OSTIblogs Keyword: [worldwidescience.org]

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.

By Walt Warnick and David Wojick

Every scientist knows that science advances only if knowledge is shared. Mathematically, this statement implies that the advance of science is a function of both the sharing of research results, as well as doing the original research. In principle, therefore, decision makers face the problem of deciding how much to spend on original research and how much to spend on sharing the knowledge that comes out of research.

WorldWideScience provides a one-stop search engine to mine global scientific databases in the deep web

The internet has revolutionized society by changing the way people communicate, find information, and enjoy entertainment. But a standard internet search misses at least 90 percent of the information available. 

The internet is separated into two unequal pools of information. The surface web contains pages of information that are utilized by popular search engines. The second pool of information is locked away in the deep web, which consists of countless databases world wide.

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.

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.

OSTI is dedicated to the principle that to advance science, research must be shared. OSTI  is increasingly recognized for its contributions to the sharing and exchange of scientific and technical information.  OSTI works to accelerate discovery by speeding access to knowledge.

OSTI’s users conducted 80 million information transactions last year.  Spreading responsibility for these transactions across the OSTI staff implies that each OSTI employee was responsible for 12 information transactions per minute throughout the work year, which I view as an incredible metric of success.   And we have only just begun.  OSTI’s traffic increases significantly each year. 

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
  
  

In 2005, the idea of creating a global science gateway for the web was conceived at OSTI.  It would make the best collections of scientific information from nations around the world act as if they were a single enormous collection.  It would be searchable via a single query, and it would be available at no cost to anyone anywhere with web access.