NTIS – National Technical Information Services — RSS Feeds

Posted on October 29, 2008 by Louise Deis

The Nation’s Source for Scientific Information

"NTIS undergoes a rigorous process to ensure that all the information we offer is authentic and credible. This integrity, along with the breadth and depth of our collection, is why NTIS is regarded as the nation’s preeminent source of government information."

NTIS is now offering RSS feeds to any of its 39 major subject categories. One may subscribe to receive the latest titles, weekly. For a listing of Scope Notes that defines the specific topical content for each, go to http://www.ntis.gov/pdf/scopenotes.pdf

To subscribe to the Newsletter, write to: ntrnews@ntis.gov

"The National Technical Information Service (NTIS), is the nation’s largest and most comprehensive source of government-funded scientific, technical, engineering and business-related information."

Source: NTIS Technical Reports Newsletter, Vol. 1(4), October 15, 2008

MultiSearch — new federated, deep web database for Defence

Posted on October 23, 2008 by Louise Deis

DTIC Online portal deploys Deep Web Technologies’ MultiSearch interface – 23 Oct 2008

Search solutions provider Deep Web Technologies, US, has launched an updated interface for the Defense Technical Information Center’s new DTIC Online research portal (http://multisearch.dtic.mil). DTIC is part of the US’ Department of Defense (DOD). The interface, known as MultiSearch, offers four defence search channels from a single drop-down menu, allowing users to access a collection of scientific and defence-related resources in one simultaneous search. The search employs the latest version of Deep Web Technologies’ Explorit Research Accelerator, which is seen to provide ‘smart’ clustering, encyclopedia sidebars from Wikipedia, and EurekAlert! science news.

DTIC supports the DOD and its community by centralising scientific, technical and related defence-information services, databases and systems. Its new DTIC Online significantly expands the breadth of information scanned and retrieved with its four search channels: DOD websites, DTIC Public Scientific and Technical Information, the DTIC Website, and Federal Scientific and Technical Information. MultiSearch also includes a federated search of other federated search websites, including Scitopia.org and WorldWideScience.org – both powered by the Explorit Research Accelerator. It therefore is projected to consolidate a number of advanced search engines within one search, delivering results users might never have uncovered.

The upgraded MultiSearch portal adds new features that seek to enrich the user experience and value of research. By taking advantage of Explorit’s ‘smart clustering,’ MultiSearch provides relevance-ranked clusters that allow users to see their results organised by topic. It also retrieves and displays entries from Wikipedia and EurekAlert! that complement the search experience. Explorit delivers not only relevant results, but pathways and context to guide users to more relevant search results.

Deep Web’s federated search technology is projected to enable fee-based or proprietary content to be searched publicly on the Internet, without giving it away. This content is not searchable by public search engines such as Google and Yahoo.

DTIC Online was created specifically for the defence community. MultiSearch can be accessed from the pull-down menu by selecting ‘Federal S&T’ or by going directly to (http://multisearch.dtic.mil).The search is free and much of the content is available at no cost. Some content – like that accessed through Scitopia – can be purchased on a pay-per-view basis or accessed by a subscription.

Open Access Day — the first, October 14, 2008

Posted on October 15, 2008 by Louise Deis

Here is their website: http://openaccessday.org/

Visit the Open Access Day Web site for shout-outs, competition winners, concurrent announcements, and more.

From the SPARC Enews (newsletter)

Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition

University Libraries in Google Project to Offer Backup Digital Library

Posted on October 14, 2008 by Louise Deis

The Chronicle of Higher Education on Monday, October 13, 2008, has announced the formation of a giant library to serve as a back-up for Google Books, designated as the HathiTrust.

"The…HathiTrust, …consists of the members of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, a consortium of the 11 universities in the Big Ten Conference and the University of Chicago, and the 10 campuses in the University of California system. The University of Virginia is joining the project, it will be announced today, and officials hope to bring in other colleges as well."

Already HathiTrust (a shared digital respository ), contains the full text of more than two million books scanned by Google. However, only about 16 percent of the books in HathiTrust—or about 327,000 volumes—are out of copyright so that their full text can be delivered to all readers.

To read the whole article: http://chronicle.com/free/2008/10/5061n.htm

Continue reading →

Open Access Day, 1st International — October 14, 2008

Posted on October 8, 2008 by Louise Deis

October 14 is Open Access Day
The first international Open Access Day will be held next week on Tuesday, 14 October. Founded by SPARC, Students for FreeCulture, and the Public Library of Science, the aim is to broaden awareness and understanding of open access.

Publication imbalance in Science and Medicine

Posted on October 8, 2008 by Louise Deis


	Current publication practices may distort science, say researchers – 08 Oct 2008 “Open access journal PLoS Medicine has published a paper in its latest issue, according to which the current system of publishing medical and scientific research provides a distorted view of the reality of scientific data that are generated in the laboratory and clinic. In their paper, a team of researchers – Neal Young of the National Institutes of Health; John Ioannidis of Tufts University School of Medicine, USA and University of Ioannina School of Medicine, Greece; and Omar Al-Ubaydli of George Mason University – apply principles from the field of economics to present evidence consistent with a distortion. According to these researchers, there is an extreme imbalance between the abundance of supply and the increasingly limited venues for publication. The result is that only a small proportion of all research results are eventually chosen for publication, and these results are unrepresentative of scientists’ repeated samplings of the real world. The authors argue that there is a moral imperative to reconsider how scientific data are judged and disseminated. The paper is available online at http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0050201. PLoS Medicine is a peer-reviewed, international, open-access journal published by the Public Library of Science (PLoS), a nonprofit organisation. The journal provides an open-access venue for publishing important original research and analysis relevant to human health.” Source: Knowledgespeak Newsletter

Free Patent Databases

Posted on October 3, 2008 by Louise Deis

In response to a question put to the Engineering Division of the Special Libraries Association, Mike White at Queen’s University in Ontario, writes:

"For teaching and research purposes, the public patent databases are excellent resources. The quality and currency of the data is as good as the commercial sites. The patent office databases are updated weekly and most of the independent databases (FreePatentsOnline, Patent Lens, etc.) are current or no more than a week behind. My favorite is the EPO’s esp@cenet system. It’s user friendly, has tremendous content (60 million patents from 72+ jurisdictions) and an excellent classification search tool. I understand that they will be rolling out major enhancements to it sometime this fall. You might be interested in a comparison of free patent databases I posted recently on my blog."

PUL’s Patent Resources guide is linkable from the "Articles and Databases" cluster, under "P" or "patent". ("Articles and Databases") is on the Library’s homepage.

Mike also notes that Thomson Reuters is rumored to have a powerful new patent searching database coming — for professional patent searchers.

SciTechNews

New resources in the sciences and technology, especially pertaining to academic and scholarly pursuits.

Monthly Archives: October 2008