Research Tools & Applications

The New Testament Virtual Manuscript Room is a place where scholars can come to find the most exhaustive list of New Testament manuscript resources, can contribute to marking attributes about these manuscripts, and can find state of the art tools for researching this rich dataset.

The Subject Information Service (FID) for the Study of Religion supports and promotes open access journals relevant to the study of religion. With the platform “RelBib Open Journals” we offer publishers the possibility to host their journals or series permanently open access. Next to the admission of new open access journals, we are also happy to assist you with the transfer of your journal from another platform to open access. We provide you with the publication management software Open Journal Systems (OJS), which can be used to run the entire editorial process right through to publication.

The Special Information Service for Theology offers editors the possibility of permanently hosting their academic theological journals or series in open access. Our service not only helps you to start a new open access journal, but can also assist you in transforming an already existing publication into an open access one.

The Special Information Service for the Study of Religion offers scholars a self-archiving service in order to increase online accessibility to literature of the study of religion. You can self-archive your essays and articles via a simple process and make them available in Green Open Access.

The Fachinformationsdienst (FID) Theologie (Specialized information service in theology) supports authors who wish to make their already published theological research available in Open Access. Researchers from all fields of theology have various possibilities at their disposal to republish or self-archive their texts.

An interactive Question Answering (Q&A) system based on Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). Built using 7,500 United Nations (UN) resolution documents related to R/S in the domains of health and education, SpiritRAG allows researchers and policymakers to conduct complex, context-sensitive database searches of very large datasets using an easily accessible, chat-based web interface.

iCANDID is a research infrastructure that simplifies and accelerates access to large-scale, online data collections. It is designed to support the aggregation, normalization, findability, and accessibility of diverse datasets-making it easier for researchers to work with complex, heterogeneous data.
In essence, iCANDID helps researchers bulk access and harmonize data from a wide range of online sources for further analysis in using their own domain-specific tools. Whether you're looking to collect social media posts around a trending hashtag or parliamentary debates from multiple countries on a specific topic, iCANDID removes the technical barriers of automated data collection and streamlines the entire process.
While iCANDID was initially developed with a focus on the Social Sciences and Humanities, it is increasingly relevant to other disciplines that rely on large-scale textual or structured data. KU Leuven researchers from disciplines including media studies, linguistics, anthropology, criminology, theology, economics, and more are actively using iCANDID. iCANDID is also supporting master’s theses and doctoral research.
Inspired by the FAIR data principles - Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable - iCANDID empowers researchers to spend less time on data wrangling and more time on meaningful analysis.

The Mansi 3 Platform, hosted within the FSCIRE portal, constitutes a specialized digital infrastructure designed to facilitate scholarly consultation of the documentary foundations of Vatican II. Through the digitization and indexing of Acta et documenta Concilio Oecumenico Vaticano II apparando and Acta synodalia Sacrosancti Concilii Oecumenici Vaticani II, the platform enables registered users to conduct both simple and advanced full-text searches, with support for keyword variations and proximity operators. Search results provide precise page references, contextual snippets, and seamless access through an integrated PDF viewer. While preserving the integrity of the sources by restricting printing and downloading, the system ensures a sustainable and reliable environment for the critical study of the Second Vatican Council’s proceedings and preparatory materials.

The Mansi Platform is a digital service integrated into the FSCIRE portal, providing open access to the digitized collection of Giovanni Domenico Mansi’s Sacrorum Conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio. It allows users to navigate more than 17,000 scanned pages through advanced search criteria – such as council year, location, session, or initiating pope – supported by curated metadata. The platform combines public browsing with a structured metadata management system and a dedicated image repository, ensuring both accessibility and scholarly reliability.

FSCIRE grants access to academic databases, which include scholarly journals, e-books, reference works, and multimedia content. These databases encompass a range of disciplines and are accessible online through the FSCIRE libraries’ catalogue. Libraries also provide guidance and training on how to effectively use these databases, often through one-on-one support.

Italian SuperComputing Resource Allocation – ISCRA is the service for distributing computational and storage resources to researchers, where the applicant PI must be affiliated with an Italian entity.