Research Portal to Launch

A free search portal that will enable users to explore research cited in scholarly work and patents will be launched by 12 science, engineering and technology societies in June, OSA announced today.

More than 3 million documents, including peer-reviewed journal content and conference proceedings spanning 150 years, will be accessible via the database. The site will aggregate the electronic libraries of science, engineering and technology research publishers. Founding partners are: American Geophysical Union, American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics, American Institute of Physics, American Physical Society, American Society of Civil Engineers, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, The Electrochemical Society, IEEE, Institute of Physics Publishing, OSA, SPIE, Society of Automotive Engineers, and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. OSA said other organizations will be invited to join as the project progresses.

"The Scitopia search will be focused on the best in sci-tech research with vetted, authoritative content," said Barbara Lange, director of product line management and publishing business development for IEEE. "Our goal is not to provide yet another search portal, but rather to provide a platform where this highly cited content can be found with greater ease, unencumbered by the noise of the Internet."

Search results will include an article's title, authors and citation; users will be directed to the publishers' digital library site to access the full text. Those with subscriptions to the content will be automatically authenticated. Members of partner societies may also be able to access full text, depending on the association's membership policies, OSA said. Pay-per-view options will also be available. As a federated search, no additional subscriptions will be needed to use scitopia.org. For example, a subscriber to a single journal published by OSA will be able to access the content via Scitopia or through OSA's Web site.

Tim Ingoldsby, director of strategic initiatives and business development for the American Institute of Physics, said, "Because of the breadth of the partnership behind it, researchers will be able to explore multiple disciplines at once. We feel scitopia.org will provide new insights, opening the door to resources that researchers might not have considered."

For more information, visit: www.scitopia.org