PubSCIENCE

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PubSCIENCE was a literature database available from October 1999 to November 2002 , which provided free access to abstracts of scientific specialist articles in the field of physical sciences , related disciplines such as chemistry and materials sciences as well as sub-areas of engineering via the World Wide Web with appropriate search functions . The functions offered and the design of the user interface are based on PubMed , an existing database for scientific publications in the biomedical and related scientific disciplines . Similar to PubMed, the abstracts and information about the authors as well as the year, number and page number of the corresponding publication could be read free of charge. Access to the full text was usually paid for via hyperlinks to the articles on the websites of the respective publisher.

history

The project was launched in November 1999 at the initiative of the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) within the US Department of Energy (DOE). Operation and financing were also carried out by this authority. According to the operator, around 1.3 million publications from around 1,200 journals from 34 providers were referenced in PubSCIENCE, including scientific specialist societies as well as private publishers and some university publishers.

In the period that followed, similar offers from private providers such as Scirus and Infotrieve came onto the market with regard to free access . An investigation by the OSTI in 2002 showed, based on the journal lists and the search results, an overlap of around 90 percent in the PubSCIENCE offer with these databases. According to OSTI Director Walter Warnick, this made it difficult to justify continued financing of the project through state funds and thus continued operation.

In August 2002 the OSTI announced the planned termination of the project on the PubSCIENCE website. The operator then received around 250 comments. Around 240 of them, including from the American Library Association and the Association of Research Libraries , from librarians and other institutional and individual users of the database, spoke out against the end of PubSCIENCE, while seven statements commented positively on the proposal. PubSCIENCE was discontinued on November 4, 2002, around three years after it was founded.

WorldWideScience , an open access science portal of the British Library, the US Department of Energy and eight other countries, has been available on the Internet since June 2007, and in terms of its offerings and functions, it can in some cases be viewed as the successor to PubSCIENCE.

Criticism and problems

Since the inception of PubSCIENCE, the project has been criticized by commercial database providers as well as some private publishing houses for viewing it as inappropriate and unfair competition and as an interference with their own business model by a state institution. In a statement at a hearing before the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs on the E-Government Act of 2001 , the Software & Information Industry Association stated , among other things:

“... The Department of Energy's PubSCIENCE presents an ongoing example of the inappropriate role of government in providing access to non-government information. ... ”
"... (The Department of Energy's) PubSCIENCE project is a recent example of the government's inadequate involvement in providing access to non-governmental information. ..."

PubSCIENCE also had problems with quality and acceptance. The financial resources of around 500,000 US dollars per year were inadequate, and a number of publishers were not willing to support cooperation. As a result, the entries, which were mostly taken directly from the publisher's websites, were hardly edited or provided with metadata and other additional information.

The consequences were problems with the search function, incomplete entries in terms of content, inconsistent presentation and formatting of the entries, a high proportion of redundant multiple entries compared to other literature databases and non-functioning internal links and links to external websites. Critics estimated, for example, that the actual number of referenced articles after subtracting multiple entries was only between 900,000 and a million instead of 1.3 million. The selection of magazines was also criticized. Important and well-known journals were partly missing, while highly specialized but unknown journals were included.

literature

  • Joseph A. Salem, Jr .: Public and Private Sector Interests in e-Government: A Look at the DOE's PubSCIENCE. In: Government Information Quarterly. 20 (1) / 2003, Elsevier Science, pp. 13-27, ISSN  0740-624X
  • Peter Jacso: Should PubSCIENCE Go the Way of Caesar? In: Information Today. 19 (9) / 2002. Information Today Inc., pp. 32-33, ISSN  8755-6286

Web links