Back to Solutions

Matilda

CNRS
France
Website (Opens in new window)

About

Launched: 2023
Record Updated: May 13, 2026
Discovery system
Matilda is an open bibliography platform serving all research communities and audiences interested in scientific literature, including media, companies, associations, and public institutions. Users search among 162 million works and 13 million ORCID-identified authors, through query alerts and citation tracking services covering most of the current scientific literature.
Matilda makes new content available within two days of its appearance in sources, through enrichment and deduplication operations. Each day, it processes on average 50K new publications, and identifying more than 2.5K new authors. It also extracts over 900K citation links from publication metadata, and a comparable volume from full texts. Matilda uses full-text documents as a core search layer. It currently includes 35M full texts, growing by more than 1M per month.
It is therefore a sovereign open alternative to extremely costly discovery commercial platforms or free but not based on open data ones.

Mission

Matilda is based on the values of open science and implements the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure while aiming for the greatest possible material and energy efficiency.
Its first objective is to facilitate the discovery and analysis of academic content through multiple tools (advanced queries, citation tracking, alerts, full-text searches, etc.). Matilda is open to all academic textual content, regardless of format or output, in line with DORA.
Its second objective is to be accessible to the widest possible range of users. The platform welcomes anyone interested in reading academic literature, without restriction or payment. Not only does the platform provide access to legally accessible texts, but it also aims to make full-text access the new standard in bibliographic research.
In addition to these direct user services, its third objective is to be part of an ecosystem of open science platforms.
Full mission here: https://matilda.science/mission?l=en

Technical Attributes

Maintenance Status

Actively Maintained

Open API

In Progress

Open Data Statement

Implemented
Website (Opens in new window)

Technical Attribute Statements

Programming Languages

  • java

Technology Readiness Level

  • Actual system proven in operational environment

Content Licensing

  • Creative commons licenses

Standards

Metadata

  • JSON-LD

Persistent Identifier

  • ORCiD

Security

Matilda is hosted by Huma-Num, a CNRS infrastructure that applies institutional security policies in line with French and European regulations, including GDPR. While not ISO-certified, Huma-Num implements strong safeguards: data replication across multiple secure sites in France, encrypted access (HTTPS/SFTP), access control via institutional identity (LDAP/HumanID), regular backups, and long-term archiving through CINES. All services are hosted on sovereign infrastructure within the RENATER research network, following best practices recommended by ANSSI (France’s national cybersecurity agency).

Integrations

  • arXiv

Community Engagement

Community Statements

Engagement with Values Frameworks

  • Principles for Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI)

Policies & Governance

Governance Summary

Matilda is a joint project of the Centre de sociologie de l'innovation (I3, UMR 9217) and Huma-Num (UMS 3598). A first governance board will be built in 2026 involving French public institutions.

Policies

Privacy Policy

Implemented
Website (Opens in new window)

Policy Statements

Board Structure

  • None

Community Governance

  • None

Additional Information

Organizational History

Since 2019, the development of the Matilda platform has been coordinated by Didier Torny (CNRS). It brings together 2 research partners: the Centre de sociologie de l'innovation (I3, UMR 9217) and Huma-Num (UMS 3598).
It has received financial support from the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-Data-002) between 2020 and 2022 and a grant from CNRS in 2023 and 2025.
It includes a in-kind contribution from Neo4J as the Matilda graph is powered by the Neo4j solution as part of the Graphs4Good program.
A first governance board will be built in 2026 involving French public institutions.

Organizational Structure

Business or Ownership Model

Non-profit organization

Full-time Staff

0

Volunteers

0

Current Affiliations

Centre de sociologie de l'innovation, Huma-Num

Funding

Primary Funding Source

  • Contributions

Funding Needs

Matilda has always been developed as a sober platform, including on the financial side, aiming at the lowest costs with maximum services. Consequently, as hosting is being taken care by a public French institution, we tun on a 40-50k€ software and data maintenance cost. Any other funding would be put on development, for which we made a roadmap.
The current platform had a total cost of a little bit over 300k€, including maintenance, excluding hosting costs and the salary costs of the scientific director. The full development would probably need 600k€ funding, the maintenance costs remaining low (less than 100k€/year).
Back to Top