ScientificCommons has launched online, the website aims to be a single port of call for accessing freely available scientific information that is published using open access models.

The new site identifies authors and provides clear data on the relationships between authors from its database by clicking through on a link. ScientificCommons claim the site does this across disciplines and institutions. 

So far the service has indexed 10 million publications and extracted the details of four million authors. The Open Access Protocol for MetaData Harvesting (OAI-PMH) was used to gather the information. The service will index a range of file formats, including PDF, PowerPoint, Rich Text File, Word and Postscript. All documents will be stored on the ScientificCommons database, but regular refreshes will be made.