News Story

CORE: Connecting knowledge, driving openness

Wednesday 18 Mar 2026

This article is part of a special series celebrating KMi’s 30 years. Over the past three decades, KMi has been at the forefront of pioneering research and innovation in knowledge technologies, shaping the way information is created, shared, and understood. In this series, we revisit some of the most impactful projects that have influenced academia, industry, and society, highlighting their significance and legacy.

As KMi celebrates 30 years of innovation, one project stands out for its global impact: CORE (Connecting Repositories). Launched in 2010, CORE was born from a simple but powerful idea, make the world’s research freely accessible to everyone. Today, it’s a cornerstone of the open access movement, indexing millions of papers from over 13,000 data providers worldwide.

CORE reflects the ethos of The Open University: openness and inclusivity. Just as the OU pioneered open learning, CORE extends that mission to research, ensuring knowledge isn’t locked behind paywalls. What began as an ambitious experiment now powers text and data mining, supports open access policies, and underpins tools used by researchers, libraries and funders globally.

The numbers tell the story: millions of papers connected, countless services built on its infrastructure, and partnerships spanning universities, publishers and policymakers. CORE has helped shift open access from a debated ideal to a practical reality, enabling discovery and innovation at scale.

Fifteen years on, CORE is more than a platform; it’s a global infrastructure and a symbol of what KMi does best, turning research into technology that changes lives. As we look ahead, the challenge is clear: keep pushing the boundaries of openness so that knowledge remains a shared resource for all.