DOE site makes research easier

The Energy Department last week unveiled a new World Wide Web site that will enable visitors to search through more than 500 scientific and technical research publications.

The new site, PubScience (pubsci.osti.gov), was developed through an ongoing partnership between DOE's Office of Science and Technical Information and the Government Printing Office. It provides access to the current text and archives of more than 20 publications, including those published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Institute of Physics Publishing and the Nature Publishing Group.

The site is modeled after the National Institutes of Health's PubMed and will be integrated with DOE's other online publishing efforts in the EnergyFiles Virtual Library of Energy Science and Technology (www.osti.gov/EnergyFiles).

PubScience focuses on journals in which DOE-funded researchers from around the world report their discoveries. The information available on the site is detailed and technical, but it serves as a reliable source for researchers.

OSTI is working with the publishers to compile citations of all of the articles from the publications into the PubScience searchable database. Site searches return a list of citations that, when available, include links to publication Web sites for the full text of articles.

DOE expects that most of the people who will use PubScience already will have personal or site licenses and subscriptions for the publications. For those that do not, the cost of the subscriptions can add up. However, many city and university libraries serve as free resources for the publications.

All of the publications are included in the Collections section of the site, with links to browse the current issue or the archives or to go to a publication's Web site to use its search engine. The site itself is well organized, with direct access to participating publications.

"We are very proud to make this research available beyond our own community of science," said Martha Krebs, director of DOE's Office of Science. "It is important because we never know where the impact of science will fall."

The basic search allows for a single keyword search or for all or one of the participating publications. Because of the number of articles that require a subscription or are not available online, researchers can chose to receive only the results that are linked to the full-text articles. The results also can be searched to further narrow down the entries.

The advanced search enables researchers to search fields within the citation—such as the title or author—and allows for a search of a combination of keywords using Boolean operators. Users also can limit the advanced search to a certain date range.