Building Energy Science And Technology Digital Collections

Building Energy Science and Technology Digital Collections

for a Physical Sciences Information Infrastructure

Karen J. Spence

Abstract

The U. S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information provides a suite of innovative digital information resources for a stronger America. Included in these resources are world-class products that address the three main ways by which researchers disseminate their findings: the DOE Information Bridge (gray literature), PubSCIENCE (journal literature), and the PrePRINT Network (preprints). These products are key components of the suite of resources provided through EnergyFiles, a virtual library of energy-related scientific and technical information. Each product can be searched individually or in parallel with other energy-related resources using EnergyPortal, which is the groundbreaking distributed search mechanism of EnergyFiles. This history of success lays the foundation for OSTI’s new initiative, a future Physical Sciences Information Infrastructure.

Introduction

The Department of Energy (DOE) is among the leading research agencies in the world, investing $7 billion annually in research and development (R&D). It is vitally important for research agencies to disseminate their information as broadly and as quickly as possible, providing access to data and information that fuels essential knowledge. For over 50 years DOE’s Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) has been collecting, preserving, and disseminating the Department’s scientific and technical information (STI). By utilizing Information Age technologies, OSTI has radically changed its information services and has developed a suite of award-winning Internet resources that bring science information to the desktop at no cost to the user. These resources provide easier, faster, cheaper, more complete, and more convenient means of accessing and using global STI by scientists, researchers, academia, industry, and the public.

One-stop shopping access to this suite of resources is provided through EnergyFiles, a Web-based virtual library that provides easy access to collections of both DOE and worldwide energy-related scientific and technical information. EnergyFiles contains a Deep Web search mechanism, EnergyPortal, that is easy to use, integrates parallel searching, and retrieves information from heterogeneous and geographically dispersed databases and Web sites. Key components of EnergyFiles are DOE R&D Project Summaries (current research), DOE R&D Accomplishments (outcomes of past research), the DOE Information Bridge (gray literature), PubSCIENCE (peer-reviewed journal literature), and the PrePRINT Network (preprints). These products have been designed to provide remote access to billions of dollars of energy‑related research performed by DOE and its collaborators.

DOE Information Bridge

The DOE Information Bridge (http://www.osti.gov/bridge) made available in April 1998 in collaboration with the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO), contains DOE report literature from 1995 forward. It incorporates over 60,000 full-text reports comprising almost 5 million pages. It provides free, convenient, and quick access to full‑text DOE research and development reports in physics, chemistry, materials, biology, environmental sciences, energy technologies, engineering, computer and information science, renewable energy, and other topics. Users remotely access and download the reports free of charge and in significant volume.

The DOE Information Bridge focuses on providing access to scientific and technical reports produced by DOE, DOE national laboratories, and DOE contractors. New reports processed by OSTI are added routinely and legacy reports are added as resources permit. Since its introduction, the content of DOE Information Bridge has more than doubled.

DOE Information Bridge search options include a basic approach that can be concentrated on specific data fields and an advanced approach that includes Boolean operators to increase search precision. Users can search the entire collection (full text and bibliographic data), or they can search portions of it. Three formats, GIF, PDF and TIFF, are available for viewing the full‑text page images. Two formats, PDF (image only) and the original input format, are available for downloading full‑text documents. This makes reports far easier to use and eliminates the cumbersome and time-consuming practices associated with searching traditional media.

Through the use of unique identifiers known as Persistent URLs (PURLs), DOE Information Bridge makes it possible for educators, students, scientists, and engineers to directly access individual documents and to easily direct others to them. Other new capabilities include a variety of search-result sorting options, extensive date-range searching, and an option to view or download full-text documents in Web or native formats.

The DOE Information Bridge is made available to the public through a partnership between OSTI and the Government Printing Office (GPO) on GPO Access (http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs). Building and expanding the DOE Information Bridge reinforces DOE’s and GPO’s commitment to make available DOE research reports and to move Federal programs and activities into the ever-expanding world of the Information Age.

PubSCIENCE

PubSCIENCE (http://www.osti.gov/pubscience) was developed to facilitate searching and accessing peer-reviewed journal literature in the physical sciences and other disciplines of interest to DOE. Made available in collaboration with the Government Printing Office (GPO) in October 1999, it provides for quick, easy, and free searching of a compendium of peer-reviewed journal citations and abstracts about the physical sciences and other energy-related disciplines. Hyperlinks provide access to publisher servers to obtain full-text articles if the user or organization has a subscription to the journal. If the user lacks such a subscription, access to the full text can be obtained by pay per view, by special arrangement with the publisher, by library access, or through commercial providers.

Forty-one publisher agreements provide PubSCIENCE users the capability to search and access almost 2 million records in more than 1300 journal titles of peer-reviewed scientific and technical information.

PubSCIENCE is the convergence of recent advances in information technology tools (as evidenced by the Internet), the re-engineering of traditional DOE products and services, the awakening interests of scientific journal publishers to utilize the Internet, the information needs of the DOE research community, and the desire of the GPO to work with other agencies to make electronic government information and tools available to the public.

Not only is the Internet changing the way publishers are thinking about publishing, but it has impacted how government views its role in the dissemination of scientific and technical information as well. PubSCIENCE is an outstanding example of converging interests of the user’s desire to access current scientific and technical literature, the Department’s desire to facilitate the flow of peer-reviewed scientific and technical information, and publishers’ interest in obtaining the widest possible visibility for their published materials.

PrePRINT Network

The PrePRINT Network (http://www.osti.gov/preprint) was unveiled in January 2000 and is a searchable gateway to preprint sites that contain information about scientific and technical disciplines of concern to DOE. Such disciplines include physics, materials, chemistry, and portions of biology, environmental sciences, and nuclear medicine. Collections and resources in the PrePRINT Network are provided by academic institutions, government research laboratories, scientific societies, private research organizations, and individual scientists and researchers.

The PrePRINT Network expedites the dissemination of scientists’ research results. It is Web-based and provides access to energy-related papers, draft journal articles, and other electronic materials produced by researchers. It provides links to more than 2000 preprint sites housing over 340,000 documents. Over twenty heterogeneous preprint databases are available for distributed cross searching via a single query. In addition, the PrePRINT Network provides links to over 600 related scientific societies and associations.

The PrePRINT Network offers users three options for locating information. Users can browse or search one specific preprint site or a selected set of sites. The Browse option allows users to view an alphabetical listing of all of the sites included in the system and to visit any of the individual sites listed. A second option for searching within the PrePRINT Network, Search Selected Sites, allows users to pulse the search engines of selected preprint sites with a single query. This search capability then compiles the results and returns them to the users. Thirdly, the Subject Pathways option offers users the ability to choose a subject area and browse preprint collections including preprints posted by individual scientists on their own sites. In most cases, access to the full-text information on the target sites is open, accessible, and free of charge.

OSTI recently launched PrePRINT Alerts, a component of the PrePRINT Network and the first alert service that harvests information from the Deep Web. The underlying content of select Web sites and databases is searched rather than only surface pages of Web sites. This new capability allows users to register, create their personalized profiles, and automatically receive weekly notification via e-mail of new preprint information fitting the profile of interest.

Additional Digital Collections

In addition to this trilogy of products that addresses the three main ways by which researchers disseminate their findings, OSTI has built and developed complementing digital collections. These include:

• DOE R&D Project Summaries, which provides brief descriptions of over 20,000 R&D projects currently ongoing within the DOE

• DOE R&D Accomplishments, which showcases outcomes of past DOE research and development that have had significant economic impact, have improved people’s lives, or have been widely recognized as a remarkable advance in science

• OpenNet, which covers the DOE legacy collection of declassified documents and has been developed and maintained by OSTI for the DOE’s Office of Declassification

• Subject Portals, which are electronic subject-based collections sponsored by DOE Programs

• Federal R&D Project Summaries, which was developed as a proof of principle to demonstrate the value of having a portal to information about Federal research projects

• GrayLIT Network, which provides access to full-text technical reports from DOE and partnering Federal agencies

DOE R&D Project Summaries (http://www.osti.gov/rnd) was unveiled in June 1997 to provide the public with access to key corporate information on over 20,000 research and development projects performed since 1995 by the Department’s laboratories and other research facilities. It includes DOE research activities in a wide variety of energy-related scientific disciplines. R&D Project Summaries enables DOE to educate and inform the general public of its current research and development activities and provides a mechanism for public access to information about Departmental research capabilities and activities.

The DOE R&D Accomplishments (http://www.osti.gov/accomplishments) Web site showcases the proud heritage of the Department’s research and development and highlights benefits that are being realized now. It was unveiled in March 1999 as a central forum for providing the public with information about outcomes of past DOE‑sponsored or generated research and development. The outcomes featured have had significant economic impact, have improved people’s lives, or have been widely recognized as a remarkable advance in science. The core of the Web site is the DOE R&D Accomplishments Database, consisting of searchable full-text and bibliographic citations of documents reporting accomplishments from DOE and DOE contractor facilities. Complementing the Database is a page of "Snapshots." It contains links to items or articles that contain information about or identify at least one research and development accomplishment. Snapshots are quick pictures, introductions, overviews, or synopses. When more information about a Snapshots topic is available via the DOE R&D Accomplishments Database, links to full-text reports are identified and provided.

OpenNet (http://www.osti.gov/opennet) provides easy, timely access to recently declassified DOE information, including information declassified in response to Freedom of Information Act requests, and makes it more readily available to the public. It includes references to all documents declassified and made publicly available after October 1, 1994, and supports the processes envisioned by the Openness Initiative of Public Awareness, Public Education, Public Input, and Public Access.

Subject Portals, also known as ECAPs (Electronic Current Awareness Publications) (http://www.osti.gov/ecaps), are a collection of bibliographic citations, broken out by subject area, from the Energy Science and Technology Database (EDB). For DOE reports, links are provided to full text. These long-standing paper publications were recently transitioned to a searchable Web product and are now being re-directed into specific Subject Portals with additional features. This migration is scheduled for completion in Summer 2001.

Federal R&D Project Summaries (http://www.osti.gov/fedrnd) was released in 2000 and provides a unique window to the Federal research community, allowing Agencies to better understand the research and development efforts of their counterparts in government. It provides insight to the public in how its investment in research and development is being used and supports full-text single-query searching across more than 240,000 research summaries and awards in databases residing at the Department of Energy, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the National Science Foundation (NSF). The Federal databases available via this tool are the DOE R&D Project Summaries; the NIH CRISP (Computer Retrieval of Information on Scientific Projects) Current Awards; and the NSF Award Data.

GrayLIT Network (http://www.osti.gov/graylit) provides a portal for over 100,000 full-text technical reports located at the Department of Energy, Department of Defense, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Collections in the GrayLIT collaboration include the DOE Information Bridge; the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) Report Collection; the EPA National Environmental Publications Internet Site (NEPIS); the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab Reports; and the NASA Langley Technical Reports.

EnergyFiles

The umbrella for this suite of resources is EnergyFiles (http://www.osti.gov/energyfiles), which was released in May 1997. It is a Web-based virtual library that provides easy access to over 500 widely diverse collections of both DOE and worldwide energy-related STI. EnergyFiles is a dynamic information system that offers users, participants and contributors the opportunity to leverage collections and capabilities and to maximize use of energy-related scientific and technical information.

The EnergyFiles search mechanism, EnergyPortal Search, provides for increased site efficiency and ease of knowledge discovery. EnergyPortal has conquered a major obstacle confronting multi-source virtual libraries. It is a unique search capability that provides distributed searching across the decentralized, heterogeneous databases and web sites linked to EnergyFiles. The user no longer needs to select individual links to sift through available information in pursuit of what is relevant. Words or phrases are entered in a single query box and the query is distributed in parallel to the user-selected multiple databases and Web sites residing at diverse locations.

EnergyPortal Search continues to represent a breakthrough in information retrieval. It enables users to search across 26 databases and 500 Web sites using a single query. The sites are maintained by various agencies, are geographically dispersed, and require no standardization in terms of format, software or metadata. EnergyPortal will search full text when available; DOE databases and collections; databases of other agencies such as the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); and other resources. When the individual database supports it, the searched word or phrase is highlighted for easy access.

This distributed search capability demonstrates an essential next step in information technology - the integration of parallel searching and retrieving of information from disparate and geographically dispersed databases and Web sites. The EnergyPortal distributed search transcends other government agencies’ full-text information sources. Since it includes only unlimited, unclassified energy-related information, users in government, industry, academia and the public benefit from the addition of this capability. Time is saved through more efficient and effective information retrieval since the information is accessible on the Internet in an organized, searchable format.

Physical Sciences Information Infrastructure

For more than 50 years, studies have called for a comprehensive national resource for finding, understanding, and using information about our physical world. A workshop was convened May 2000 at the National Academy of Sciences for representatives from scientific agencies, academia, professional societies and the private sector to address issues and gaps in communicating and using information in the physical sciences.

The Workshop resulted in the endorsed vision of a Physical Sciences Information Infrastructure to integrate the whole of science to provide a basis to improve society, the economy, and the environment. Findings in the Workshop report (http://www.osti.gov/physicalsciences) support the need for:

· An Integrated Network to provide comprehensive access and facilitate the reuse of worldwide sources of physical sciences information,

· A Point of Convergence for ensuring the awareness, availability, use, and development of information technologies and tools, and

· An Openly Available Source of information to serve all users with tools to assist them in their quest for information and ultimately knowledge.

The report also emphasized the need for an interagency, academia, professional society, and private sector collaborative effort. OSTI’s leadership in the collection and sharing of worldwide scientific and technical (S&T) information and OSTI’s expertise in information, technology, and the scientific disciplines have laid the foundation for the Physical Sciences Information Infrastructure. OSTI is now pursuing partnerships and consortia agreements for a collaborative implementation strategy for the Physical Sciences Information Infrastructure, which will provide comprehensive access to reliable worldwide information; a managed set of information resources and tools; timely access to ongoing research; and support of multi-organizational collaborations. Resource requirements, partnership arrangements, and numerous other planning activities are currently being explored as support for this initiative continues to grow.