The mobile platform of the Periodicals Portal, the virtual library of the Higher Education Personnel Training Coordination (Capes), of the Ministry of Education, which can be accessed by cell phones and tablets since 2014, has gained a new version, more modern and with further options of interaction for the academic community.

The novelties include the integration with the Federated Academic Community (CAFe) and the possibility of creating an offline library. There is also an area to highlight relevant content and the implementation of the push system, with notices sent to the user. The research paper editing service within the very platform and the option to create groups of interaction among researchers are still under development.

Developed in partnership with the Brazilian National Research and Educational Network (RNP), the application allows the users to make quick searches by subject in over 38 thousand periodicals, 12 patent databases, 130 reference databases, over 120 thousand e-books, encyclopedias, dictionaries, papers, dissertations, statistics databases, technical standards and e-prints networks.

According to RNP’s Project Manager, Cláudio Fabrício da Silva, the idea is for the platform to stand out even further as an important tool to share knowledge and bring students and researchers closer. “A professor will be able to create a study group for the students to take part in and exchange information. There is no such kind of media in the academic community. Even in the existing social networks, there is no potential for the sharing of content of scientific interest like the platform allows”, he stresses.

Since 2014, over 25 thousand downloads of the applications into the mobile platforms (iOS, Android and Windows Mobile) have been counted, a third of the hits in the portal is currently made through mobile platforms. The access may also be made through other operational systems, and they are all integrated with CAFe. In 2015, the Periodicals Portal had over 100 million visits, counting the access to reference databases and downloads of full texts.