In an October 29, 2011 Wall Street Journal article, “The New Einsteins Will Be Scientists Who Share,”  Dr. Michael Nielsenstated that networked science has the potential to speed up dramatically the rate of discovery across all of science, and that we may well see the day-to-day process of scientific research change more fundamentally over the next few decades than over the past three centuries. He also noted that there are major obstacles to achieving this goal, including the lack of a systematic effort by scientists to adopt new tools of discovery or to share data – because they are busy, they may believe it’s a diversion from their “real” work or because they may not be familiar with the means to do so easily.

OSTI knows that the public and members of the scientific community may not be familiar with the multitude of different science databases.  OSTI addresses and solves these considerable challenges by providing vehicles for obtaining targeted, precise information quickly and easily.  We believe that shared knowledge is the enabler of scientific progress, and that accelerating the sharing of knowledge will accelerate discovery.  To these ends, OSTI uses and extends modern communication technologies.  Our databases are the largest national sources of energy and science R&D information in the world. 

OSTI resources include:

Science Accelerator, a gateway to DOE research and development (R&D) projects and programs, descriptions of R&D projects underway or recently completed, major R&D accomplishments, and recent research of interest to DOE.  The user can learn about ongoing research projects, explore significant DOE discoveries, learn about DOE Nobel Prize Winners, access and search scientific e-prints, locate science conference papers and proceedings, and more.

Science.gov, a gateway to federal government science information and research results that provides a search of over 50 scientific databases, 200 million pages of science information and 2100 scientific websites just one query.

WorldWideScience.org, a global science gateway comprised of national and international scientific databases and portals containing over 400 million pages of scientific and technical information deemed worthy of publication by, or on behalf of, governments around the world, which can be retrieved in ten languages. 

All of these resources are available to anyone with internet access, at no cost to the user.

We don’t know who the next Einstein will be, but we do know that to make great discoveries, researchers need scientific information, and they need it fast. OSTI works to ensure scientists and the American public can readily find and share research so that science can advance.