About
03 June 2007
Launches Scitopia.org with Partner Societies
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:
Lyndsay Meyer
The Optical Society
+1.202.416.1435
lmeyer@osa.org
OSA LAUNCHES SCITOPIA.ORG WITH PARTNER SOCIETIES
June 3, 2007 (DENVER) – Scitopia.org, the free, federated search portal created by leading science and technology scholarly societies, officially launched today at the Special Libraries Association’s Annual Conference. The service commences with two new partners – AVS and Acoustical Society of America (ASA) – along with its 13 founders, providing users with an even broader array of high quality results to their sci-tech search queries.
Scitopia.org aggregates the entire electronic libraries of its partners, publishers of the content most often cited in patent applications and scholarly scientific works. More than three million documents, primarily peer-reviewed journal content and conference proceedings, dating from the mid-1800s to the present are searched through this dedicated gateway. Society partner databases are searched in real time, allowing scitopia.org to deliver the Web’s most timely sci-tech search results.
"Today's scientific environment is intrinsically multi-discipline. For example, an advance in optics may affect others' research in aeronautics and vice versa. It's through shared information that true technological advancements are made, and scitopia.org is a mechanism to help scientists, engineers and researchers navigate today's information-rich environment in a quicker, more focused manner," said Elizabeth Rogan, executive director, OSA. "By partnering with our sister societies in a number of fields, scitopia.org will provide an improved alternative to other search engines."
In addition to the published works of its partners, scitopia.org also searches a database of nearly 50 million worldwide patents from the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Japan Patent Office and the European Patent Office.
To access the content, visitors to scitopia.org use a simple, but function-rich interface, developed by Deep Web Technologies (DWT). Most recently known for its work on science.gov, DWT has extensive experience in the development and refinement of federated searching, particularly in the development of scientific portals. Users can search for full text articles using a fielded approach, for example, by article title or author name. Or, they can use it as a discovery tool, narrowed to gather specific publisher content or broadened to scan the complete databases of all the partners. Search results include the article's title, authors and source. Scitopia.org also includes a “clippings” function that allows researchers to mark and save (or e-mail) articles they want to examine at a later date.
When users find content they want in full text they’re directed to the publisher’s digital library for access. Researchers at institutions with subscriptions to the content are automatically authenticated and are able to click through to it. Members of partner societies may also be able to access full text, depending upon the association’s membership policies. Pay-per-view options allow users without any prior subscriptions to purchase as many articles as they choose. As a federated search, no new subscriptions are needed to use scitopia.org.
Scitopia.org expects to continually add new partners that can contribute significant content to the gateway. Its founding partners are American Geophysical Union (AGU), American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), American Institute of Physics (AIP), American Physical Society (APS), American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), ECS, IEEE, Institute of Physics Publishing (IOP), Optical Society of America (OSA), Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) and SPIE.
About scitopia.org
The federated vertical search portal scitopia.org is the product of the imagination and collaboration of 15 leading science and technology societies: Acoustical Society of America (www.asa.aip.org), American Geophysical Union (www.agu.org); American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (www.aiaa.org); American Institute of Physics (www.aip.org); American Physical Society (www.aps.org); American Society of Civil Engineers (www.asce.org); American Society of Mechanical Engineers (www.asme.org); AVS (www.avs.org), ECS (www.electrochem.org); IEEE (www.ieee.org); Institute of Physics Publishing (www.iop.org); Optical Society of America (www.osa.org); Society of Automotive Engineers (www.sae.org); Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (www.siam.org); and SPIE (www.spie.org).
About OSA
Uniting more than 70,000 professionals from 134 countries, the Optical Society of America (OSA) brings together the global optics community through its programs and initiatives. Since 1916 OSA has worked to advance the common interests of the field, providing educational resources to the scientists, engineers and business leaders who work in the field by promoting the science of light and the advanced technologies made possible by optics and photonics. OSA publications, events, technical groups and programs foster optics knowledge and scientific collaboration among all those with an interest in optics and photonics. For more information, visit www.osa.org.
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