In a world replete with information sources and options, it is imperative to offer users something unique.  WorldWideScience.org (WWS.org), a federated search product that currently provides a single point of access to 61 scientific databases and portals from more than 60 countries, is a remarkably unique scientific discovery tool.  Representing more than three-fourths of the world’s population, WWS.org enables access to over 400 million pages of science from around the globe.  Many of the databases searched through WWS.org are not well known outside their originating countries and are not easily accessible through typical commercial search engines.  In fact, a recent analysis indicated that WWS.org results, when compared to Google and Google Scholar results, were unique approximately 96.5 % of the time.  Some examples of the wide range of information that a user might find on WWS.org are:

• From the CERN Document Server, full text experimental reports from the Large Hadron Collider project.
• From KoreaMed, an article on the specific risks of stroke in the Korean population.
• A PhD dissertation from the University of Queensland, available through ARROW, which assesses the potential contribution of renewable energy to the electricity supply in Australia.
• An article from Nepal Journals Online which discusses the critical role of irrigation water for food production within that country.
• From African Journals Online, a journal article discussing the impacts of human activities on the persistence of malaria.
• Through NASA’s contributions to Science.gov, information on manned space flights.
• Technical reports from the INIS database on the disposal of high level radioactive wastes.
• Journal articles on laser arrays from the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China.
• From the ERFF Environmental Research database in the U.K., information about research projects on sustainable urban water supplies.
• Theses and dissertations from European universities, available through DRIVER, on the applications of nanotechnology in biomedicine.

Of course, there are many, many more examples from both well-known and much lesser known national databases.  Through WWS.org, users can truly gain access to a vast quantity of information, all with a single query on their topic of interest!

Lorrie Johnson

OSTI