CASE STUDY

CACTUS uses GetFTR to provide researchers with a more personalised experience and increases full-text views by 20%

  • Cactus integrated their research discovery tool – R Discovery – with GetFTR to improve the research journey
  • CACTUS recorded a 20% increase in full-text views by users of R Discovery who had saved their institutes in their profiles
  • User retention rates increased by as much as 100% for these users
  • Researchers are able to develop personalised feeds of open access, freely available content, and subscription content where the researcher’s institution subscribes
  • Researchers recognise that with a GetFTR indicator they will receive the full text every time

CACTUS was one of the first organisations to integrate their research discovery tool, R Discovery, with GetFTR back in January 2021.

R Discovery is a free app for students and researchers to find and read research papers. The app is rated 4.6+ out of 5 by 12,000+ users on Google Play and iOS App-Store with over 2.5 million app downloads at present and has one of the largest scholarly content repositories with over 115 million articles indexed. Researchers can instantly discover or search for relevant literature, invite peers to collaborate on reading lists, and seamlessly organize and manage your research and references.

We were curious to know how GetFTR helped them achieve this scale over time and caught up with them at the recent STM spring conference to see how things were going.

CACTUS reported that GetFTR had helped them to deliver a more personalised user experience. Researchers who included their institutions in their profiles on the R Discovery app, were finding far more research papers to read, to save in relevant reading lists, and to get full texts for references. User retention rates increased by as much as ​​100% for these users. R Discovery was able to achieve this as GetFTR provides real-time entitlement checks, enabling the research discovery app to deliver personalised feeds of open access, freely available content, and subscription content (where the researcher’s institution subscribes). 

How does R Discovery integrate with GetFTR?

In 2020, R Discovery was challenging the existing research discovery methods and wanted to bring recommendations and personalization to the forefront of the user experience. They found a partner in GetFTR to enable direct access to full texts which helped deliver their vision. GetFTR’s free API was integrated with R Discovery for real-time entitlement checks and full-text smart links, providing researchers with an efficient way of accessing the trusted content they need. This was particularly helpful during the pandemic when researchers could not visit their institute libraries in person.

When using R Discovery, the researcher has the option to add their institutions. GetFTR uses the researcher’s institutions to check directly with participating publishers to ascertain whether the institution subscribes to the content that is being viewed. Where there is a subscription in place, R Discovery adds a GetFTR indicator to alert the researcher that the full text can be accessed.

The result – CACTUS recorded a 20% increase in full-text views by the users of R Discovery who had saved their institutes and noted increased engagement by as much as 100%.

Researchers are starting to recognise that with a GetFTR indicator they will receive the full text every time.                                              

Abhishek Goel, co-founder at CACTUS said “Millions of researchers are now using R Discovery for their literature search and reading needs. R Discovery has pushed boundaries and leveraged technology to make both discovery and reading effortless for researchers. We had identified the core need of reading full texts for researchers quite early in our journey, which is when we shortlisted GetFTR as a partner. We are happy with our decision and that it could enable numerous researchers to access full texts without even visiting the university during the pandemic. It expedited their research and ensured safety at a time when the entire world was struggling. We are not done yet and are exploring many more ways to make the lives of researchers better with every passing day.”

If you are looking for ways to help your users ensure their journey from discovery to access is as seamless as possible, please get in touch with our team.

Contact Details:
R-Discovery: discovery@researcher.life
GetFTR: dianne@getfulltextresearch.com