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Beta-release of Zendy offering academics free and easy access to over 100 million publications

calendarOct 11, 2018 |clock5 Mins Read

Frankfurt Book Fair – FRANKFURT, Germany, 11th October 2018 – Zendy has been created with the aim to radically facilitate access to academic literature; it sees the light today in the form of a beta release. Zendy has been developed by Knowledge E in a growing collaboration with academic researchers, students, institutions and publishers.

“By addressing the key challenges that we face through traditional ways of accessing academic literature, Zendy serves to provide peace of mind, a zen day, for all researchers and students”, says Kamran Kardan, CEO at Knowledge E.

Many academics feel the opposite of zen on most days – overwhelmed by the sheer availability of knowledge hidden in not-so-easily-accessible nooks and crannies of the vast body of academic publishing output, unable to retrieve just that one piece of available quality research that solves a problem, enables a discovery, enlightens a hungry mind, broadens horizons, opens new doors and – a bit further down the line – changes the world for the better. Pitfalls are plenty, many of which revolve around discoverability, reliability and trustworthiness of sources.

Martin Jagerhorn, Chief Innovation Officer at Knowledge E, outlines the objectives of Zendy in more detail. “We have set out to ensure that Zendy provides an outstanding user experience. Typically, there is a complex path towards the full text – going across different sites and several clicks before you can finally download the full-text article. Our ambition is to ensure that the full-text material can be accessed directly for all articles on Zendy. Currently, we have only achieved this for a small fraction of the publication records.”

Dr. Tanguy Pierog, who is a Particle Physics Researcher at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany and a part of the beta users providing input to the development process, explains that: “You feel that this new service has been designed in close collaboration with the research community. Zendy is already incredibly intuitive and easy to use, and will save us valuable time for accessing relevant literature and let us focus more on the actual research.”

Furthermore, the content will be reviewed based on a set of quality criteria to ensure that it is reliable and of high quality, in particular, making sure that there will be no content from any predatory publishers. This is a major undertaking, which will take time before it becomes available on Zendy, but it will be crucial for researchers and students to fully trust the content and be able to progress their work more effectively.

The third pillar of Zendy, next to an outstanding user experience and high-quality content, is to offer an affordable access to paid content. While the Open Access material will stay free for everyone on Zendy, the ambition is to enable anyone to access paid content for a modest subscription fee through Zendy Premium. Martin adds: “We invite all publishers to join the collaboration to support the vision for Zendy as we believe this will be important to academics globally, but particularly in developing countries, where universities commonly cannot afford to subscribe to many of the key databases required for quality research and studies. Zendy will in this way facilitate the democratization of access to knowledge, which we know is key to learning”.

Even without the paid content, Zendy realizes the dormant power in openly accessible research that might not quite have made its way to end users in all its vastness until now. Already containing more than 100 million publications from over 20,000 peer-reviewed journals, Zendy channels this impressive quantity of data to anyone and anywhere, and to be consumed online or be downloaded.

About Knowledge E

Established in 2012, Knowledge E’s name was fast to become synonymous with collaboration, professionalism and innovation. Head-quartered in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and supported by a team of 30 highly engaged professionals, Knowledge E works passionately with all types of organisations and government entities within the research and education sector to support their continued innovation and development by providing them with leading expertise, information resources and software solutions. Knowledge E’s three core offerings are the 3D’s; ‘Discover’, ‘Develop’ and ‘Disseminate’. ‘Discover’ through the KnE Digital Library Solutions for research literature discovery, ‘Develop’ through the KnE Learning Services, supporting capacity building and skills development within academia and ‘Disseminate’ through the KnE Publishing Services and the platform for Open Access publishing and indexing of regional journals and conference proceedings. www.knowledgee.com

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Zendy signs Agreement with International Academic Publisher IGI Global 

calendarJul 7, 2023 |clock4 Mins Read

[United Arab Emirates, July] – Zendy, the AI-powered research library, has signed a licensing agreement with leading international academic publisher, IGI Global. With this agreement, IGI Global’s extensive collection of Open Access content, including their fully transformed OA journal portfolio (175+ e-Journals) as well as book content across subject areas including Business & Management; Scientific, Technical, Medical (STM); and Education, will become available to Zendy’s fast-growing user base. By working with publishers, Zendy continues to strengthen its dedication to promoting accessibility and fostering collaboration among the global research community. “We are delighted to partner with IGI Global to enhance the accessibility of open access books and journals through Zendy. This collaboration exemplifies our commitment to breaking down barriers to access knowledge and empowering researchers worldwide. We can create a more inclusive and equitable scholarly ecosystem through collaboration," said Zendy Co-founder Kamran Kardan. Melissa Wagner, Vice President of Editorial for IGI Global, mentions, “Integrating with Zendy supports our mission of equality and accessibility of innovative research for all, which has been at the forefront of our company’s values for over 35 years. This partnership will enable our open access authors to benefit from even wider discoverability, usage, and citations of their work from readers worldwide.” Zendy is dedicated to contributing towards Sustainable Development Goals 4 (Quality Education) and 10 (Reduced Inequalities). By working with publishers to increase accessibility to academic research, Zendy aims to bridge the knowledge gap and promote equitable access to scholarly resources worldwide. For more information about Zendy, please visit www.zendy.io. About Zendy Zendy is a product of Knowledge E. Since its inception in 2019, Zendy has connected over 200,000 users to academic journals, proceedings, articles, e-books, and more. Zendy is on a mission to make academic literature more affordable and accessible for students, researchers, and professionals worldwide. Zendy was awarded Best Startup – Education at the Middle East Technology Excellence Awards 2022. To learn more, visit www.zendy.io. About IGI Global Founded in 1988 and headquartered in Hershey, Pennsylvania, USA with a subsidiary office (IGI Science and Technology, Ltd.) operating out of Beijing, China, IGI Global is a leading medium-sized and independent international academic publisher of scholarly reference sources. They are committed to facilitating the discovery of pioneering scientific research that enhances and expands the body of knowledge available to the research community through traditional and open access publishing workflows. Working in close collaboration with more than 200,000+ expert researchers and professionals from leading institutions, IGI Global publishes quality peer-reviewed content in three major academic subject areas: Business & Management; Scientific, Technical, & Medical (STM), and Education. To learn more, visit www.igi-global.com/about/.

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Zendy Unveils New AI-Powered Features for Research Papers

calendarMay 19, 2023 |clock3 Mins Read

Zendy announced today the launch of its new AI-powered features that help researchers streamline the literature discovery process. Unlike traditional tools that rely on simple statistical methods, Zendy's AI-based summarisation and keyphrase highlighting tool comprehends the underlying meaning of research papers, resulting in more accurate information for the researcher. With these new features, Zendy will continuously enhance its AI-based tool with new papers available in its platform. The new papers will be used to fine-tune the models to generate even more insightful information, providing researchers with the most up-to-date and relevant insights. With the depth of content available to researchers, reviewing literature is one of the most time consuming, yet critical, aspects of the research process. AI-based summarisation can significantly optimise literature review by automating the process of identifying the most relevant information in a large body of literature. Keyphrase highlighting within academic texts spotlights critical concepts in the text, making it easier for researchers to quickly and efficiently identify the most important information related to their research question. We're pleased to offer researchers a more intelligent way to utilise and continue their discovery through research papers," said Zendy Co-founder Kamran Kardan. "It’s critical that the industry leverage the best technologies to deliver value to the research discovery process and enable a more effective and equitable experience for students, researchers, and professionals. The correct use and implementation of AI and machine learning has the power to make a true difference in creating a more knowledgeable world.” In addition, Zendy's is building topic classification models that will deliver AI-based personalised search results to enable researchers to discover papers based on their interests and preferences. Zendy's latest AI-based summarisation and keyphrase highlighting features are now available in beta-mode to users, and the platform will continue to evolve with new papers and enhanced AI capabilities, providing researchers with the industry’s most advanced research tools available.

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Zendy Partners With IntechOpen to Boost Accessibility of Open Access Content for Developing Countries

calendarMay 17, 2023 |clock3 Mins Read

Zendy is pleased to announce that it has signed an agreement with IntechOpen, a leading global publisher of Journals and Books within the fields of Science, Technology and Medicine. Zendy will host IntechOpen's Book Series and open science journals, offering all the benefits of open access to authors, users, and readers. Zendy a product of Knowledge E, provides seamless access to millions of articles, journals, e-books, and more. Comprehensive filters enable users to search effectively for content, making it easier for them to identify, read, cite, and save the content that they need. As members of the SDG Publishers Compact, both Knowledge E and IntechOpen share the same commitment to increase awareness, publish and disseminate scientific research that supports the UN Sustainable Development Goals. This is why we are thrilled that the Sustainable Development series will be featured on the Zendy platform, as this is how we can all work together to contribute and achieve the SDGs. Zendy Co-founder Kamran Kardan said, “IntechOpen has been a driving force in the open access movement, and we are proud to partner with them to further our shared mission of democratising access to knowledge. With IntechOpen's extensive portfolio of scholarly work and Zendy's cutting-edge technology, we can make a significant impact on improving the accessibility of scientific research in developing regions, ultimately contributing to the UN's Sustainable Development Goals.” Viktorija Žgela, Head of Editorial Development at IntechOpen, commented: “The journey towards more inclusive, equitable, and sustainable future starts with collaborative efforts. The scholarly communication landscape with all its stakeholders, including researchers, publishers, online libraries, and service providers that facilitate and enrich the publishing experience and the communication of the scientific output, is part of this journey. Therefore, it is a pleasure to partner with Zendy because we share the same vision, mission, and values: to make academic content accessible to everyone in the world.” Learn more about Zendy: https://zendy.io Learn more about IntechOpen:https://www.intechopen.com/