STM publisher Elsevier, Netherlands, has released highlights from a new online survey titled 'Future of Search and Discovery'. The survey reveals that researchers around the globe are not only ready for the next phase in search and discovery, but also prepared to actively contribute to making it a reality.
In developing SciVerse, Elsevier's recently launched search and discovery platform, the company conducted a significant amount of research within the scientific community. Building on earlier qualitative work, the survey is seen to offer a quick pulse of the attitudes and opinions of more than 1,200 researchers across the globe. Respondents primarily hailed from academia (79 percent) with the balance from government (15 percent) and industry (7 percent).
Elsevier initially released the results of the 'Future of Search and Discovery' opinion survey on September 28. While it was not a scientific research study, information about the survey's methodology and limitations were not included in the earlier release.
About 1,200 academic, government and industry researchers participated in the online survey. A link to the survey was distributed via e-mail to 11,570 ScienceDirect users on June 22, 2010, with 1,801 users clicking the link. The link was sent to an additional 22,768 Science Direct users on June 28, 2010; 1,223 clicked that link. As multiple subject area lists were used, it is possible there were some duplicate e-mail addresses. A link to the survey was also included on http://info.scopus.com and http://info.sciencedirect.com. The survey was closed to further responses on July 5, 2010 after 1,200 responses were received (the goal was to collect more than 1,000 responses). Respondents came from 100 countries and 20 fields within the physical sciences and engineering, life, health and social sciences disciplines.
The survey investigated the current understanding of the prospective impact of open data and the opening up of platforms through the release of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). The results clearly suggest awareness of the potential these trends hold for enhancing search. In fact, almost all respondents agree that open data is important to the future of search and discovery.
Researchers also have a high level of awareness of APIs, seeing them as important components that can foster innovation. Eight in 10 concur the 'availability of APIs will foster experimentation and the development of innovative search and discovery applications'.
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