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news release:
Global Science Gateway Agreement Signed in
London
London, England, 22 January 2007: Dr. Raymond L. Orbach, Under Secretary for
Science of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE),
yesterday signed an agreement with Lynne Brindley, Chief Executive, the British
Library, to partner on the development of a global science gateway. The gateway
would eventually make science information resources of many nations accessible
via a single Internet portal.
"It is timely to make the science offerings of
all nations searchable through one global gateway,” Dr. Orbach said. “Science
is international, and centralizing access will enhance the rate of scientific
discovery. It is a privilege to be associated with such a venture.” The
agreement notes that international collaboration is essential to revolutionary
advances in science.
Science projects are becoming increasingly
international in scope, with researchers across the globe collaborating on
projects as diverse as energy, linear colliders, genomes and the environment.
Projects such as ITER, the large-scale international fusion energy research
effort, and the particle accelerator known as the Large Hadron Collider are
being conducted as major international collaborations.
Dubbed “Science.world,” the planned resource
would be available to scientists in all nations and to anyone interested in
science. The approach will capitalize on existing technology to search vast
collections of science information distributed around the globe, enabling
much-needed access to smaller, less well-known sources of highly valuable
science. Following the model of
Science.gov, the U.S.
interagency science portal that relies on content published by each
participating agency, “Science.world” will rely on scientific resources
published by each participating nation. Other countries have been invited to
participate in this international effort.
The U.S. and Great Britain have recognized the
importance of providing their citizens with one-stop electronic access to
increasing volumes of science information, with a growing sense of the need for
reciprocity and sharing of science knowledge across national boundaries.
Objectives of the “Science.world” initiative are
to:
- Search dispersed, electronic collections in
various science disciplines;
- Provide direct, seamless and free searching
of open-source collections and portals;
- Build upon existing and already successful
national models for searching;
- Complement existing information collections
and systems; and
- Raise the visibility and usage of individual
sources of quality science information.
DOE’s Office of Scientific and Technical
Information (OSTI) (www.osti.gov)
will work with the British Library (www.bl.uk)
and international counterparts to develop a prototype of “Science.world” in
2007.
OSTI has extensive experience in offering
searching of distributed, deep web databases, having played a central role in
the development of Science.gov (www.science.gov),
the U.S. government’s one-stop searchable portal to major science databases of
federal science agencies. Through Science.gov and other OSTI web products,
scientists and citizens access U.S. R&D results over 50 million times per year.
DOE's Office of Science is the single largest
supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the nation and helps
ensure U.S. world leadership across a broad range of scientific disciplines. For
more information about the Office of Science, go to
www.science.doe.gov.
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