11 January 2025

zbMATH Open: new features and achievements in 2024

Enrico Schlitzer

zbMATH Open, the world's most comprehensive and longest-running abstracting and reviewing service in mathematics, continues to expand its features in 2024. As a collaborative effort between FIZ Karlsruhe, the European Mathematical Society (EMS) and the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the platform is set to become a crucial hub in the global network of mathematics information.

Zb Math@2x

Currently, zbMATH Open contains around 5 million bibliographic entries with reviews or abstracts drawn from more than 5,000 journals and book series, and some 200,000 books. The coverage, which starts in the 18th century, is complete from 1868 to the present day. In 2024, several developments have substantially improved the user experience and functionality of the platform:

  • Multi-Line Search. The newly released Multi-Line Search is now the default search form at the home page. It offers an intuitive and seamless combination of the many search options supported by zbMATH Open. If you wish, you can either switch to the classical One-Line Search (making use of fields and operators as before) or you may use the first line "Anywhere" as the classical One-Line Search. You can also set your preferred search form in the preferences menu.
  • Tools and Resources. We have collected in one place several tools that are of interest to all users of zbMATH Open. These concern information about authors (e.g., citation match, co-author distance), resources for developers (APIs, github tools), information for reviewers, partner services (e.g., MathOverflow, ATLAS, OEIS) and some other resources like MaRDI or Wikimedia. The comprehensive list of tools and resources can be consulted here.
  • General Help menu. We present here a brief description of the Multi-Line Search and One-Line Search. Several examples using Boolean operators and zbMATH Open fields are included.
  • Updated Cite button. With this tool you are able to export the citation of a work in several formats: LaTeX Citation, BibTeX, AMSRef and XML.
  • Open Access-Filter. Using this filter you can extract from your search all the open access publications.
  • Interlinking with several external services such as mathematical videos from carmin.tv, ORCID, Wikidate, Google Scholar, among others.

zbMATH Open's growth is reflected in its impressive 2024 statistics: nearly 5 million bibliographic entries supported by around 8,000 active reviewers. The database includes over 1.2 million authors and 7,700 journals and book series. The platform has also enhanced its interconnectivity, featuring approximately 70,000 references to research data and 47,000 software packages.

In recognition of its contributions to open science, zbMATH Open has been awarded the prestigious Demailly Prize for Open Science for its «broad scope which ensures that the project is accessible and beneficial to all mathematicians, regardless of their geographical location or specific field of interest» and «the innovative and impactful nature of the zbMATH Open project, particularly noting recent additions such as software search capabilities and an API for retrieving machine-readable data».

Editor's note: We would like to thank Olaf Teschke (Managing Editor of zbMATH Open) and Octavio Paniagua (Member of the Editorial Board) for providing the information and materials necessary for this article.