercial-use permissions through a subscription or institution. The Individual Professional Workspace costs $1,000 a year. APIs support programmatic search and retrieval, subject to approved access and a token.