Cairn

CAIRN aggregates scholarly journal content for social science and humanities journals published in France and Belgium. Most of the content dates back only to 2001. As of late 2014, over 400 journals and 4,000 ebook titles (more than 300,000 full-text articles and book chapters) were included. Content is updated continually, averaging five new journal issues per day. 

CAIRN, launched in 2005, was started as an initiative of four French language publishers to support the publication and dissemination of journals in the humanities and social sciences on the internet. The National Library of France has been associated with the project since 2006.

CAIRN organizes its collection of journals into different ‘bouquets,’ or packages, from which subscribers may choose. Some titles are repeated in the various bouquets, which include:

• Bouquet Général (the complete journal collection)
• Bouquet Sciences économiques, sociales et politiques (including journals in Economics, Politics, Sociology, Geography and Law)
• Bouquet French Studies (including journals in Literature, Linguistics, Philosophy, History, and General Interest)
• Bouquet International (also called CAIRN International Edition, which includes English versions of a selection of journals in Economics, Politics, Sociology, Geography, History and Philosophy)

In 2013, CAIRN discontinued the Bouquet Sciences Humaines, which contained most journals in the Bouquet Général (absent Psychology and Education journals). 

CAIRN continues to add new journal titles, averaging 40-50 new titles per year in recent years. Since 2010, CAIRN also offers e-book packages from major French, Belgian and Swiss publishers. See Appendices to this review for a listing of current journals and e-book packages. 

To the best of our knowledge, there is no overlap between titles available on Cairn and those of other aggregators.  While Cairn does not force publishers into exclusivity agreements, the publishers working with Cairn generally do not make their eBooks or journals available elsewhere.

CAIRN partners have made portions of their content (CAIRN reports as many as two thirds of all articles) available via open access. Depending on the choice of each journal, select articles, whole issues (subject to a three-year "moving wall") or entire runs of journals are freely accessible to all users.