News for scientific searchers

Scirus/Fast new build

[heini]

Scirus, the search engine for scientists [scirus.com], owned by Elsevier Science, comes in a new, improved build with new features.
Most striking is the news feed from LexisNexis, bringing science related headlines from all over the world.

The science search itself now scans through "107 million science specific pages, with new full-text additions like NASA reports, CogPrints pre- and postprints, and preprints from the Chemistry and Mathematics Preprint Servers...now offers over 17 million proprietary records that cannot be found using generic search engines."
Press release [fast.no]

Improved features are based on Fast's new technology and bring intelligent query rewriting, automatic generation of a list of related topics and improved ranking.

[fathom]

Excellent find heini!

A client will be very, very impressed.

[jimmykav]

Heini

That link has been on the AllTheWeb home page for a long time now. Has it just gone live ?

[shelleycat]

Ooooo! *rubs hands in glee*

I already have access to Science Direct through my univeristy but the web results look promising. Maybe I'll finally be able to track down those last few references for my thesis :) Thanks.

[heini]

Jimmy, it's a new improved version. Scirus has been online for quite a while.
here's a more detailed description of what Scirus is and what it does
[webmasterworld.com...]

[Tor]

This is a great find heini! I`ll inform a couple of our clients about this ASAP. :)

[markd]

Heini, do you think this is the Fast database filtered in some way?

I have a 'scientific' client in Fast - don't want to upset them by also submitting to Scirus. Do you think I should submit to both?

Thanks

Mark

[heini]

Mark, do you find your clients pages in Scirus? If not so, why not submit directly?

What I would think is a factor here, is how it is determined if material is scientific?
Being a university page surely helps...

[markd]

Thanks Heini, I'll double check. I was just a bit concerned about submitting to Fast AND Scirus, in case they use identical databases and somehow filter for 'science' pages. I didn't want to incur the wrath of Fast, which I feel is a major player these days.

Regards

Mark

[brotherhood of LAN]

I checked it out with a few searches....looks good...has same sort of probs that AOL has with G results though? See many SERP's from the same site.

I run a small bio site, and I'm glad to see its' not in there ;) Whereas I write introductory stuff, I guess this tool will be excellent for the professional who doesn't want to sift through dozens of results and "revision" sites.

[Slade]

Just out of curiosity, I typed in 'wolf 359' (it is the name of a star, I think), ans what do you know?

First result is for a babylon 5 message digest...

So for fun, I typed in 'Babylon' and 1 I think out of the first 10 results where for Babylon5 fansites...

[rubble88]

1) Articles from fee-based sources (e.g. ScienceDirect) are included in the result set but these articles are fee-based. You must pay to view. Those of you with access to a university or public library might already have access to some of this content for free.

2) The LexisNexis "feed" is very dissapointing, at least at the moment. 10 articles only. Constantly updated.

3) Finally, Scirus is not a "science" related chunk of the AlltheWeb database but rather a product that uses a completely different set of crawlers.

[heini]

>fee based
sure. For the articles you get a summary, and source etc, then you may pay for view. After all it's a search engine, not a content provider.

>crawler
Rubble88, do you happen to know them by "name"? I never came across them?

[fathom]

'wolf 359'

We have engaged the BORG!

[rubble88]

Heini:

>>>Re: Fee-Based.
You are 100% correct.

My point was that many people often pay for material that they already have access to.

Most university students have access to remotely accessible databases with some great content. In fact, Shelleycat even mentions that she has access to ScienceDirect in her post.

Here in the U.S. and Canada more and more public libraries are providing free access to remotely accessible fee-based databases.

Granted, every library does not have every database but most offer some great content available from any net connection. All you need is a library card. Actually that's not really accurate any longer.

In Michigan, the just relaunched Michigan Electronic Library provides free access to a set of fee-based database. No library card is needed, just enter your Michigan Drivers License number.

Examples:
LA Public
[databases.lapl.org...]
Fairfax County, VA
[co.fairfax.va.us...]
State of Pennsylvania
[powerlibrary.net...]

[stevenha]

I tried using Scirus for the past 3 hours, to research something medical-related. It is not really useful.

I turned off the "websites" results, so that it would only show "journals" publications. It sorted the results in a weird way. The first batch of results (20+ pages) were ones where the full-text was available for purchase from ScienceDirect. The next batch (60+ pages) were results where the abstract could be viewed by registering with BioMedNet (for a fee).

Scirus doesn't even show the full abstract, and it doesn't show the journal volume number or page number... so you can't use its results to hop over to the medical library to look them up yourself.

Scirus had multiple copies of the same results scattered throughout the first 100 pages. It's "email results" feature didn't work for me, and apparently only applied to your current page, not previous pages.

In summary, at least for searching medical journals, use "PubMed" instead.

[rubble88]

All of the Science Direct entires have full-abstracts and citations available for free.

After you find the Science Direct article in the results list,
Click on the desired entry, you should now be on the Science Direct page.

Directly above the login box, note the full article citation
and a link labeled "abstract". Click again and the entire abstract apprears.

Also, Science Direct, one the info sources in Scirus, only covers materials from a single publisher, Elsevier.

Ideal Library, another info source, only covers content from
Academic Press, another scholarly publisher.

[shelleycat]

My point was that many people often pay for material that they already have access to.

This is a good point. If I had found this search six months ago I might have been sucked in too, particularly as it's not always referred to as "ScienceDirect" on my university's system (it's part of a greater set of databases referred to as Ovid I think, don't know why). A bit of checking before paying for information is always a good thing.

The rest of the results (ie the non-ScienceDirect ones) aren't as good as I get from Science Citations or Pubmed either. I wouldn't use this as one of my main journal-search sources.

However, I'm right at the end of my MSc thesis and have two things I need to reference which I can't find a relavant paper for. They are minor points not really related to my research but it would just be tidier if I could tack a name after them. I've already found a reference for one of them in this new search :)

My experience has been that any new information source or search method (that returns the right kind of information) will always have some use, even if only minor. It's always nice to look at things from another angle. So I'll be keeping this book mark.

Thanks again for pointing it out :)

Shelley