WorldWideScience.org is a global gateway that enables federated searching of 44 science databases from 32 countries. Launched in 2007 by the US Department of Energy and The British Library, this collaborative project is now sponsored primarily by the International Council for Scientific and Technical Information (INSTI). It encompasses the output of an alliance of member libraries, research institutes, and scientific councils. Although WorldWideScience.org features the United States's massive Science.gov portal, it is notable for its focus on research from the international scientific community.
WorldWideScience.org is a resource primarily for identifying publications. Incorporated resources include catalogues and abstract/citation databases, such as those of INIST (France), NRC‐CISTI (Canada), and TIB (Germany). Much of its content relates to e‐journals, such as the Scientific Electronic Library (SciELO) collections for several Portuguese‐ and Spanish‐speaking countries, plus similar collections for Africa, Bangladesh, and Korea. Within these collections several options exist for accessing individual journal articles; many are available for free in English or in their original languages with abstracts provided in English. Some are available for purchase. The inclusion of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) adds to the number of free scholarly articles.
Also included in WorldWideScience.org are repositories and archives of scientific data, offering additional publications such as e‐prints, doctoral theses, and patent applications as well as data sets, maps, and current research project information. Specific repositories include the Australian Antarctic Data Centre, South Africa's CSIR Research Space, Denmark's DEFF, India's National Institute of Oceanography, The Netherlands's NARCIS, Germany's VASCODA, and Finland's VTT Research Centre.
The range of scientific disciplines in WorldWideScience.org is vast, but its search interface and capability are quite limited. There is no functionality that allows the user to select a subject area for initial searching or browsing. In the Advanced Search mode, searches can be limited to a specific source database; but this presumes the user has knowledge of what that source offers. The home page offers a single keyword search box. Results can be refined by keyword; sorted by rank (i.e. relevance, date, title, and author); or limited to specific source databases. Clusters of subtopics appear to refine results by research area. A Source Response link displays the source databases and the number of results from each. However, noticeably absent is the option to limit results to specific types of information. Two extra features are links to a Wikipedia entry for the search query (when available) and to related items in EurekAlert!, a global science news service sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The Advanced Search option allows limits to source databases and document date ranges, plus field searches for author, title, and full record. The date range option goes back only to 1990, but older documents are included in non‐limited results.
There are other freely accessible, federated‐search science databases, but none offers the international scope and range of information types of WorldWideScience.org. For example, ScienceResearch.com, Scitopia, and Scitation search across the publications – primarily journals – from various scientific societies. All three can interoperate with local detection systems and link to library subscriptions, making them similar to proprietary bibliographic databases like Web of Science or Scopus (RR 2005/47). WorldWideScience.org accesses materials more deeply hidden in the research spaces and collections of scientific communities. It is a uniquely focused resource that deserves attention from researchers and information specialists.
