Making Research Software FAIR: How SoFAIR Tackles the Reproducibility Challenge

Reproducibility is one of the significant challenges of contemporary science. A landmark survey revealed that more than 70% of researchers had failed to reproduce another scientist’s experiments, and more than 50% were unable to reproduce their own (Baker, 2016).

“Single occurrences that cannot be reproduced are of no significance to science.” (Popper, 1935)

One of the less visible, but increasingly critical, factors contributing to this problem is the visibility and availability of research software. Software now underpins almost every stage of the research lifecycle from data collection and analysis to simulation, modelling, and visualisation. Yet despite its centrality, research software often remains hidden within manuscripts, mentioned fleetingly or omitted altogether. Without proper identification and registration, software is rarely linked back to the publications that introduced or used it, leaving its role in scientific discovery under-recognised and its reusability limited. read more...

The Shape of Comprehensiveness: 13,000 Data Providers and counting.

In the world of science, it’s common to talk about big numbers. Citation counts, impact scores, and download figures often dominate the conversation, somewhat controversially. But numbers on their own rarely tell the full story unless they’re connected to purpose.

As of 4th August 2025, CORE (Connecting Repositories), has surged past the direct data provider mark, a milestone that underscores both our accelerated growth and truly global coverage.  It’s tangible evidence of CORE’s constant growth and truly global coverage. Unlike some similar services, CORE’s figure reflects direct data providers, meaning that intermediaries such as DOAJ are counted once rather than tallying every individual journal, offering a clearer and more transparent measure of reach. At CORE, we actively curate, maintain, and support these data providers, ensuring they remain operational and fixing issues on a daily basis not only for our users, but for the benefit of the global repositories community. Unlike services that restrict themselves to content with registered (often paid-for) DOIs, we prioritise comprehensiveness and equal visibility of research outputs from all parts of the world. We share this number because it says something vital about the shape of open research and who is included in it. A perfect example is the groundbreaking paper “Attention Is All You Need”, which appears in CORE’s index via preprint repositories as a seminal work without a DOI, showcasing that critical research can be available outside of traditional commercial publishing channels. read more...

Looking Back, Stepping Forward: 15 Years of CORE in the Open Access Movement

Fifteen years ago, CORE (COnnecting REpositories) began as a PhD project with a simple but ambitious idea: to make open research more accessible, not just for humans, but for machines too. At a time when few could imagine tools like ChatGPT answering questions based on vast collections of scientific literature, it was already clear that the future of knowledge would depend on infrastructure capable of delivering information in ways both people and machines could understand. What followed was a decade and a half of learning, building, listening and working with the global research community to shape a more open, intelligent, and discoverable world of knowledge. read more...

CORE at 15: Together Building Open Access, Unlocking Global Knowledge

As of July 2025, CORE marks 15 years of supporting the global open access community through indexing and enriching research outputs. What began as a small-scale project has grown into the world’s largest open access indexing platform supporting over 10,000 repositories and journals, and making millions of full-text research outputs accessible to all.

Our anniversary, CORE at 15: Together Building Open Access, Unlocking Global Knowledge, is both a celebration and a recommitment to the mission that drives us: enabling unrestricted, global access to research. read more...

CORE at Open Repositories 2025: Reflections from the Global Stage

Earlier this year, we shared our excitement ahead of the Open Repositories 2025 (OR2025) conference in Chicago. With a packed programme and growing momentum around open science infrastructure, CORE brought a series of contributions focused on the responsible use of AI, metadata innovation, and national-level repository coordination.

Now that the dust has settled and the conference has wrapped up, we’re taking a closer look at the sessions our team presented, the partnerships we strengthened, and the contributions we brought to the open repositories community. From addressing machine access to research content, metadata quality to AI-powered SDG classification and reproducibility, here’s a comprehensive summary of CORE’s significant presence at OR2025. read more...

Reflections from Tokyo: CORE at the COAR 2025 Annual Meeting

The COAR Annual Conference 2025, held in Tokyo from 12–14 May, brought together repository experts, open science advocates, and infrastructure leaders from across the globe. Representing CORE was Professor Petr Knoth, who contributed to three sessions throughout the event, each addressing urgent and emerging questions around artificial intelligence, machine access, and repository infrastructure.

This blog captures the key moments from CORE’s participation at COAR 2025, touching on discussions about responsible machine behaviour, the current state of UK repositories, and the transformative potential of AI in scholarly communication. read more...

CORE at the CHIST-ERA Projects Seminar 2025: Turning Research Software into Reusable Knowledge

Professor Petr Knoth was selected by the CHIST-ERA organisers as one of four Open Science panellists in the first part of the Seminar. The other panelists included David Camacho (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Project MARTINI & Open Science Ambassador), Sabine Kraml (Université Grenoble Alpes, Project OpenMAPP & Open Science Ambassador), and Joanna Watt (EPSRC, UKRI, Research Funding Agency representative). The panel discussed the main challenges and gaps in Open Science. Among these, Professor Knoth particularly highlighted: read more...

CORE at Open Repositories 2025: Unlocking Insights and Empowering Open Access

CORE will be contributing seven accepted submissions to the 20th International Conference on Open Repositories (OR2025), taking place in Chicago, Illinois, USA, from 15–18 June 2025. These presentations highlight ongoing efforts to enhance open access, improve research discoverability, and address key challenges in the open repositories community.

From managing machine access in the era of generative AI to improving research classification and repository interoperability, each submission provides valuable insights for repository managers, academic institutions, and the wider open access ecosystem. read more...

CORE Successfully Completes the USRN Discovery Pilot Project, Enhancing Repository Discoverability in the United States

A significant milestone has been reached: CORE’s pilot project with the USRN has concluded, delivering impressive outcomes, our pilot project with the United States Repository Network (USRN), a collaborative initiative between CORE, SPARC, Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) and AntLeaf. This pilot, which commenced in 2023, focused on assessing and increasing the discoverability and promoting good practices of U.S. repositories, a crucial step towards building a robust and interoperable national research infrastructure. read more...

CORE presents SoFAIR project at UNESCO

Last week saw CORE founder Professor Petr Knoth at UNESCO in Paris for the 2025 Software Heritage Symposium and summit. Professor Knoth was presenting the work undertaken in the first year of the SoFAIR project, a two-year multinational CHIST-ERA project. The Open University is working in conjunction with multiple partners including INRIA, Brno University of Technology, the Polish Academy of Sciences and Europe PMC. SoFAIR will improve and semi-automate the process for identifying, describing, registering and archiving research software, ensuring it has received a Software Heritage persistent identifier.  read more...