OSTI Partnering with Publishers on CrossRef and FundRef to Enhance Public Access to DOE Scientific and Technical Information
As reported in the last issue of the OSTI.gov Newsletter, the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) is now developing a gateway that will provide public access to the gold standard of scientific communications, peer-reviewed accepted manuscripts and scientific journal articles resulting from Department of Energy (DOE) research investments, as directed by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and requested by former DOE Office of Science Director Dr. William Brinkman. In recent years, OSTI has worked especially closely with scholarly publishers on a number of initiatives to improve access to DOE research and development (R&D) results. Two of those collaborations, CrossRef and FundRef, promise to be integral components of the DOE public access solution that OSTI will be unveiling. Â
CrossRef is a collaboration among scholarly publishers that makes it easier to access online materials by assigning "Digital Object Identifiers" or DOIs to content and enabling researchers, librarians and other users to navigate from one resource to another through reference citation linking. A DOI is a permanent, electronic identification assigned to an individual document or dataset. A DOI gives the content more stable linking and aids in citation, search and retrieval of R&D results and scholarly publications.
CrossRef was launched in 2000 and now includes more than 4,300 commercial and not-for-profit members who collectively publish more than 27,000 journal titles. CrossRef interlinks nearly 60 million items in a variety of content types, including journals, books, conference proceedings, working papers and technical reports, and the reference linking service's database is growing by more than 2.5 million items a year.
In 2005, OSTI became the first government agency to join CrossRef, to facilitate access to DOE's vast stores of scientific and technical information. OSTI assigned DOIs to the technical reports of the Information Bridge, which included 94,000 full-text and bibliographic records of DOE research since 1995 in physics, chemistry, materials, biology, environmental sciences, energy technologies, engineering, computer and information science, renewable energy and other topics. Ever since, DOIs have been added to records in OSTI databases for technical reports, accomplishment reports, and theses and dissertations.
Today, OSTI and CrossRef are partnering to make it easier to access electronic versions of both technical reports and journal articles. There are more than 171,000 science research reports that have DOIs assigned by OSTI. These reports are available electronically on the successor to the Information Bridge, OSTI's SciTech Connect site. There are also over 375,000 journal article citations in SciTech Connect with DOIs from CrossRef to full-text articles on publishers' websites. In addition to the technical reports citations containing DOIs, SciTech Connect makes available in full text 118,350 conference proceedings, 1,200 books, 16,500 journal articles, 18,700 patents, 320 program documents and 3,100 dissertations, for a total of more than 334,000 full-text reports.
In May 2012, CrossRef announced FundRef, a pilot collaboration between scholarly publishers and funding agencies to standardize funding source information for scholarly publications. OSTI was one of four funding agencies that participated in the pilot of the funder identification service, which provides the names of research funders and the grant or award number attributed in journal articles or other scholarly documents. FundRef makes it possible for researchers, publishers and funding agencies to track the research published by sponsoring agencies.
A beta version of FundRef Search allows a user to search the data from the publishers and funders that participated in the pilot for funder names and abbreviations. In addition, CrossRef Metadata Search allows search by grant number.
In May 2013, CrossRef officially launched FundRef. Publishers participating in the initiative add the name of the agency funder and a grant or award number to the metadata they already provide to CrossRef for reference linking. The FundRef funder registry accounts for a list of 4,000 global funder names (including alternate names, aliases and abbreviations), allowing authors to choose from a standard roster of funders. The tagged funding data is then relayed through publishers' systems to be stored at CrossRef.
OSTI believes FundRef is a great way for publishers and funding agencies to work together. Research agencies like DOE are accountable for the results of their expenditures to Congress and to the public. Publications in the peer-reviewed literature represent an important output of those expenses, but they have been difficult to track and quantify until now. Tagging this data in a searchable, standard way is a key step forward.Â
OSTI’s Catalogue of Collections
DOE conducts more than $10 billion a year in R&D. OSTI helps ensure a return on that investment by collecting, preserving and disseminating information on DOE-sponsored R&D results.
OSTI makes research emanating from DOE available in web-based searchable databases, which are easy to use and offer such advanced search capabilities as customized alerts, results displayed by relevance and downloadable search results for a broad array of scientific and technical information related to DOE missions. These DOE databases can be accessed individually, and they also are made available through a single point-of-access portal, Science Accelerator.
Through OSTI’s Science Accelerator, you can access SciTech Connect to search and find the full text of 300,000 electronic research reports and 2 million energy citations going back to the Manhattan Project era, as well as datasets and multimedia. In addition, Science Accelerator provides access to 5 million e-prints (journal article pre-publication drafts, scholarly papers and more); DOE R&D accomplishments; DOE patents; energy science and technology software; multimedia videos about DOE and other science research; DOE non-text data collections; proceedings and papers from science conferences; green energy research results; and DOE technology transfer information.
OSTI has a dual core mission – getting DOE results out to the scientific community and beyond, and getting the community’s results into DOE. So in addition to these DOE collections and resources, we also host Science.gov, a gateway to science information from 15 U.S. federal agencies (now celebrating its 10th anniversary), and WorldWideScience.org, a portal to science information from more than 70 countries.
For a guide to OSTI’s scientific and technical information resources, please see OSTI’s Catalogue of Collections.
Statistically Speaking – Web Traffic to OSTI's DOE Collections
OSTI resources provide access to R&D results generated by a $10 billion average annual DOE investment.
OSTI web access exceeded 300 million transactions in FY12.
WorldWideScience.org – A Global Science Gateway Fostering International Collaboration
DOE plays a key role in scientific research and innovation, providing significant support for basic research in the physical and energy-related sciences. Collaboration among scientists is a crucial element of the scientific process, and many of the research projects supported by the Department involve collaboration on an international scale. For example, the ITER project is a seven-member international collaboration to design, build and operate an international research facility in Cadarache, France, aimed at demonstrating the scientific and technical feasibility of fusion energy. Similarly, DOE-supported high energy and nuclear physicists participate in experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, and data for the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) program is collected from sites around the globe. User facilities at the DOE Laboratories regularly host visiting scientists from all corners of the world, and indeed, valuable cutting-edge research in a number of energy-related areas is being conducted in other countries. It is increasingly important for scientists to share information with and to obtain information from colleagues worldwide, and they need tools to help them find information in other languages and in non-text-based formats. OSTI's participation in the WorldWideScience.org initiative helps fulfill this need.
WorldWideScience.org is a global science gateway, developed and maintained by OSTI, on behalf of the WorldWideScience Alliance. Without having to know the scope of any particular scientific database, or having to search the databases individually, users have one-stop, real-time access to over 400 million pages of science information in over 90 national scientific databases from more than 70 countries. WorldWideScience.org searches the databases simultaneously, delivering a consolidated, relevance-ranked results list. Offering ground-breaking, multilingual search capabilities, users can search and translate scientific literature in ten languages. A variety of databases are searched, and results are segmented by format, enabling the user to locate text-based information, multimedia and datasets.
WorldWideScience.org allows DOE researchers to easily access international information, while concurrently making DOE R&D results accessible to others. As science becomes increasingly more diverse and global, and as the Department expands its research collaborations with other countries, WorldWideScience.org serves as a model for international collaboration and knowledge discovery.
2013 STIP Working Meeting
Ames Laboratory, location of the latest Energy Innovation Hub, the Critical Materials Institute, was the host of the 2013 DOE Scientific and Technical Information Program (STIP) Working Meeting, held in Des Moines, IA, April 8–12. Led and coordinated by OSTI, the DOE STIP is a complex-wide collaboration which works to ensure that the results of DOE-funded research and other scientific and technical information (STI) are managed, disseminated and preserved, thereby advancing scientific knowledge and technical innovation. Headquarters programs, field offices, national laboratories, and facility contractors work together as designated STIP representatives to identify best practices for STI management and effective ways to respond to emerging policy or initiatives. In addition to the annual two-day STIP Working Meeting, representatives participated in STIP orientation sessions and other special topics meetings.
The theme of the 2013 working meeting was STIP – DOE's Public Access Solution and More, reflecting the growing focus on increasing access to the results of federally-funded scientific research, including peer-reviewed publications. This has been an important topic within the Department following the issuance of the February 2013 Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) memorandum, "Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research." Dr. Jeffrey Salmon, Deputy Director for Resource Management in the DOE Office of Science, Dr. Walt Warnick, OSTI Director, and Mark Martin, OSTI Assistant Director for Program Integration, presented on aspects of the public access initiative; and Stacy Joiner, STI manager for Ames Lab and host, and other STIP and OSTI representatives presented on other important topics impacting the Department’s management of one its most valuable resources – scientific and technical information. Additional information on STIP is available at the STIP homepage.
Meet Judy Gilmore
Judy Gilmore
Judy Gilmore serves as Program Manager for DOE's Scientific and Technical Information Program (STIP), a robust collaboration across DOE programs, field sites, national laboratories, and contractor communities. Within OSTI's Office of Program Integration, Judy works to coordinate scientific and technical information (STI) policy and procedures for publicly available as well as statutorily controlled STI, to address programmatic and cross-cutting STI-related issues and to advance STIP goals to disseminate and preserve the Department's STI and R&D results by working with STIP representatives and experts across the agency. During her tenure at OSTI, she has managed various aspects of the DOE technical information program, including information receipt and processing during the 'paper era,' as well as responsibilities over the years related to project management. Prior to OSTI, she worked as a technical information specialist and control analyst at the Tennessee Valley Authority. She holds an M.S.L.S. from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and completed her undergraduate work at Virginia Tech and Radford University.
Eleanor Frierson: A Tribute to the Grande Dame of Government Science Information Partnerships
Eleanor
Frierson
Eleanor Frierson, who passed away in April 2013, was the grande dame of partnerships to improve public access to federal and international science information. For 10 years, she helped spearhead U.S. interagency efforts to make federal science information more accessible to Americans, playing an absolutely crucial leadership role on the Science.gov Alliance. She took Science.gov all the way from a nascent concept through to its maturation. Ms. Frierson also made similar contributions to the international science portal, WorldWideScience.org.
She had extensive and diversified experience in information service development and management and had great business acumen and network-building skills. But Ms. Frierson was much more than a consummate professional; she also was a caring colleague who took great personal interest in her associates.
Eleanor Frierson was that rare public servant who made a very special mark. Her legacies continue on today as vital national and international resources (read more).
What Is a Federated Search?
DOE research is disseminated through three key federated search tools.
A federated search tool searches multiple resources with one query. The query is sent to each of the resources searched by the tool, whether they are databases, collections, portals, websites or other federated search tools. Three federated search tools produced by OSTI are Science Accelerator (DOE science information), Science.gov (U.S. science information), and WorldWideScience.org (global science information). Most of the databases searched by these tools are not indexed by your favorite web search engine.
It can be challenging to know which federal agency is conducting the research that you may find useful. If you regularly search such databases as the NASA Technical Report Server, the Defense Technical Information Service, the National Service Center for Environmental Publications, the USGS Publications Warehouse and SciTech Connect, you may often find yourself entering the same search multiple times in different databases. With Science.gov, you can search all of these databases with just one search query. The added benefit of Science.gov is that in addition to searching the databases that you want to search, you also search many other databases that you may be unaware of or don't realize contain the type of information for which you are looking.
If you perform a search in Science.gov on "water pollution control" limited to the five resources in the Environment and Environmental Quality category, you will get about 330 citations. If you do the same search in all categories, you will get over 2,100 citations. Chances are you will find some really valuable citations in this search that you would otherwise have missed.
What is the Difference between Science Accelerator and SciTech Connect?
Science Accelerator and SciTech Connect both search DOE and non-DOE scientific and technical information, and there is some confusion about the difference between the two products.
Science Accelerator is a federated search tool that lets you search 13 databases and federated search products produced by OSTI. Each of these products has a different purpose and scope. Separate databases cover data files and collections, patents, software and multimedia. Textual databases cover DOE scientific and technical reports, R&D accomplishments, technology transfer information and green energy STI. Non-DOE material searched by Science Accelerator includes conference papers and proceedings, science journals and e-prints in repositories or on researchers' web pages. Many of the articles, papers and e-prints in these sources were produced with DOE support. The non-DOE sources include a great deal of scientific information that is of interest to DOE and useful to DOE researchers.
SciTech Connect is a single database, not a federated search of multiple databases like Science Accelerator. SciTech Connect is one of the resources searched by Science Accelerator. Using a new search interface, SciTech Connect consolidates and replaces Energy Citations Database and Information Bridge. The Basic Search in SciTech Connect features semantic search, while the Advanced Search uses Boolean and fielded search. SciTech Connect provides more detailed search capabilities that are not available through Science Accelerator.
If you are not sure which source to use, start with Science Accelerator. If you need to do a more sophisticated search of scientific literature, you may find that SciTech Connect better suits your needs, especially if you want to find STI funded by DOE or DOE predecessor agencies.
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Search Tip: Finding DOE-sponsored STI in SciTech Connect
While SciTech Connect provides comprehensive coverage of DOE STI, it also covers a great deal of non-DOE scientific research. If you are interested in only the DOE-sponsored research, it is quite easy to limit your search to just DOE-funded research. Using the Advanced Search box and selecting "Matches funded by DOE only" at the bottom should do the trick.
Compare these two searches: Search #1 searches "biomass" in the top box of the Advanced Search. Search #2 performs the same search with the "Limit to Matches funded by DOE only" box checked. Note that in Search #2 the numbers for Everything and Citations are greatly reduced while the Electronic Full Text only goes down a little. This is attributable to the fact that full text in SciTech Connect is almost entirely DOE-funded research.
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DOE Science Showcase – Power Grid Research
A modernized electrical smart grid is needed to handle the exploding requirements of digital and computerized equipment and technology dependent on it, as well as one that can automate and manage the increasing complexity and needs of electricity in the 21st Century. DOE is working to increase the reliability, efficiency and security of the country's electrical system; encourage consumers to manage their electricity use; reduce greenhouse gas emissions; and allow the integration of all clean energy sources and electric vehicles into the grid of tomorrow. Read more about the power grid and the research being funded by DOE in Dr. William Watson's latest white paper In the OSTI Collections: Keeping Power Grids Stable.
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OSTI Mission: To advance science and sustain technological creativity by making R&D findings available
and useful to Department of Energy (DOE) researchers and the public.
