By Hope Leman

This morning I am taking a test drive in the new user interface of ScienceResearch.com. This search engine has been around since 2005. But I am treating it as brand new in this post, given that I have not written about it before and given its new look. 

The first thing I did was try out the home page search function. Nice and handsome. I tried out my usual search term, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. I decided not to go immediately to the Advanced Search page where I did have the option of limiting my search using a wide range of limiters (such is the amusingly oxymoronic jargon of search!): date, health and science, etc. Everyone interested in science search and attractive, user-friendly Web design should take a look at that page. 

Budding inventors and science journalists and laypeople just curious about what has been written lately on certain scientific subjects should try out the “Patent news” and “Science News” options. Some of the results for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis I got using the Science News options were a little bit on the only slightly related side. But I did get a link to this fascinating article, “Social Networking Sites Embrace Clinical Trials” here which I would not have otherwise seen and it is a mark of a good search engine that it apprises users of treasures so far undiscovered by them. For those laypeople seeking to understand a newly diagnosed condition, the Science News feature of ScienceResearch.com is a nice complement to other sources of medical information such as MedlinePlus.

 For instance, sometimes a simple news story in a local paper can often illustrate what certain conditions entail for patients. Here, for example, is a profile of a very courageous couple coping with ALS: Learning to cope with ALS 

The article contains useful information such as this, “…DynaVox computer system. The system looks like a flat panel television, but has an infrared camera that tracks the movement of Ann’s eyes. Ann is training her eye muscles to “push” buttons on the computer screen, which she can then use to type out messages, email and signal for help. She will also be able to control the television, wireless Internet and telephone with the blink of an eye. 

There were a couple of upgrades the couple added to the system and it can even synthesize a voice for Ann, all through the use of her eye power.”  

Thank you Ann and Howard Hanson for sharing your story. It is really heartening while trying out a search engine to stop and read about loving couples facing adversity courageously. And that is what good search engines like ScienceResearch.com do—they enable users to read about health technologies in real-world situations and make note of specific product names. 

Back on the home page. I tried out the “preferences” button, which enabled me to get 250 items per page—that was nice. The more items on a page, the better as having to click for a new page after only a few results is a bother. 

One definite major plus of ScienceResearch.com, is that it returns recent results of abstracts (though not the article themselves, usually) for Elsevier’s Science Direct such as the article, Managing patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis here.

I just did a search for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in PubMed and that article was not in PubMed yet. So way to go both ScienceResearch.com and Elsevier for rendering the latter’s outstanding content more readily discoverable. It will be interesting to see how Elsevier works with innovative search companies such as Deep Web Technologies (the firm behind ScienceResearch.com), DeepDyve and NextBio—see here  in alerting the research community and an increasingly savvy and search-powered (thanks to these innovative companies) lay public to its articles. Elsevier finally is getting search. Yay! Go, Elsevier, go! Take advantage of the know-how of these search firms. You have the world’s best content—showcase it. 

One thing I found a little confusing in ScienceResearch.com was that sometimes it linked directly to the abstract at the site of the publisher and sometimes to the abstract in PubMed. Although it is useful to be taken to PubMed (as one can make a can save items to its clipboard), I wasn’t quite clear on why I was taken to PubMed in some cases with some of the Springer journals and at other times to the site of the journal at Springer itself. I did like, though, that one of the limiters was Springer. But not, interestingly, ScienceDirect or MD Consult. 

Still, there is a lot to like about ScienceResearch.com and its new look is worth a look. It will be interesting to see what those in hardcore science like mathematics and chemistry think of it.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 15th, 2009 at 5:10 pm and is filed under Newcomers, Reviews, Verticals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.