Release Notes

Web App Enhancements

• File upload: Files can now be attached to a chat directly from the user’s device. Supported formats are indicated on the attach icon, and clear warnings appear for unsupported formats or files that exceed the size limit.

• Rich answer rendering: Answers now render richer content: charts display as interactive elements rather than static images, dynamic widgets are supported, mathematical expressions and equations render correctly, and code snippets are properly formatted.

• Nudges: Users can add a follow-up question while an answer is still being generated, and the response adjusts to take it into account. Nudges can be turned on or off in the account settings.

• Conversation export: Conversations can now be exported to Word or PDF, including graphs and visualisations.

• Individual answer export: Individual answers can also be exported on their own. An Export action is available below each answer that does not contain a dynamic widget.

• Navigation map: A navigation map has been added to chats with three or more question and answer pairs, making it easier to jump to a specific exchange in longer conversations.

An error occurredPlease try again laterContact SupportClose

Enhancements

• The account settings page has been reorganised to make individual settings easier to find, including the new option to enable or disable Research Assistant nudges.

• ReadCube is now available as a source option in the Add to Literature Review dialog, and the selection is reflected in the Literature Review.

• When importing papers that already exist in a library, a notification now indicates that duplicates were merged, matching the behaviour already in place when copying papers between libraries.

• The Advanced Search and AI Filter popups now open as standard in-app modals, consistent with the rest of the application, and the page URL no longer changes when they are opened or closed.

• Dropdown controls across the application now consistently indicate their open and closed state.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a crash in the Add to Library modal that could occur when collection data was temporarily unavailable.

• Fixed an issue where users whose accounts were unlinked from SSO could get stuck at the email verification step when setting a new password.

• Several side panel fixes: duplicate error modals no longer appear when opening a deleted paper, a loading spinner no longer gets stuck in the search side panel, and the library now refreshes correctly after importing references.

Browser Extension Enhancements

• PDF downloads from several publishers (including ScienceDirect, Wiley, Science, NEJM, ASH Publications, and RSNA) are now completed in a browser tab instead of in the background. This improves download success rates on sites where publisher security checks previously interrupted downloads.

• The extension has been renamed from Papers by ReadCube to ReadCube. This covers the extension name, toolbar tooltip, buttons, logos, and support links, while the extension icon and all functionality remain unchanged.

An error occurredPlease try again laterContact SupportClose

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where articles from Wolters Kluwer (Ovid) journals could fail to download or incorrectly show a purchase option for users whose organization subscribes to the journal. Subscribed content now resolves correctly through the organization’s holdings.

Browser Extension Enhancements

• Organizations can configure a second link resolver. When two resolvers are set up, both now appear in the article sidepanel, with the second listed beneath the first. This supports institutions that rely on more than one resolver for full text access.

An error occurredPlease try again laterContact SupportClose

Enhancements

• The link resolver URL construction has been improved, making full text access links through institutional link resolvers more reliable.

• The link resolver selection has been removed from the extension popup. The resolver used is now determined by account settings rather than a per-user choice between personal and organization resolvers.

An error occurredPlease try again laterContact SupportClose

Bug Fixes

• Adding a note from the extension toolbar and then saving the article to a library now works as expected.

• Fixed an issue where the extension was not injecting buttons or the sidebar on Embase pages.

• Fixed the position of extension buttons on ScienceDirect list pages.

• Fixed article import on Ovid pages.

• PDF downloads now work correctly when the Adobe Acrobat browser extension is installed. Previously, detecting Adobe Acrobat could interrupt the download flow.

SmartCite for Word Enhancements

• A new Advanced Settings screen is available from the Options screen (opened via the gear icon), grouping less-common settings into one place. It brings together the existing advanced citation selection and citation locking options, and adds a new setting for choosing the default destination library where new SmartCite items are created (for example, items added from global search or recovered citations). The default is the personal library (“My Papers”).

An error occurredPlease try again laterContact SupportClose

Enhancements

• Citations pointing to library items that were later removed can now be recovered automatically using the item’s external identifiers (DOI, PMID, and similar). When updating a bibliography that contains missing citations, SmartCite recovers them where possible and clearly flags any citations that cannot be recovered before making changes. This makes documents more resilient when cited items are deleted from a library.

• Bibliography page ranges now use non-breaking dashes, so page numbers no longer split across two lines. This behavior can be turned on from the new Advanced Settings screen.

An error occurredPlease try again laterContact SupportClose

Browser Extension Enhancements

• When adding an article to your library from the extension, the “Add to Papers” popup now pre-selects the collections and lists you saved to most recently. This makes saving to your usual destinations a one-step action instead of re-picking them each time.

An error occurredPlease try again laterContact SupportClose

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a problem on PubMed where the extension could open a login window without any user interaction for logged-out users.

• Fixed an issue where the in-page login dialog stayed open after a successful login instead of closing and refreshing the page buttons.

• Fixed a regression where logged-out users no longer saw the article count on the toolbar badge on supported pages such as PubMed and Google Scholar.

• Fixed a mismatch where the article count shown on the toolbar icon did not match the number of articles listed in the popup.

• Fixed an issue on search results pages where the extension button would briefly appear and then disappear for articles identified only by a PMID.

• Fixed an issue on PubMed Central search results where articles already saved to the library were not detected or highlighted.

• Fixed a problem on Google Scholar where the extension could stop working silently when the metadata lookup returned an empty response, which left library status indicators missing from results.

• Fixed a timing issue where refreshing search result metadata could drop arXiv and patent identifiers, close an open add-to-library popover, or hide error banners and full-text option panels. These now stay stable.

• Fixed inconsistent behaviour on Europe PMC, Mendeley, ProQuest, Web of Science, and Publibee where library and access status on already-listed articles could stay out of date after the page loaded more results. Status now refreshes consistently across supported sites.

• Fixed an issue where the PDF button dropdown could be hidden behind other elements on the page.

• Fixed an issue where a duplicate PDF dropdown could appear after a download failed.

• Fixed an issue where some Elsevier subscription content failed to download.

An error occurredPlease try again laterContact SupportClose

Web App Enhancements

• The status bar now always shows the total number of items in a list, even when some items are selected (for example, “2 of 800 selected”). This makes it easier to keep track of how large a list is while working through a selection.

• When building a filtered list, the Stop control now reads “Stop & Delete List”. It halts the operation immediately and removes the partially built list, rather than closing the dialog while the operation keeps running in the background.

• Literature Review now keeps its state when opened inside the web app. Navigating away and back, or refreshing the page, returns to the same place with filters intact, and a Literature Review view can be shared or bookmarked by its URL.

An error occurredPlease try again laterContact SupportClose

Bug Fixes

• Removing an item from a list now refreshes the view correctly. Previously the item count and the open right-hand panel could still reflect the removed item.

• Copying formatted references in bulk now includes DOIs consistently. In some cases, bulk-copied references (for example, in JAMA style) were missing DOIs that displayed correctly in the single-item view.

• Resolved several errors seen in production: exporting a single item with no article metadata no longer fails, older desktop app builds launch without an error during start-up, and bulk library operations no longer raise an error when the user navigates away mid-operation.

• Corrected an inconsistent label where the personal library appeared as “My Library” in the “No starred folders” empty state. It now reads “My Papers” to match the rest of the app.

An error occurredPlease try again laterContact SupportClose

Web App Enhancements

PDF-related highlights are now supported. Users can highlight text directly within the PDF viewer, with highlights stored and accessible alongside annotation notes.

An error occurredPlease try again laterContact SupportClose

Enhancements

• Star ratings can now be applied as a single or bulk action from the Organize menu, allowing users to rate one or multiple papers at once without opening each paper individually.

• In the Discover Browser Library view, navigation options are now active even when no libraries are visible, allowing users to browse and add content without requiring an existing library in view.

• Links in the Metrics tab now open in a new browser tab, keeping the user’s current context in the application while reviewing external metric sources.

• Search input fields are now consistent in length across the application, providing a more uniform interface.

• The full-text indicator has been removed from the Query preview in Filtered List, simplifying the display and reducing visual noise in query summaries.

• Sorting options across the navigation bar have been improved for more consistent and predictable behavior.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where the star button on the library header occasionally displayed as unstarred for libraries that had been starred.

• Fixed an issue where library header action buttons were rendering on top of the PDF preview overlay.

• Fixed a text wrapping issue in breadcrumb navigation.

• Fixed keyboard navigation in the query parser recents and autocomplete dropdowns, ensuring consistent behaviour when navigating suggestions with arrow keys.

• Fixed an issue where the Research Assistant chat session was not resetting when the tab was closed and reopened.

• Fixed an error that could occur when restoring tabs if user preferences had not yet fully loaded.

• Fixed an issue where the Query Assistant rejected queries beginning with the NOT operator. Such queries are now processed correctly.

• Fixed an issue where using the AND operator in a combined full-text and custom metadata search in Filtered List returned unexpected results.

• Resolved an issue where certain errors were not captured correctly. Error handling has been strengthened to improve reliability.

Browser Extension Enhancements

• The save article and save webpage flows now respect collection-level write permissions. When a user does not have permission to add items to a selected collection, the save option is disabled in the extension. The standalone tag editor is similarly disabled when the user lacks tagging permission on that collection.

• When a captcha is detected during PDF download from LWW (Wolters Kluwer), the extension now recognises the captcha and brings the relevant tab into focus so users can complete it, rather than silently failing.

An error occurredPlease try again laterContact SupportClose

Bug Fixes

• PDF auto-download was not triggered when saving an article to a library at organisations with the “disable open access download” setting enabled, even for articles that were not open access. The setting now applies only to open access content, as intended. Users at affected organisations will see PDFs download automatically again for subscription and IP-authenticated articles.

• PDFs from publishers that serve content with the application/download content type failed to save due to a hash mismatch during upload. These PDFs now save correctly.

• Articles accessed through ezproxy URLs were not being resolved by the extension, so the article panel did not appear. Direct and proxy access to the same article now behave consistently.

• On Safari, PDF access attempts for Elsevier articles were generating errors related to following redirect chains, which in some cases prevented the correct PDF URL from being resolved. This has been corrected.

• A parsing error in Firefox caused by malformed or empty response data has been resolved. This error was surfacing for some users when the extension processed certain page responses.

• A parsing error in Safari caused by an unexpected response format has been resolved.

• In Firefox, an error related to missing host permissions when the extension attempted to interact with certain tabs has been addressed.

Web App Enhancements

Inline Query Assistant in global search.
The search bar now surfaces query syntax as users type, including parameter typeahead (e.g. author:, year:, meshterm:), operator suggestions, and real-time error detection. Users no longer need to open Advanced Search to build structured queries.

Inline Query Assistant in library search.
The same syntax-aware query assistant is now available in the library search bar, with parameter typeahead that includes collection-specific custom fields. The legacy Query Parser Search modal, which was available to admins and developers only, has been retired.

Research Assistant: Search past chats.
Users can now search across their Research Assistant chat history directly from the Research Assistant sidebar. A search popup filters results as the user types, highlights matching terms in chat titles, and lets users jump to any previous conversation.

Changes

• Filtered list: query preview with one-click copy. When building a filtered list, a read-only Query Preview field now shows the combined full-text and library-specific query assembled in real time. A copy button lets users capture the full query string in one click, useful for documenting search syntax in regulatory workflows.

• Filtered list: library-specific parameters can be used independently. The Dimensions full-text query field is now optional when building a filtered list. Users can submit searches using only library-specific parameters (such as custom metadata fields), which was not previously possible.

• DocDel: consolidated PDF action menu. For document delivery customers, the “Locate PDF” action has been removed and the “Get PDFs” action has been renamed to “Find & Access PDF.” This applies to the right-click context menu, bulk actions, and the import from identifiers options.

• Year filter improvements. The publication year filter now defaults to the current year rather than 1900, and out-of-range values are handled more clearly so users can understand why a filter may not return results.

• BibTeX export: special characters preserved in cite keys. Colons, hyphens, and underscores in cite keys are no longer stripped during BibTeX export. These characters are valid in BibTeX syntax and were previously removed in error.

Bug Fixes

• List permission enforcement corrected. Users with shared library access but without the “Manage Lists” permission could previously move items between lists using the Move to… action, bypassing the permission model. This has been corrected across all surfaces where the Move action appears.

• Annotations filter no longer persists across articles. When navigating between articles, the text filter applied in the Annotations tab of the info panel now resets correctly rather than carrying over from the previous article.

• Author column sorts hyphenated names correctly. Hyphenated author names are now sorted by the first part of the name rather than the second, restoring expected alphabetical order in library list views.

Web App Changes

Research Assistant: example prompts

Research Assistant now shows a gallery of 12 example prompts when starting a new conversation. The prompts cover a range of use cases, including library scoping, patent search, and structured output, and are a good starting point for users who want to explore what is possible. Clicking any prompt loads it into the input so it can be edited before sending.

Search Filters

The Authors and MeSH terms have been aded to filters in the search module, next to the , and Publication year. All three are easy to apply: Authors and MeSH use a typeahead input, and Publication year takes a simple year range. Applied filters are reflected in the search field and are saved when creating a Starred Search or Feed. Available to Enterprise users, with the “Full text Search” enabled feature.

Enhancements

Search Sections

The section scope options (Exclude references, Materials and methods) are now visible directly in the search interface, rather than inside the filters menu. A note in the Save Search and Feed modals reminds users that section settings apply to the current search only and are not saved.

Bug Fixes

• Mendeley authentication now completes correctly regardless of how long the user takes on the Mendeley login page.

• The “Migrating from Mendeley” help link now routes to the correct help centre for each product.

Web App Enhancements

Web Application Domain Migration: Following the successful transition of all users to the current web application over the past 18 months, the platform is returning to the primary flagship domain. The web application is moving from newapp.readcube.com back to app.readcube.com. While redirects are in place to ensure a user is not impacted and can continue working without interruption, it is recommended to update any saved bookmarks to the new address as a matter of best practice.

New Features

Research Assistant for ReadCube Pro The Research Assistant has officially transitioned out of the beta phase phase and is now available as a feature for premium ReadCube Pro license holders. This tool provides advanced AI-driven capabilities for literature discovery and analysis directly within the workspace.

Supplementary File Support for Bulk Export The bulk PDF export feature now includes an option to incorporate supplementary files. This allows the user to download all associated research materials alongside primary documents in a single action, ensuring a more comprehensive data retrieval process.

Improvements

Refined Library Organization Workflow The interface for moving and copying items has been updated to provide greater clarity regarding library permissions. If a user doesn’t have permission to delete items in a library, the “Move to” option is hidden at the library level and remains available only at the list level. This change accurately reflects that items remain in the source library while being organized into new collections, preventing confusion regarding item ownership and placement.

Optimized Research Assistant Streaming The Research Assistant interface has been updated to handle data streaming more efficiently. This technical refinement ensures that AI-generated answers appear more smoothly and responsively during the research process.

Search Filter Defaults To improve search performance and provide more comprehensive initial results, the “Exclude references” filter is now deselected by default. The user can still choose to apply this filter manually when refined results are required for a specific query.

Bug Fixes

Shared Library Access A fix has been implemented to resolve an issue where an “action_not_permitted” error occasionally appeared when accessing shared library settings. The user can now manage these settings without interruption.

Mobile App - iOS Changes

In this release, we have focused on enhancing the stability, interface layout, and overall navigation experience. These updates ensure a more reliable workflow for researchers and professionals, particularly those using iPad devices and the latest iOS versions.

Improvements

iPad Interface Optimization The placement and responsiveness of buttons on the iPad have been refined, specifically within the search interface. This update ensures that interactive elements are more accessible and behave consistently across different iPad models, providing a more intuitive experience during literature discovery.

Bug Fixes

Search and Navigation

• Navigation Flow: Resolved an issue where a user could become unable to return to the library from the search landing page. This fix ensures seamless transitions between library management and search activities.

• Search Page Stability: Addressed a crash that occurred when removing search terms or interacting with the search popup. These improvements provide a more robust experience during complex search sessions.

• Landscape View on iPad: Fixed a layout bug in iPad landscape orientation where the keyboard would occasionally overlap the search bar, ensuring the search input remains visible while typing.

PDF Reading and Annotation

• Google Scholar Integration: Fixed a crash that occurred when a user attempted to use the Google Scholar tool after selecting text within the PDF reader. This ensures uninterrupted citation lookups and external research.

• Annotation Reliability: Resolved an issue where adding an annotation from selected text could lead to an unexpected application exit.

• Literature Import: Addressed a bug in the PDF import workflow where downloading and adding new files from external sources like Google Scholar would encounter errors. This fix ensures a smooth process for expanding a library with new research materials.

Interface and Metadata

• Visual Polish for iOS 18: Corrected UI elements on iOS 18 where organization titles and recommendation headers were previously cut off or missing.

• Metadata Accuracy: Fixed the formatting of author names and the alignment of metadata lines in the list view. These corrections ensure that bibliographic information is presented clearly and professionally.

• Header Layout: Resolved an issue on iPad where the menu title and logo could overlap with the device status bar, improving the readability of the main navigation menu.

System Stability

• Startup and Loading: Fixed a rare startup issue on iPad devices and addressed an error that caused the application to hang during the initial loading of data in the library list.

• Background Management: Resolved a crash that could occur when a user returned to the application after it had been in the background, specifically when interacting with library sections.

• App Notifications: Addressed an internal error related to the delivery of in-app notifications to improve background stability.

• Onboarding Experience: Fixed a bug where help tips and onboarding prompts on the library screen could not be dismissed, allowing for a cleaner workspace once the user has completed the tutorial.