Fellow Nairalanders, I'm glad to inform you that ResearchClass.com, an online library of Nigerian academic materials, has finally debuted after about 11 months in development.


Now, this is how it works:

•ResearchClass.com makes available copy-protected tertiary institution documents that can be read online or purchased by users.

•The documents include undergrad theses, Masters theses, Ph.D theses, lecture notes, Handouts, Course notes, past questions & answers, problem sets, papers, term papers, books, journal articles, etc.

•Documents read online are billed per time while purchases are billed per download.

•For a user to be able to upload materials to the site, he/she must register as an agent.

•As agents, users can upload their documents in pdf, word or excel formats.

•The price for online reading is set across board by the Admin while the purchase price for each document is set by the respective agent during the document upload stage.

•The uploaded materials are reviewed, approved and converted to a protected format by ResearchClass.com Admin and editors before they can be made available for reading online and purchase by registered users.

•The original documents uploaded by the agents in pdf, word, excel formats are deleted after conversion to protected formats.

•Users are billed per time spent reading documents on the site.

•The agent’s earnings/revenue/royalties are calculated based on the cumulative duration his documents are read and the number of times his materials are downloaded. The agent can monitor this daily from his control panel.

•The agent can set his minimum payout amount so long as it’s above the site’s minimum payout amount. For now, our minimum payout amount is N5,000

•Earnings are remitted to agents every month, through their bank accounts, if their earnings exceed or equal our minimum payout amount.

•Searching for materials on the website is free and does not require any registration. However, to open and read a document, or to even purchase a document, registration is required. We strongly advise that before a user goes ahead and register, he/she should read our Terms & Conditions.

•To read a document online, a registered user has to credit his/her account and that is done using Nigerian-bank issued MasterCard, Verve or Visa cards.

•Users need to first download and install the CopySafe PDF reader in their computers and try to view the demo books to ensure their computers are compatible with the reader before going ahead to credit their accounts. Note that for now, ResearchClass only works on Windows browsers ... hence it is not supported on the iGadgets.

•If a user decides to purchase documents, an email containing the document’s download link is sent to the user. This document has the highest form of copy protection (DRM).


I would be honoured if you could take a few minutes to check out the site at www.ResearchClass.com and share your opinions, questions or issues. I would be glad to respond to them here.


Thank you.

Kudos

I stumbled upon the site long before now. I was impressed then and I'm still impressed. So much went into building that site. No wonder it took almost a year to build.

Just wondering if the owners of the materials on the site won't sue you for copyright infringement?

oduz: Kudos

Thanks. God bless you!

DueTime: I stumbled upon the site long before now. I was impressed then and I'm still impressed. So much went into building that site. No wonder it took almost a year to build.

Just wondering if the owners of the materials on the site won't sue you for copyright infringement?

Thanks for your kind words.

As per copyright infringement, we do not own the materials uploaded to the site, hence we do not own the copyrights to them. A user that uploads a document still continues to own the document(s). If we, however, get a complain backed with adequate proof that a material uploaded to our site violates some other person's copyright, we'll remove such materials.

Thank you.