Comments on: Thompson Scientific has a closed science search engine.

By: Mr. Gunn

Mr. Gunn — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 22:05:26 +0000

There's also Mr. Gunn's Friendfeed page, which is where I send stuff that isn't worth a whole blog post. That service also pulls in links, bookmarks, favorites, etc from other sites I use, such as del.icio.us, a site which stores links you send it. I find del.icio.us better than bookmarking the link in the browser, and it's also nice to be able see the same list from anywhere, so I don't run into the problem of finding a site at work or away which I've only bookmarked on my home computer. Additionally, you can see who else has bookmarked the same link, which can help you find related information. FriendFeed aggregates the stuff from sites such as del.icio.us, so that people who keep an eye on my friendfeed page can know what I'm up to online. Friendfeed allows me to ask questions or post links and get answers or comments from people who've chosen to watch my friendfeed page, who are, in theory, people who share similar knowledge or expertise. There's also people who watch my page who aren't from a science background, but who want to know what us scientists are talking about. Many of these people work for publishers, but some are journalists or marketers or other people just generally interested in science. Friendfeed isn't just science, of course. There are groups of people doing the same thing we're doing, but for food, economics, politics, photography, etc etc. There's even a make-up group.

By: lady with a gunn

lady with a gunn — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 20:28:17 +0000

anything specific you’d like me to see? I’ve checked all of this out already…

By: Mr. Gunn

Mr. Gunn — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 15:24:09 +0000

Aha! I've been discovered! Wanna see how deep the rabbit hole goes?

By: lady with a gunn

lady with a gunn — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 04:49:58 +0000

hmmmmm.

By: Rafael Sidi

Rafael Sidi — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 17:04:40 +0000

Agreed that there is plenty of room for competition.
The improvement that you mentioned are valid for other scientific information products/publishers too.

In terms of author names, this is a painful task for everyone until we all figure out a (author name) standard in the submission process.

By: Mr. Gunn

Mr. Gunn — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 15:49:16 +0000

I think there’s plenty of room for competition here, and WebPlus has a neat idea with breaking out repositories and blog posts onto their own tab, but as you can see, the reality leaves something to be desired.

Another major innovation would be a usable “initial stemming” for author search, so that publications published variously as “William Gunn”, “W. Grady Gunn”, and “WG Gunn” all show up in the same search. It’s not my fault it’s that way, either. Journals have different conventions for this.

By: David Bradley

David Bradley — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 09:58:17 +0000

Hmmm…why do we need a closed, curated science search engine? Haven’t we already got Scirus, which is open and curated, and Google Scholar, and the MS version. A fully open, curated but not parochial SE for science would be a different matter, one that can handle chemical structures as well as tEx formula etc.

By: Mr. Gunn

Mr. Gunn — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 21:23:47 +0000

Rafael Sidi from Elsevier emailed me and would like to get some feedback on what we don't like about the way Sciencedirect does things, so please leave a comment here or in friendfeed. He mentioned apps built using a WoK or Sciencedirect API a la salesforce. I think that would be awesome, and particularly relevant to the discussion about reading, bookmarking, sharing, discussing, and writing applications on on Nature Network right now.