Tracy Gardner reviews and celebrates five years of GetFTR’s cross-industry collaboration

In the complex world of scholarly publishing, discovery doesn’t always lead straight to access. That was the central problem behind the founding of GetFTR (Get Full Text Research), a service created to bridge the gap between discovery tools and authoritative, entitled access to the version-of-record. What started as a response to researcher frustration has grown into a widely used infrastructure helping to reduce friction, support research integrity, and foster a more trustworthy scholarly ecosystem.

To coincide with GetFTR’s fifth anniversary we interviewed representatives from each of GetFTR’s five founding publishers to find out how they feel about the GetFTR journey so far, and their hopes and predictions for the future. 

The catalyst: seeing the problem clearly

The original motivation for GetFTR came in response to a stark presentation by Roger Schonfeld at the Frankfurt STM meeting in 2015 . Schonfeld mapped out the fragmented and frustrating researcher experience – bouncing between discovery tools, re-authenticating, and often hitting paywalls despite entitled access.

“This talk really opened our eyes,” said Todd Toler from Wiley. “Researchers were landing in paywall cul-de-sacs, while usage was shifting to platforms like ResearchGate or European PubMed Central – easier, yes, but not always showing the best or final version of a paper. We imagined a simple service, originally called ‘Get PDF’, so users could reach the most authoritative version of content they had access to, no matter where they started.”

Mark Heaver from Taylor & Francis pointed to the broader issue: “With so many platforms and discovery services, researchers can suffer from infobesity. Improving the user experience and streamlining access decisions by researchers was something no single publisher could fix alone. GetFTR’s objective to simplify pathways to content therefore had clear benefits; benefits to readers but also to authors, helping to boost the reach of their research.”

Laying the groundwork

For Springer Nature’s product and tech teams, seeing was believing. “We gathered in London, watching videos of researchers trying to access research online,” recalled Laird Barrett. “We mapped the researcher journey on the wall with Post-its to highlight pain points. A frequent one was clicking through to a publisher site only to hit a paywall, even when entitled access existed. Some discovery services had mitigated this problem – Google Scholar had its IP address-based Subscriber Links and Library Discovery Services had title-level KBART holdings files – but they didn’t cover the breadth of discovery and access journeys with a high level of accuracy. It was obvious we had to solve that.”

For Ralph Youngen, from ACS, the problem also evoked a cautionary tale. “Think about Napster and iTunes. Napster was popular but illegal and clunky. iTunes was legal, user-friendly – and it won. SciHub was our Napster, but we lacked the iTunes equivalent. Our motivation was to create streamlined, compliant, and user-friendly pathway to access that would make accessing content on publishers’ sites easier than using SciHub”

Creating a streamlined research experience

GetFTR’s early goals were twofold: show researchers what content they had access to before they clicked, and simplify the authentication journey where needed. “The GetFTR indicator became a proxy for quality and ease of access,” said Toler. “It gave researchers confidence.”

Barrett noted that GetFTR now supports access indicators via a GetFTR browser extensions or API integrations. “Whether through IP recognition or federated access, we can provide highly accurate signals – even down to the article level,” he said. “The goal is simple: if a researcher has access, make sure they know it – and help them reach it.”

“The idea was straightforward – if a search carried out in a discovery resource led the researcher to a paywalled journal article, GetFTR would signal whether the researcher had access via an institutional subscription” noted Youngen. “For items outside of a publisher paywall, GetFTR would signal Open Access or Free.”

Importantly, GetFTR checks entitlement data across publishers, which levelled the playing field for discovery services and startups. “Before GetFTR, only Google Scholar had the weight to consolidate subscriber data from 250+ publishers,” Toler said. “We extended that reach, lowering the barrier for newer tools and enabling article-level accuracy.”

Rose L’Huillier from Elsevier commented on the feedback from the community, or rather the lack of it! “When services run smoothly, you usually don’t get any feedback. It’s when it doesn’t run smoothly, that you hear about it. At Elsevier we have seen access-related complaints decrease over the years. It’s clearly difficult to attribute this directly to GetFTR, but it will certainly have contributed to smoother access flows.

Building trust and integrity 

GetFTR also evolved to address a growing concern in scholarly communication: research integrity. Retractions, errata, and expressions of concern are now signalled by GetFTR helping users avoid citing outdated or invalidated research.

Heaver emphasised the role of transparency in discovery. “Researchers don’t always come across a work via the publisher site. They may encounter it in a reference list, in a citation index, or via a search engine. Noting the updated status of a paper – even where it’s cited  – dramatically increases visibility. That kind of transparency supports both policymakers and researchers.”

L’Huillier added: “There is a risk that citations to the retracted article inadvertently prolong the lifespan of the retracted work. GetFTR helps to reduce this unintended consequence.” 

Barrett noted the risk to integrity posed by AI: “It is increasingly challenging as AI tools make it easier to commit fraud through the publishing process.”

Publishers and the burden of trust

So what role should publishers play in maintaining trust? “Publishers are the guardians of science,” said L’Huillier. “They must help keep the scientific record clean so that those standing on the shoulders of giants can do so with confidence. GetFTR supports that mission by guiding users to the final, trusted version of record.”

Barrett echoed that view. “GetFTR provides an easier pathway for researchers to access the trusted version of record which is increasingly important as research gets digested and reworked – sometimes inaccurately – by generative AI tools.”

GetFTR works closely with the community delivering high performing and highly accurate standardised services across the academic ecosystem. “I hope we continue to work to gain the trust of the user community” noted Heaver. 

The power of cross-industry collaboration

GetFTR also stands out as a model of effective cross-industry collaboration. “It’s a good example of publishers, libraries, and discovery tools aligning around a shared infrastructure,” said Toler. “We streamline access and improve researcher workflows whilst protecting privacy – no user data is stored.”

Heaver praised the inclusive spirit: “It accounted for services and platforms of all sizes, and that ethos continues today. That’s been key to its success.”

L’Huillier noted: “Cross-industry innovation is possible. When different players share a common goal that promotes the advancement of human knowledge and benefits the overall ecosystem, it is absolutely possible to develop something together while maintaining competition”.

Barrett noted the importance of rapid testing and scaling: “By starting with a small group, we could move fast, then scale based on real-world validation. I’d love to see more of this agile innovation in our industry – a Google X-type of approach.”

Youngen agreed: “It wasn’t easy, but GetFTR now runs like a well-oiled machine. It shows that even among competitors, collaboration is possible – with appropriate guardrails – when the mission is shared.”

What’s next for GetFTR?

The GetFTR team is already looking ahead. “We’re excited about expanding our use cases,” said Toler. “We now direct users from preprints to the published version-of-record on the publisher site, address perpetual access through journal transfers, and are testing library tools that could help librarians stay on top of usage and subscription metrics,.”

Youngen added: “The GetFTR infrastructure is very extensible. Surfacing licensing details and supporting generative AI services are options under discussion. As workflows shift to AI, we want agents to be ‘entitlements-aware’—accessing content legally and accurately.”

Heaver noted that GetFTR is well positioned to evolve alongside open access. “While OA may reduce the need for entitlement signalling, GetFTR already does much more – supporting retraction indicators, content syndication, COUNTER reporting, and beyond. 

Reflections

For those involved, GetFTR has been as rewarding as it is impactful.

“What’s most rewarding?” Barrett reflected. “Watching GetFTR help a real researcher during user testing. There’s nothing better than seeing something you helped build make a difference.”

Youngen said the collaborative process stood out: “Getting publishers to agree on a shared vision, governance, and implementation—that’s rare. And deeply rewarding.”

Heaver noted that it was an initiative that simply attempted to solve an industry wide problem “It was non self-serving from the outset, an ethos that has remained that way which is a core strength when enhancing and developing new services.”

For L’Huillier, the surprise was the rapid uptake: “I expected a slow rollout, given the investment required. But the growth was fast. GetFTR clearly hit a nerve – it solved a real, shared problem.”

Toler offered a longer view: “GetFTR has become part of the backbone of scholarly communication. As we shift into the agentic web – machines, not just people, retrieving knowledge – we’ll need this infrastructure even more. It’s about balance: making access easy, secure, and trustworthy.”

Tracy Gardner is Head of Marketing for GetFTR

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