A Cambridge-based startup, Pubget, aims to simplify scientific research by offering copyright-safe access to literature from more than 20,000 journals.
The life sciences search engine is similar to the National Institutes of Health’s PubMed engine, with a few crucial improvements.
Pubget links directly to publishers, including the Journal of the American Medical Assn., The Lancet, the New England Journal of Medicine, Nature and Science, bringing users directly to each article’s full-text PDF file.
And to protect copyrights, the service uses a “credentials engine” to verify the bone fides of users’ subscriptions. In other words, users who don’t already have rights to access a journal can’t get the PDF download.
Pubget also has links to a wide swath of major research institutions around the world, including Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston University, Harvard, Mass. General Hospital, MIT, NIH and Tufts University.