Imagine a vast, public library full of the outputs and results of some scientific research -- shelves full of articles, preprints, datasets, data analysis plans, and so on.
You can think of SHARE/Trove as that library's card catalog.
A card catalog is that weird, cool cabinet you might see at the front of a library with a bunch of tiny drawers full of index cards -- each index card contains information about some item on the library shelves.
The card catalog is where you go when you want to:
- locate a specific item in the library
- discover items related to a specific topic, author, or other keywords
- make a new item easily discoverable by others
As of July 2021, SHARE/Trove contains metadata on over 4.5 million items originating from:
- OSF (including OSF-hosted Registries and Preprint Providers)
- REPEC
- arXiv
- ClinicalTrials.gov
- ...and more!
Updates from OSF are reflected within seconds, while updates from third-party sources are harvested once daily.
You can search the full SHARE/Trove catalog at share.osf.io/discover.
Other search pages can also be built on SHARE/Trove, showing only a specific collection of items. For example, OSF Preprints and OSF Registries show only registrations and preprints, respectively, which are hosted on OSF infrastructure.
To learn about using the API (instead of a user interface), see how-to/use-the-api.md