| Elsevier Science has announced the launch of Scirus.com (http://www.scirus.com),
a search engine dedicated to science. According to the announcement, Scirus
is the world’s most comprehensive search engine specifically designed for
finding highly relevant scientific information. Using search engine technology
developed by Fast Search & Transfer ASA (FAST), Scirus pinpoints both
free and access-controlled scientific information sources that conventional,
generic search engines can’t find, according to the company.
"We supply a tailor-made tool specifically for the scientist," said
Derk Haank, Elsevier Science’s CEO. "It really fulfills the desire of scientists
to put important refereed research in the context of everything else that’s
available. People don’t like to search in boxes—they want to search the
universe. The way I see it, Scirus is a targeted entrance to the universe."
Scirus searches the whole Web, including access-controlled sites. It
currently covers more than 60 million science-related pages and is capable
of reading non-text files in formats such as Adobe PDF and PostScript.
According to the company, Scirus yields more precise results because it
indexes complete documents. It can direct users to more peer-reviewed articles
than any other search engine.
Scirus is powered by the same core technology behind FAST’s AllTheWeb.com.
It also leverages specialized linguistic search algorithms specifically
designed to target scientific content. FAST is providing hosting services
for the Scirus search engine.
In addition to scientific information that’s freely available on the
Web, Scirus will cover Elsevier Science’s information resources: ScienceDirect,
BioMedNet, and ChemWeb. Elsevier Science is currently in final negotiations
with other scientific publishing companies to make their proprietary databases
searchable through Scirus.
Scirus is also available as a Web search capability on ScienceDirect
(http://www.sciencedirect.com),
complementing both its scientific literature and the scientific content
available via its linking capabilities.
[For an in-depth look at Scirus, see the Internet Insights column on
page 34.]
Source: Elsevier Science, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 011-31-20-4853851;
http://www.elsevier.com. |
