Research on the Web
February 20th, 2008
The Internet is a decent place to do research these days. The idea that "everything is online" is still not true but it becomes more so every day. The problem for everyone is that much of this information costs a lot of money to access for large institutions much less small organizations. Help is often available in the form of the public library. Tennessee has a project called the Tennessee Electronic Library, which provides access to a number of databases for any Tennessee resident through their school or public library.
There is plenty online for free though.
- For instance many government departments have websites ending in the .gov domain. Useful at this time of year is IRS.gov where you can download the forms or fill out a free electronic submission form (you can't have made more than $54,000 to use Free File though). They also have information meant to make filing your taxes easier and a "Where's my Refund?" system.
- The first and fastest growing area of free information is medical. Pubmed.gov is the government's free portal to its database of medical journal articles (Medline). Medline is the foremost database of medical citations in the world. These are the articles written by scientists and doctors for other scientists and doctors, where they publish drug trial data you hear about in commercials. Doctors like PubMed because they can get into it anywhere. It can be difficult to understand for those without a medical degree though. MedlinePlus.gov is produced by the National Institutes of Health and the National Library of Medicine. Searching it gives results in journals, medical dictionaries, encyclopedias and selected websites.
- The New York Public Library has posted an extensive Digital Gallery of scanned images that are free for noncommercial use.
- The American Kennel Club (AKC)'s website is a font of information for prospective and current dog owners including a directory of breeds and a list of registered breeders.
- Open Vault: WGBH Media Library and Archives (MLA) provides online access to materials produced by WGBH public television station. The database currently houses more than 50,000 audio, video, and film masters.
- TRIS (Transportation Research Information Services) is a comprehensive source for published transportation research on the Web from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics and the Transportation Research Board.
- Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) covers free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals.
- Open J-Gate is an electronic gateway to global journal literature in open access domain. Launched in 2006, Open J-Gate is the contribution of Informatics (India) Ltd to promote OAI. Open J-Gate provides seamless access to millions of journal articles available online.
- In 2003, PLoS (Public Library of Science) launched a nonprofit scientific and medical publishing venture that provides scientists and physicians with high-quality, high-profile journals in which to publish their most important work, while making the full contents freely available for anyone to read, distribute, or use for their own research. The PLoS journals are run by professional editors, trained scientists, and physicians, in close collaboration with editorial boards. Papers published in these journals are peer reviewed using a uniquely consultative process between editors and experts in their field, and are produced to the highest editorial and production standards. Under the open access model, PLoS makes all published works immediately available online, with no charges for access and no restrictions on subsequent redistribution or use, as long as the author(s) and source are cited.
- AGRICOLA is like Medline but for all aspects of agriculture, including nutrition and veterinary science. Unfortunately, it's also the National Agriculture Library's catalog so you have to be aware of whether you're searching the books or the journal articles.
There are free sources for pretty much any subject, you just have to be careful that they are reliable sources. .edu and .gov domains tend to be good indicators
Wednesday, February 20th, 2008 at 11:34 am and is filed under Business.
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February 21st, 2008 at 9:55 am
Hello,
Thank you for providing this list highlighting the changing scene of scholarly research on the web. It is true that the sciences, especially medical journals, are doing much better at this than other disciplines.
I have created an independent project which provides Google Co-op custom search engines for journals in the Arts and Humanities. It's called SearchPigeon.org, and can be found where you'd expect at "http://www.searchpigeon.org/". The journals are mainly taken from the DOAJ repository, and made searchable with the CSEs. I'd appreciate it if you'd check it out and offer criticism and/or promote it.
All the best,
Mike van Eerden