U.S. Department of Energy

Advancing Global Discovery

Sharing Our Knowledge
FLICC Meeting
November 29, 2007

OSTI Mission:

To advance science and sustain technological creativity by making R&D findings available and useful to DOE researchers and the American people.

Science Progresses as Knowledge is Shared

OSTI Corollary: If the sharing of knowledge is accelerated, discovery is accelerated.

Profound implications for all of us in the information business!

We can accelerate the sharing of knowledge ...

But first we must dispel the misperception that popular search engines are already doing the job.

• Google

• Yahoo!

• MSN

Much of Science is Non-Googleable

In fact, the vast majority of science information is in databases within the deep Web – or the non-Googleable Web – where popular search engines cannot go.

We in the information business need to recognize this gap between availability and need, and seize the opportunity to ...

Provide science information consumers with better tools.

• Surface Web

• Deep Web databases

Federated search drills down to the deep Web where scientific databases reside.

Unlike the Google solution, federated search places no burden on the database owners.

We need systems, such as federated search, that probe the deep Web.

OSTI has recognized the need to bridge this gap; our emerging solution is "federated" search.

• 50 million pages of federal science information

• Key DOE databases

Our most recent federated search engine is WorldWideScience.org – the global science gateway.

International partnership kicks off global science gateway

In January 2007, Dr. Raymond Orbach, Under Secretary for Science, and Lynne Brindley, Chief Executive of the British Library signed a Statement of Intent to partner in the development of a searchable global science gateway.

WorldWideScience.org was launched in June 2007 and now searches 24 portals from 17 countries of every inhabited continent.

Enables access to prominent as well as smaller, less well-known sources of highly valuable science.

WorldWideScience.org allows the users to search multiple data sources around the globe from a single query search box.

What is WorldWideScience.org?

• A federation of the leading science portals sponsored by the governments of 17 countries

• A quantity of science searched comparable to that searchable via Google, with the bulk of the science being non-Googleable

• A breakthrough in content enabled by break-through technology

Current National Partners in WorldWideScience.org

Australia
Argentina
Brazil
Canada
Chile
Colombia
Denmark
France
Germany
Japan
The Netherlands
New Zealand
Portugal
South Africa
Spain
United Kingdom
United States

Current WorldWideScience.org Sources

African Journals Online (South Africa)
Article@INIST (France)
Australian Antarctic Data Centre
Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information
CSIR Research Space (South Africa)
Defence Research and Development Canada (Canada)
DEFF Global E Prints (Denmark)
DEFF Research Database (Denmark)
Electronic Table of Contents (ETOC) (United Kingdom)
J-EAST (Japan)
J-STAGE (Japan)
J-STORE (Japan)
Journal@rchive (Japan)
NARCIS (Netherlands)
Science.gov (United States)
Scientific Electronic Library Online (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Portugal, Spain) Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand 1868-1961 (New Zealand)
UK PubMed Central (United Kingdom)
Vascoda (Germany)

Live demonstration of WorldWideScience.org search.

The stage is set for the future

We are ready to scale up our efforts in metasearch, or federated search.

Simply put, we intend to make more science accessible to more people than anyone has done before.