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SciTech Connect

Frequently Asked Questions

What is SciTech Connect?

SciTech Connect is a portal to free, publicly-available DOE-sponsored R&D results including technical reports, bibliographic citations, journal articles, conference papers, books, multimedia and data information. SciTech Connect is a consolidation of two core DOE search engines, the Information Bridge and the Energy Citations Database. SciTech Connect incorporates all of the R&D information from these two products into one search interface. SciTech Connect was developed by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) to increase access to science, technology, and engineering research information from DOE and its predecessor agencies.

Will SciTech Connect replace DOE Information Bridge and Energy Citations Database?

Yes. SciTech Connect will provide access to all the information previously available via DOE Information Bridge and the Energy Citations Database.

How will my service from Information Bridge and Energy Citations Database be affected?

You should not experience any interruption in service. Any links made to citations or full text in DOE Information Bridge or Energy Citations Database will be redirected to SciTech Connect. You should bookmark the new site for future use. If you experience any interruption in service, you can Contact Us.

What is the content scope of SciTech Connect?

SciTech Connect contains all the full-text documents and citations previously found in Information Bridge and Energy Citations Database. Thus, SciTech Connect contains over sixty-five years of energy-related citations created and/or collected by OSTI.

SciTech Connect includes technical reports, bibliographic citations, journal articles, conference papers, books, multimedia, and data information sponsored by DOE through a grant, contract, cooperative agreement, or similar type of funding mechanism from the 1940s to today. This collection continues to grow as new scientific and technical information resulting from DOE research becomes available.

There are over 2.5 million citations, including citations to 1.4 million journal articles, 364,000 of which have digital object identifiers (DOIs) linking to full-text articles on publishers' websites. SciTech Connect also has over 313,000 full-text DOE sponsored STI reports; most of these are post-1991, but close to 85,000 of the reports were published prior to 1990.

What subject areas are covered in SciTech Connect?

Biology and Medicine
Chemistry
Energy Storage, Conversion, and Utilization
Engineering
Environmental Sciences
Fission and Nuclear Technologies
Fossil Fuels
Geosciences
Materials
Mathematics and Computing
National Defense
Physics
Power Generation and Distribution
Renewable Energy

How should I search ... Basic or Advanced?

Basic Search
Want to take advantage of the semantic search capability available at SciTech Connect? Use the Basic Search. A semantic search technique called keyword-to-concept mapping is utilized, so your search term will be mapped to related scientific concepts allowing you to retrieve results related to your search term, but also to explore narrower and similar concepts. Boolean operators are ignored in the basic search so your term can be easily mapped to other concepts.

This technique is an expansion of your search and will generally return a larger number of results. This powerful and intuitive search can take several seconds to complete.

Using the basic search, a search for wind energy would be expanded to approximately 48 terms associated with wind and energy, including these:
wind power
renewable energy
wind turbines
energy efficiency
energy conservation
geothermal energy
If you are searching for a precise title or author, the Advanced Search is more appropriate.

Advanced Search
Want to combine terms or limit your search to a particular bibliographic field? Use the Advanced Search. You can enter terms into one or more fields, combine terms with Boolean operators like AND, OR, and NOT, and limit by date. The semantic search capability of searching similar and narrower concepts is not applied when you use the Advanced Search. The Advanced Search will generally provide fewer results than the semantic Basic Search. If you are searching for a known title, it would be best to use the Advanced Search title field.

In-Document Search
There is also an In-Document Search available. If the record has full text, you can search within that record to see where your terms appear in the document. The In-Document search is available from the Citation Details screen for each result. This capability does not work with multimedia, datasets, or citations.

What is a semantic search?

The SciTech Connect Basic Search utilizes a semantic search technique called keyword-to-concept mapping. Your search term will be mapped to related scientific concepts allowing you to retrieve results related to your search term, but also to explore narrower and similar concepts.

Can I download information from SciTech Connect?

Yes. If the item is available electronically, a full-text icon will be shown at the right of the result. Items in SciTech Connect are publicly-available and free. There are also various citation export options available on the bibliographic details screen for each result.

How do I register for a SciTech Connect account? What are the benefits of being a registered user?

To create a SciTech Connect Account, select Create Account and enter the requested information. You are required to provide your email address and create a password. Each account must be registered with a unique email address. After registration, you will be taken to your account management screen.

A SciTech Connect account allows you to save documents, save searches and categorize them into lists, export bibliographies, and create alerts.

Does SciTech Connect offer an Alerts service?

Yes. You can create a SciTech Connect account, which will allow you to save and categorize documents, save searches, export bibliographies, and create content alerts. The search results retrieved by the alerts service will be presented exactly as your original search was designed, with your chosen result facet (Everything, Electonic Full Text, Citations, Multimedia, Datasets) displayed.

Can I change how my search results are displayed? What is the difference between the 'Basic results view' and the 'Detailed results view'?

Yes. You can create a SciTech Connect account, which will allow you to customize how the results are displayed from a search. On your 'My Account' page you will have two options: Basic results view and Detailed results view. The Basic view will display the title, author, publication date, and description in a list format. The Detailed view will display fields of your choosing in a more compact, tabular format. The Detailed view allows for extensive customization of the results display.

For additional assistance, Contact Us.