The Science.gov Alliance, consisting of representatives from 13 federal government science agencies, has launched the latest version of Science.gov, an initiative introduced in December 2002 to facilitate free searches of federal science databases. Version 5.0 searches 200 million pages of scientific information and provides links to related EurekAlert! Science News and Wikipedia information on science topics of interest.
In addition, Science.gov offers an upgraded federated search interface developed by Deep Web Technologies. This interface includes 'smart' clustering, a science news feed and an encyclopedia sidebar from Wikipedia that provide a context for the 'science attentive' citizen and other researchers.
Science.gov 5.0's upgraded interface includes Deep Web Technologies Explorit Research Accelerator's 'smart clustering,' relevance-ranked clusters that allow the user to see the most prevalent topics in the results. It also retrieves and displays entries from Wikipedia that relate to the user's search. The results screen delivers relevance-ranked search results in the centre, complemented by clusters that assist in visually navigating results in the left side-bar and links to supporting content on the right side-bar.
New content includes DOepatents, with thousands of patents resulting from US Department of Energy (DoE) research and development; DoE R&D Accomplishments, with documents and bibliographic citations of DoE accomplishments; E-print Network, with millions of scientific e-prints from around the world; HSDB Hazardous Substances Data Bank, with peer-reviewed toxicology data for thousands of chemicals; Cancer.gov, with cancer-related information of all kinds for all audiences; PubMed Central, a digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature; and TOXLINE Toxicology Bibliographic Information, with information on toxicological effects of drugs and other chemicals.
Science.gov seeks to search authoritative science information from more than 1,800 websites and from deep web databases out of reach of conventional search engines, and returns results in relevance ranked order. The information is free and no registration is required.
Science.gov is hosted by the US DoE's Office of Scientific and Technical Information and supported by CENDI, an interagency working group of senior scientific and technical information managers from 13 US federal agencies.
