Information resources and technologies provider ProQuest, US, is launching a new research service that provides individuals with access to premium content and the latest tools. Instant and on-demand, Udini seeks to bundle a wide range of information, including peer-reviewed and trade journal articles, dissertations, international newswires, newspapers and magazines from thousands of publishers in a cloud-based workflow management tool designed for individual users. For knowledge workers without access to research libraries, Udini provides ease for finding and using high- quality information for professional projects. For publishers with already-strong academic distribution, Udini seeks to open a trusted and compelling new channel to reach an under-served group of users who want and need their content.
Proprietary content from publishers such as Springer, Nature Publishing Group, the Economist, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the World Health Organisation, Cambridge University Press and 3,800 others is already slated to be available through Udini. The service currently encompasses some 150 million full-text articles as well as ProQuest dissertations archive, the world’s most consulted collection of intellectual property and emerging research from universities. Udini is seen to combine the kind of information resources offered by scholarly libraries with the intuitive search and content management of a cloud-based web service.
Udini serves growing ranks of independent researchers, from freelancers, to workers in organisations without their own libraries, to unaffiliated authors. These users can search and then add desired content to the Udini cloud-based project organisation and management tool, which also welcomes information from personal libraries and the open web, enabling them to capture their projects' whole research file in one always-accessible space. All content types share an easy-to-read display that allows note taking and highlighting. Purchase plans are flexible – by the article, by the month or by the project – and some content is free. There’s no cost to use or store projects in Udini.
ProQuest is continuously developing the Udini service, including the exploration of new access models such as subscriptions for alumni associations.
