| The Lens | |
| Url: | The Lens |
| Commercial: | Not for profit |
| Type: | Patent Search Service |
| Language: | Multilingual |
| Registration: | No |
| Owner: | Cambia |
| Launch Date: | 2000 |
| Current Status: | Active |
The Lens, formerly called Patent Lens, is a free searcheable online patent and scholarly literature database, provided by Cambia, an Australia-based non-profit organization. The Lens has been hailed as the “most comprehensive scholarly literature database, that exceeds in its width and depth two leading commercial databases (Web of Science and Scopus) combined”.[1] The Lens is an agglomeration database, that takes bibliometric data from other databases (such as PubMed and Crossref) and combines them into one, deduplicated and with unified search syntax. Also, unlike the competing databases (most are for-a-fee), The Lens allows data exporting in JSON format with a superior granularity compared to RIS and CSV formats.
Launched in 2000 as the Patent Lens, over the years, thanks to grants from the Rockefeller Foundation in 2000–2004, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2011, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation in 2012, Wellcome Trust in 2018, as well as from the Lemelson Foundation it added journal articles, conference papers, reports, books and other types of scholarly literature,[2]