U.S. Department of Energy

Advancing Science, Accelerating Discovery

2008 STIP Working Meeting
Santa Fe, New Mexico
April 23, 2008

Thanks to Los Alamos National Laboratory & Santa Fe!
Thanks to special guests!
And welcome everyone

Thanks to Gloria Zamora for Making the Case for Science.

OSTI Corollary

Premise
Sharing knowledge (our R&D findings) advances science.

Corollary
Accelerating the sharing of knowledge speeds the advancement of science (discovery).

Government Role Recognized, Set Foundation for DOE's STI Program

"The diffusion of such knowledge should help us stimulate new enterprises, provide jobs for our returning servicemen and other workers, and make possible great strides for the improvement of the national well-being."

– Franklin D. Roosevelt, November 17, 1944

"... the lid must be lifted" on war-time science, and "the government should accept new responsibilities for promoting the flow of new scientific knowledge... ."

– Vannevar Bush, July 1945 response to FDR in Science, the Endless Frontier http://www.nsf.gov/about/history/vbush1945.htm

OSTI & STIP 60+ years later

We are still on that frontier, deploying information technology in revolutionary ways to accelerate what President Roosevelt and Vannevar Bush called "knowledge diffusion."

OSTI MISSION

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.

Role in Office of Science

OSTI works to ensure that DOE's contributions to science are shared with a wide range of audiences, including the general public, news media, scientific and research communities, business/industry, Congress, OMB, and OSTP.

Organization Changes, Office of Science

New partners/new synergy

New Responsibilities

New partners/new synergy

• SC Communications and Public Affairs
    - SC Headquarters, Labs, and Field Offices communications
    - SC Web page management
    - E.O. Lawrence, Fermi, and PECASE awards
    - National Science Bowl promotion/publicity
    - Other efforts to promote SC contributions to science

• Searchable Field Work Proposals (FWP)
    - Management tool to search, evaluate, and monitor FWPs
    - DOE R&D Tracking

Making R&D Accessible

Multiplier factor

• Accelerating the spread of knowledge inspires everything we do at OSTI
    - Making DOE's discoveries more broadly known
    - Diffusing knowledge generated by labs to further the advancement of science and technology

• Specifically, OSTI aggressively pursues efficient access to expanded sources of R&D information

• Innovative tools, such as the DOE Science Accelerator, Science.gov and WorldWideScience.org, and the technology behind them, federated deep Web searching, are key initiatives

Federated Search

Useful when full bibliographical control is not feasible.

Most Science Info Is in the Deep Web.

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.

Surface Web

Deep Web databases

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

OSTI on the Right Track

• OMB Watch
    - OSTI one of five federal government Web sites recognized as "on the right track" by OMB Watch, a nonprofit government watchdog organization located in Washington, DC.
    - The report, Hiding in Plain Sight: Why Important Government Information Cannot Be Found through Commercial Search Engines, was released December 11 and spotlights the gap in accessibility of government information
    - http://www.ombwatch.org/info/searchability.pdf

OSTI on the Right Track

• Sitemap Protocol
    - Google's J.L. Needham cited OSTI as an example of a government Web site that increased citizen access to government information by incorporating Google's sitemap protocol: "the Department of Energy's Office of Scientific and Technical Information operates a large database that makes research and development findings available to the public. OSTI developed a Sitemap for its Energy Citations and Information Bridge services in just 12 hours, opening up 2.3 million bibliographic records and full-text documents to crawling by search engines. After its implementation of Sitemaps, OSTI saw a dramatic increase in traffic to its services..."
    - OSTI the first ".gov" to implement sitemap protocol

OSTI on the Right Track

• Leveraging technology (e.g. federated search) vs. invoking prescribed standards
• FY 2007 Report to Congress on Implementation of The E-Government Act of 2002 (Science.gov again recognized)
    - "Science.gov provides search capability across 30 Federal agency R&D databases and provides links to science websites and scientific databases so citizens can access the results of Federal research. In FY 2007 Science.gov experienced 6.5 million search queries across all its scientific databases and 2.6 million page views of its website."

Federated Search Tools

Science.gov
Celebrating 5th Anniversary!
50 million pages of federal science information from 13 U.S. science agencies
V. 5.0 Coming Soon!

Science Acclerator
Celebrating 1st Anniversary!
Key DOE databases, including technical reports, e-prints, accomplishments, patents, project summaries, software and more from DOE labs, grantees & other facilities.

Our most recent federated search engine is WorldWideScience.org - the global science gateway
Alliance Election Complete!

STI Provided by DOE Sites

These tools search databases where DOE STI is located as well as STI of interest to DOE.

DATABASES

WorldWideScience.org Global Science
Science.gov USA science
Science Accelerator DOE science

We are diffusing the knowledge generated by our STI partners through "regular" channels to NTIS & GPO and through federated search to broad audiences everywhere!

Federated Search Tools

• A federation of the leading science portals of authoritative science information, searchable via one query
• A quantity of science searched comparable to that searchable via Google, with the bulk of the science being non-Googleable
• A contrast to content searched by Google - tends to be scholarly
• A breakthrough in content enabled by breakthrough technology

WorldWideScience.org was launched in June 2007 and now searches 32 portals from 44 countries.

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

More than 200 million pages from every inhabited continent!

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

Here's how it works . . .

Type a search term such as "weather prediction" into the search box and click "Search".

With just one click, your query will be sent from the server in Oak Ridge, TN, to databases around the globe!

WorldWideScience.org

Your query will return to your desktop from the server in Oak Ridge, TN, with a list of results in "real time."

You get up-to-the-minute information relevant to your query.

Innovations in the Works

SBIR-generated capabilities

• Domain recognition
• Grade-level stratification
• Multi-lingual translations
• Spell check

Digitization Initiative

• Completed digitization of technical reports issued during 1991 to 1994
• Seeking a solution to digitize the entire legacy collection - 900K+ documents
• Recognizing limitations of in-house scanning
• Thinking outside the box - "no cost" contract
• Issued Expression of Interest, Summer 2007
• Currently in negotiations (slow progress)

Science Education Portal

Supports the America COMPETES Act

www.scienceeducation.gov in the works!

Search across all DOE resources with one query to improve K-16 science education programs and spark interest in scientific, engineering, and math-related career fields.

Web 2.0 at OSTI

• Web 2.0 Beginnings
    • Wiki
    • Blog
    • Widgets

OSTIblog www.osti.gov/ostiblog

The OSTIblog provides an opportunity for OSTI to better inform the public and for the public to better inform OSTI.

Invitation to Comment & Post Three Threads
    • Personal Perspectives
    • Products & Content
    • Technology

Onward!

• STIP meeting agenda is full of great topics & presentations
• We'll learn from each other and
• Invigorate our ideas & path forward