OSTIblogs Keyword: [science.gov]

by David Wojick and Peter Lincoln

As OSTI Director Walt Warnick likes to say, today's Web is like the Model T Ford -- revolutionary but ready for vast improvement. This is especially true when it comes to making the Web work for science and technology. In that spirit I want to describe a new kind of Web Portal, one which has yet to be built. It is called the X-Portal.

Science.gov is a one-stop portal for federal government science information.  Over 200 million pages of science information from 14 federal agencies may be searched through a single query.  How far we have come in the past decade!

You may not be aware that Science.gov was developed and is governed by the Science.gov Alliance, a group of science information managers who began working together to overcome the stovepipes of agency information in 2001.

Did you know that science information is available via web "mashups"? Web "mashups" combine multiple products/services into a single application for the purpose of consolidating information with an easy-to-use interface.

The Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) uses “mashups” to return search results from Science Accelerator, Science.gov, and WorldWideScience.org. These "mashups" include external sources of information, in these cases from Wikipedia and EurekAlert!, that are provided as a service to the user for help with additional background information or with the ability to further study their topic.

Did you know:

• That now you can find research from China when you search within WorldWideScience.org?  OSTI was in Ottawa June 10 helping formalize the addition of China to the WorldWideScience Alliance? In addition, now you can quickly narrow your WorldWideScience.org results list to the research you need, share them on social networking sites, bookmark your search, and set up alerts.
• That now you can learn about OSTI tools and services on our OSTI YouTube site launched in June?

On March 2nd I wrote an article for the Federated Search Blog: On credibility  of search results.

The article asserts that a federated search engine is only as good as the quality of the content to which it provides access. While the major consumer-oriented search engines may provide more search results overall, it is left to the user of the search application to sift through the search results to identify which content represents credible scientific and technical information.

by Kristin Bingham and Sol Lederman

On June 22, 2007, OSTI opened WorldWideScience.org, a global science gateway, to the public. WorldWideScience.org was an ambitious undertaking and OSTI was the perfect organization to take on the technical, administrative, and organizational challenges to take a powerful idea and bring it to fruition.

When it comes to science and technology development, OSTI people are writing one of the biggest Internet success stories. Everyone talks about how the Internet is changing science but OSTI is making it happen, and doing it on a shoestring budget.

by Walt Warnick and Sol Lederman

This is the final article in a series about the limitations of the crawl and index approach to searching scientific content and the advantages of federated search. Part 1 identified a number of issues with Google and the other crawlers, and showed why researchers and the science attentive citizenry don't rely on "Googleable" content to meet their needs for quality scientific and technical information. Part 2 explained how federated search, by providing access to "non-Googleable" content, overcomes the Google limitations. This article highlights three important applications, developed and maintained by OSTI, that demonstrate how federated search is going beyond crawling to advance science.

Federated search is very much at the heart of OSTI's ability to realize its mission. OSTI provides a simple description of what federated search is and how it works in the OSTI environment. The best way to experience the tremendous value of federated search at OSTI is to try several of OSTI's flagship applications:

• Science Accelerator


• Science.gov


• WorldWideScience.org
  
  

OSTI provides searchable access to vast collections of DOE research results, project descriptions, and accomplishments. Making R&D findings available and usable is central to OSTI's mission:

The mission of the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) is to advance science and sustain technological creativity by making R&D findings available and useful to Department of Energy (DOE) researchers and the American people.

Yesterday my son had an emergency appendectomy – these days a pretty routine procedure. But far from routine was the array of drugs offered to get him through the long night ahead.