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June 10, 2009 – WorldWideScience.org: China's Participation Expands Access to Global Science

Ottawa, Canada Government officials today formalized the addition of the People's Republic of China as the most recent member of the WorldWideScience Alliance. The signing ceremony was held in Ottawa, Canada. The addition of the Chinese database, from the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China, means that WorldWideScience.org, the global science gateway, now searches science and technology research and development results from 80 percent of the world's population. The multilateral WorldWideScience Alliance was established in June 2008 to govern this rapidly growing online gateway to international scientific research information.

WorldWideScience.org uses federated search engine technology to provide a single point of Internet search and retrieval for vast quantities of geographically-dispersed science and technology information - information which is generally not accessible to conventional search engines. The growth of WorldWideScience.org, since its prototype debut in 2007 has been dramatic, rapidly evolving from 10 countries to 56 countries and 375 million pages of science information today. In the Ottawa ceremony, Chinese and WorldWideScience.org officials signed a statement, saying, "We commit ourselves to a long-term vision for enabling and accelerating scientific discovery through unique and innovative use of federated searching and other technologies." The ceremony was held in conjunction with the 2009 conference of the International Council for Scientific and Technical Information (ICSTI), which serves as a primary sponsor of the WorldWideScience Alliance.

Taking part in the signing ceremony were Wang Rongfang, Chinese Embassy in Canada, and WorldWideScience Alliance Executive Board Members Richard Boulderstone (Chair), The British Library; Pam Bjornson (Vice Chair), Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information; Walt Warnick (Operating Agent), OSTI; and Herbert Gruttemeier (ICSTI President), French National Institute of Scientific and Technical Information.

May 13, 2009 – New Sources Added to WorldWideScience.org

KoreaMed, a product similar to PubMed, was recently added to WorldWideScience.org. KoreaMed provides access to articles published in Korean medical journals from the Korean Association of Medical Journal Editors (KAMJE). Coverage goes back to approximately 1997.

The International Science and Technology Center (ISTC), a database containing approximately 5,000 project summaries of research taking place in Russia and several former Soviet states, has also been added to WorldWideScience.org. Established by international agreement in 1992, the Parties to ISTC are Canada, the United States, the European Union, Japan, Norway, and South Korea (funding Parties), as well as Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan (recipient Parties).

October 15, 2008 – People's Republic of China joins WorldWideScience Alliance

The People's Republic of China has joined the WorldWideScience Alliance–the multilateral governance structure for the global science gateway, WorldWideScience.org. WorldWideScience.org is intended to accelerate international scientific progress by serving as a single, sophisticated point of access for diverse scientific resources and expertise from nations around the world. The addition of China is a notable milestone, as it is a major global contributor to scientific knowledge. Read the press release.

June 12, 2008 – WorldWideScience Alliance Agreement Signed in Korea

Officials from organizations representing 38 countries gathered recently in Seoul, Korea to formalize their commitment to sustain and build upon the online gateway to the world’s science information. The Alliance (see DOE press release) was formed to establish a multilateral governance structure. WorldWideScience.org enables anyone with Internet access to launch a single-query search of 32 national scientific databases and portals from 44 countries, covering six continents and nearly half of the world’s population. Users of WorldWideScience.org can search more than 200 million pages of science and technology information not typically accessible through popular search engines. more

Video of WorldWideScience Alliance Signing Ceremony

Click play arrow to view video. Download latest version of Flash Player [exit federal site].

[Video by: Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information]

April 1, 2008 – Sources from Finland, Sweden and Korea

Science from Finland, Sweden and Korea can now be found at WorldWideScience.org, the global gateway to science. This brings the total to 32 sources from 44 countries that can be searched. The new sources include the VTT Publications Register and VTT Research Register (from the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland), the Directory of Open Access Journals (managed by Lunds University in Sweden), and KoreaScience (from the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information). Visit WorldWideScience.org and click on the interactive map to view science sources from every inhabited continent.

February 5, 2008 – Formative WorldWideScience Alliance Meeting

WorldWideScience Alliance Stakeholders held the formative meeting of the Alliance on February 5, 2008 in Paris, France. The meeting provided a concentrated opportunity to review and revise the Terms of Reference (ToR). A nomination and voting period for elected officer positions will take place in April.

January 8, 2008 – India added to WorldWideScience.org

Four important science information sources from India have been added to WorldWideScience.org. The Indian Academy of Sciences, the Indian Institute of Science Eprints, the Indian Institute of Science Theses & Dissertations and the Indian Medlars Centre are now available through the global science gateway, making a total of 28 sources from 18 countries searchable via a single query. The addition of India effectively doubled the percentage of the world's population represented in the searches of WorldWideScience.org. The goal of the gateway is to make the world’s science readily available to researchers and citizens. WorldWideScience.org is maintained by OSTI, which makes R&D findings available and useful to advance discovery.

June 22, 2007 – Global Science Gateway Now Open

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The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the British Library, along with eight other participating countries, today opened an online global gateway to science information from 15 national portals. The gateway, WorldWideScience.org (worldwidescience.org), gives citizens, researchers and anyone interested in science the capability to search science portals not easily accessible through popular search technology such as that deployed by Google, Yahoo! and many other commercial search engines.

January 21, 2007 – Global Science Gateway Agreement Signed in London

A Statement of Intent (215-KB PDF) to partner in the development of a searchable global science gateway was signed Sunday, January 21, by Dr. Raymond Orbach, Under Secretary for Science of the U.S. Department of Energy, and Lynne Brindley, Chief Executive of the British Library.

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WorldWideScience.org is maintained by the U.S. Department of Energy's
Office of Scientific and Technical Information as the Operating Agent
for the WorldWideScience Alliance.