Learning materials and sources are primarily digital in nature in the case of e-learning. This allows them to be easily modified in order to adapt to the users' needs and a learning context. Student and professionally-created learning materials can be found on the Internet in various formats. The amount and diversity of available resources are becoming an issue for both the learners and the information systems that facilitate learning. Using a descriptive and standardized set of attributes (metadata), the aforementioned problems can be solved.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.