Global Science Gateway Now Open

WASHINGTON, DC—The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the British Library, along with eight other participating countries, today opened an online global gateway to science information from 15 national portals. The gateway, WorldWideScience.org, gives citizens, researchers and anyone interested in science the capability to search science portals not easily accessible through popular search technology such as that deployed by Google, Yahoo! and many other commercial search engines.

“Scientific research results are archived globally in a plethora of sources, many unknown and unreachable through usual search engines,” Dr. Raymond L. Orbach, DOE Under Secretary for Science, said. “This international partnership will open up this vast reservoir of knowledge in a rapid and convenient manner, something that will add great value to our existing knowledge.”

Relying on a novel technology called federated search, WorldWideScience.org gives science information consumers a single entry point for searching far-reaching science portals in parallel, with only one query, saving time and effort. As WorldWideScience.org grows, it will capitalize on existing technology to search vast collections of science information distributed across the globe, enabling much-needed access to smaller, less well-known sources of highly valuable science. Following the model of Science.gov, the U.S. interagency science portal that relies on content published by each participating U.S. agency, WorldWideScience.org will rely on scientific resources published by each participating nation.

The U.S. contribution to WorldWideScience.org is Science.gov, the U.S. government’s one-stop searchable portal to major science databases of federal science agencies. In addition to the U.S. and the U.K., the inaugural WorldWideScience.org portal provides access to research information in English from Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Japan and the Netherlands. The intent is for WorldWideScience.org to become a world-class Web facility that lets any scientist, any citizen, anywhere, easily find the research results of any nation in any language.

WorldWideScience.org was developed and is maintained by the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI), a program within DOE’s Office of Science. OSTI has extensive experience in offering searching of distributed, deep Web databases, having played a central role in the development of Science.gov and other Web products that scientists and citizens access over 50 million times per year.

DOE's Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the nation and helps ensure U.S. world leadership across a broad range of scientific disciplines. Additional information is available at the Office of Science.

Media contact(s):
Jeff Sherwood, DOE, (202) 586-5806
Cathey Daniels, OSTI, (865) 576-9539