ResearchGate – LinkedIn for Scientists

“Most social network founders want to make money. Ijad Madisch, the scientist-CEO behind ResearchGate, has a higher goal: He wants to win a Nobel Prize for the network. 

Five years after its founding, Madisch’s plan doesn’t seem so far-fetched. ResearchGate, which has been described as “LinkedIn for scientists,” has 2.9 million users — about half of the international scientific community. Madisch has built a list of success stories in which scientists used ResearchGate to speed up their work. And as of now, he’s got a formidable supporter you may have heard of: Bill Gates.”

Source: ReadWrite [support=readwriteweb.com@mail320.us3.mcdlv.net]

Full article is here, complete with photo of a freckled Bill Gates:

http://readwrite.com/2013/06/04/bill-gates-researchgate?utm_source=ReadWrite+Newsletters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=b883d1cdd5-RWWDailyNewsletter&utm_term=0_9fbeb5d667-b883d1cdd5-201299837

Open Access Week, October 18 – 24, 2010 (4th Annual)

“Leading the event is O[pen] A[ccess] advocate Dr. Harold Varmus, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist who currently directs the US National Cancer Institute. He is joined by Dr. Cameron Neylon, a biophysicist and open research advocate; Dr. Mona Nemer, professor and vice-president for research at the University of Ottawa; Dr. Roger Wakimoto, Director of the US National Center for Atmospheric Research; and a host of other researchers from around the globe.

“Presenters are expected to paint a clear picture of how OA has contributed to changing the research landscape and point to opportunities that lay ahead. Dr. Varmus has described OA as an ‘incredibly important development in the history of science’. Dr. Neylon noted how popular news stories now highlight a growing amount of research published in OA journals, which make that material directly available to people who want to dig deeper.”
Open Access Week is organised by SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), with guidance from an international panel of OA leaders.”

Source:  Knowledgespeak Newsletter Oct. 19, 2010

WorldWideScience.org Goes Multilingual

"WorldWideScience.org Goes Multilingual
 
OAK RIDGE, TN – Now you can find non-English scientific literature from databases in China, Russia, France, and several Latin American countries and have your search results translated into one of nine languages. With the beta launch today of Multilingual WorldWideScience.org, real-time searching and translation of globally-dispersed collections of scientific literature is possible. This new capability is the result of an international public-private partnership between the WorldWideScience.org Alliance and Microsoft Research, whose translation technology has been paired with the federated searching technology of Deep Web Technologies.
 
Microsoft Research Corporate Vice-President Tony Hey said, "We are extremely pleased to have our Microsoft Translator technology used with WorldWideScience. Built at Microsoft Research, this translation technology already provides translations to millions of users. Partnering with WorldWideScience is an opportunity to advance science across language barriers and improve scientific discovery."
 
While a large share of scientific literature is published in English, vast quantities of high-quality science are recorded in languages where the research is performed, and the pace of non-English scientific publishing is increasing. Multilingual WorldWideScience.orgBETA will benefit the English-speaking science community, enabling searching and translation of non-English sources. It will also benefit native speakers of other major languages (Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, and Russian) by translating search results into the user’s language of choice. More languages will be added in the coming months.
 
Multilingual WorldWideScience.orgBETA was officially launched at the International Council for Scientific and Technical Information (ICSTI) annual conference held in Helsinki, Finland.
 
Dr. Walter Warnick, Director of the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information within the Office of Science, emphasized both the "open government" aspects and the potential for accelerating scientific discovery with the addition of multilingual translations across nationally-sponsored R&D results and other science. OSTI serves as operating agent for WorldWideScience.org. WorldWideScience Alliance Chairman, Richard Boulderstone from the British Library, noted that WorldWideScience.org has become "the world’s most important scientific resource, where the global science community can share knowledge."
 
About WorldWideScience

WorldWideScience.org was formally launched in 2007 with federated searching of 12 databases in 10 countries. Through early 2010, it had grown to search national scientific databases in 65 countries, covering some 400 million pages of science. In addition to other WorldWideScience Alliance members, key partner organizations taking part in the ceremony included the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology (Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China), and ICSTI."

Source:

Tim Byrne
DOE/Office of Scientific and Technical Information
P.O. Box 62
Oak Ridge,TN 37831
Phone: 865-241-2358
E-mail:  byrnet@osti.gov 

Public Reaction to Science Research @ FAS website

The FAS, the Federation of American Scientists has created a new tool to examine  Public Reaction to Science Research, on their website.  It will help to measure  public understanding of science and the importance of communicating science to the public.

"The module is the latest addition to the FAS Case Studies in Dual Use Biological Research multimedia online education material. The series illustrates the implications of dual-use biological research through case studies of researchers and provides a historical background on bioterrorism, bioweapons and the current laws, regulations and treaties that apply to biodefense research. Continuing development and expansion of the case studies is funded in part through a grant by the Carnegie Corporation of New York."

From Knowledgespeak Newsletter, Mar. 23, 2009.

 

Rice Database, formerly Rice Bibliography

The International Rice Research Institute’s Library is responsible for maintaining the Rice Bibliography. Whereas the library catalogue contains a large collection of books and journals of interest to scientists researching rice or rice-related topics, the Rice Bibliography is a comprehensive bibliography of all books and articles directly pertaining to rice. It endeavours to include all articles and books relating to rice in the world, and is the world’s largest and most complete source of scientific information about rice with almost 8,000 new references added each year. All articles pertaining to rice are sought out for the Rice Bibliography and IRRI Library acquires copies of the article whether or not it holds the particular serial in its collection.Over the years the Rice Bibliography has been mounted on a total of four software packages. The version on the screen before you contains references from 1970 onwards. Older references, a few going back to the mid-18th century, are available for searching at IRRI Library.

From their website and from the announcement by ALA (ACRL-STS) of the 2009 (biennial)Oberly Award for Bibliography in the Agricultural or Natural Sciences.

AuthorMapper.com — free online analytical tool — Springer

German Springer launches free analytical online tool, AuthorMapper.com04 Feb 2009

STM publisher Springer Science+Business Media, Germany, has launched AuthorMapper.com, a free analytical online tool for discerning trends, patterns and subject experts within scientific research.

The portal currently searches over three million journal articles to deliver a variety of useful information. The current searchable content is from all Springer journals. Metadata from other STM publishers will be included in the near future. The tool can provide a variety of analyses, such as keyword tag clouds and "Top 5" bar charts for various important metrics, and includes an interactive world map of the results.

AuthorMapper.com’s advanced search function also allows complex queries using keyword, discipline, institution, journal and author. The results can identify new and historic scientific trends through timeline graphs and bar charts of top statistics, allowing for identification of trends in the literature, discovery of wider scientific relationships, and locating other experts in a field of study.

The trend timeline graph, for instance, allows authors to see whether their area of expertise is growing or has already peaked. Users that are only interested in open access content can restrict their searches accordingly, and all search results provide link-outs to content on SpringerLink. For graduates, post-docs and emerging researchers, AuthorMapper.com shows which institutions are the most prolific in specific research areas and allows for their comparison.

AuthorMapper.com’s can even be useful for members of the general public seeking to identify experts, for example, medical specialists, working close to where they are located.

Click here

Source: Knowledgespeak Newsletter (2/4/09)