OSTIblogs Keyword: [worldwidescience.org]

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. 

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.

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.