Sourcesthis

Sourcesthis is a web-based platform designed to organize and curate source materials for research, journalism, and education. It aggregates bibliographic metadata, direct URLs, abstracts or summaries, and user-contributed annotations to help people discover, evaluate, and cite sources more efficiently. The project emphasizes transparency of provenance and traceability of citations.

Users can search by topic, author, date, institution, or citation style, and results include metadata such as publisher, DOI, access status, and cross-references. Items can receive tags, notes, and quality signals, and users may discuss entries within a discussion thread. Sourcesthis supports export to common formats and offers optional integrations with citation managers and word processors.

Origins and development: Sourcesthis emerged from open scholarship and library science communities as an effort to improve source discovery beyond single publisher platforms. It is built as open-source software with contributions from librarians, researchers, and developers, and relies on community curation to expand its indexed material.

Licensing and governance: The platform and data are released under open licenses, with governance by a community body and contributor guidelines. Privacy and data handling emphasize minimal telemetry, with opt-in features for analytics or personalized recommendations. Data hosted by sourcesthis is typically retained under user control or chosen hosting arrangements.

Reception and impact: The project is used by researchers, students, and journalists for source discovery and citation support. Critics note uneven coverage, reliance on user contributions, and potential biases in metadata. Ongoing work focuses on improving coverage, auditing provenance, and expanding interoperability with other research tools.