Research site adds social networking

Features recently added to the science and technology research Web site WorldWideScience.org allow users to easily share search results through social-networking sites, Energy Department officials said today.

The free online science gateway to databases from more than 60 countries also now offers clustering of results by publication, author, topic or date. The clustering enhancement is intended to let users quickly narrow results lists, according to the department’s Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI), which developed WorldWideScience.org.

A new quick-share tool lets users post results to social-networking sites for discussions, and the enhancements also let users bookmark search topics and sign up for weekly alerts, OSTI officials said.

The enhanced site is also faster, provides improved relevance ranking and searches more than 375 million pages of research information in real time via a single query, according to OSTI.