Get Free Copy: A Multi-Repository Search Platform for Biomedical Publications

In the rapidly evolving landscape of biomedical research, the ability to access and synthesize relevant literature is critical. The advent of digital publishing has exponentially increased the volume of scientific outputs, presenting both opportunities and challenges for researchers. While the proliferation of academic publications provides more relevant knowledge, such information often stands behind the barriers erected by traditional paywall systems, significantly impeding the free flow of information. These paywalls hinder knowledge exchange and scientific progresses in research, underscoring the importance of open access as a means to democratize knowledge and foster scientific progress [1].

The open access movement has made significant strides in dismantling barriers to research access [2]. Parallel to the development of open-access publishing options, the emergence of preprint servers such as arXiv, bioRxiv, and medRxiv has revolutionized the dissemination of scientific findings, allowing for rapid sharing of research ahead of peer review. The strategic use of these platforms can greatly accelerate scientific communication, facilitating immediate access to research findings [3]. Additionally, PubMed Central (PMC), managed by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), is a free digital repository that offers access to full-text biomedical and life sciences journal literature. Despite their growing acceptance, the disparate nature of these repositories complicates literature search, necessitating multiple, often redundant, searches across platforms. Several existing tools, such as Unpaywall [4], LibKey Nomad [5], and EndNote Click (formerly Kopernio) [6], attempt to streamline access to research by providing pathways around paywalls or facilitating easier access to articles. However, these tools often lack comprehensive support for preprint publications, are sometimes not universally open, or are restricted to functioning solely as browser or software plugins, limiting their utility across different research contexts for a wide range of researchers.

Building on these foundations, “Get Free Copy” emerges as a pioneering solution designed to bridge the gaps between multiple biomedical literature repositories that provide free versions of research papers. By integrating search results from arXiv, bioRxiv, medRxiv, and PMC, this platform offers a unified interface that simplifies the search and retrieval of research papers. The development of such a tool is not only timely but essential, as researchers navigate the vast and diverse landscape of biomedical literature.

Get Free Copy (https://getfreecopy.com/) is a web-based search engine developed to aggregate and streamline biomedical literature searches across four major repositories: arXiv, bioRxiv, medRxiv, and PubMed Central (PMC). This platform significantly enhances the efficiency of locating research papers and preprints by providing a unified interface for results, including key metadata such as the publication title, author names, journal name, publication date, and the digital object identifier (DOI). The Get Free Copy web application is implemented through a Node.js backend (`app.js`) that configures a server to handle API requests and serve static files. It integrates with external scholarly databases and search APIs to fetch academic papers based on user queries. The frontend (`client.js`) captures user input from a web form, sends search requests to the backend, and dynamically displays the retrieved academic papers, organizing results by each repository. This dual-component setup allows efficient cross-repository literature searches, enhancing accessibility to academic content.

We demonstrate the Get Free Copy platform’s user interface as displayed on a desktop browser and a mobile device (Figure 1). A loading indicator provides visual feedback during query processes. The search term “open science” yields search results from arXiv, bioRxiv, medRxiv and PMC, as one would find by searching directly on each of these repositories (Figure 2). Supplementary Figure 1 and Figure 2 further showcases search results returned by searching for a specific author name or institution. For each repository, Get Free Copy show the top query results for titles, author(s), date, journal, and doi in a standardized format. The interface showcases a simple search bar against a clean, white background, allowing users to search across various scientific repositories including arXiv, bioRxiv, medRxiv, and NCBI PMC. The desktop version displays search results from multiple repositories concurrently across its horizontal panels, loading from left to right. The mobile version focuses on user-friendly navigation suited to smaller screens, loading the search results across repositories from top to bottom, where the users can scroll down to see results from other repositories.

The proliferation of scientific literature—coupled with complex paywall systems—has made it challenging to conduct an efficient search of academic publications. Although PubMed Central (PMC) and preprint servers (e.g., arXiv, bioRxiv, and, medRxiv) provide free access to a vast collection of biomedical literature, each operates in isolation, thereby necessitating multiple searches across different databases. This fragmented landscape not only leads to inefficiencies but also exacerbates disparities among researchers lacking access to paid journals.

Our solution, Get Free Copy, addresses these issues by offering a responsive, user-friendly search engine that amalgamates results across repositories. Possible future developments of Get Free Copy may focus on expanding the repository coverage for comprehensive literature access and improving user experience with advanced filtering options to streamline the search process. As the user base expands, the platform may also need to be deployed in a server with higher capacities.

Get Free Copy is an open-source project under an MIT license, and we welcome contributions from developers and researchers worldwide to its GitHub repository. Currently, Get Free Copy faced limitations due to the lack of direct search capabilities in the APIs of several preprint servers. We can only rely on web scraping for data extraction, which may lead to server crashes from high query volumes, e.g., 500 Internal Server Errors or yielding no results that likely suggest server overload, rate limiting, or occasional server downtown. This may also result in longer wait time for search queries depending on the response time from each of the server. We have implemented a loading indicator to enhance user experience by providing visual feedback during the query process. The user experience may be improved through future collaboration with preprint servers and enhanced development.

In summary, we present a search platform—Get Free Copy—that stands at the intersection of open access advocacy, the burgeoning role of preprint servers, and the need for innovative search solutions in biomedical research. By addressing the inefficiencies and disparities in literature access, this platform embodies a significant step forward in making academic research more accessible, efficient, and integrated.