General Information
How the E-print Network Works
General Information
What are e-prints?
E-prints are scholarly and professional works
electronically produced and shared by researchers with the intent of
communicating research findings to colleagues. They may include preprints,
reprints, technical reports, conference publications or other means of
electronic communication. Preprints, those selectively-shared pre-published
documents or articles going through the publication process, have long been
recognized and utilized by peer groups throughout the scientific community.
Recent technological advances, however, have incorporated preprints with other
forms of peer communications to establish an information genre in its own
right. Therefore, the more inclusive term e-prints is more appropriate to use
currently in
describing this rich and valuable source of scientific and technical information
that now reaches beyond the scope of pre-published information.
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Are e-prints and preprints the same thing?
Not necessarily. Generally, preprints are manuscripts intended for publication
that have not yet been published but may have been reviewed and accepted for
publication; or they may be in the process of being circulated for comment prior
to publication. Preprints generated and circulated in electronic forms make up
part of the genre of communication that has come to be known as
"e-prints". Many e-prints are electronic versions of research papers
that have been submitted for dissemination and review among peers; for
publication in journals; or prior to presentation at conferences. Some e-print
servers may now define preprints as any electronic work circulated by the author
outside of the traditional publishing environment, as the traditional
definitions between preprints and e-prints continue to blur. In summary, from an
E-print Network perspective, preprints are always e-prints, but e-prints are not
necessarily preprints.
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What is the E-print Network: Research Communications for Scientists and
Engineers?
The E-print Network is a set of powerful tools that facilitate access to and use
of scientific and technical e-prints communicating the results of a wide range
of research activities of interest to the Department of Energy. These
e-prints reside on thousands of Web sites and data bases, both large and small,
at remote locations worldwide, employing a wide variety of technologies,
architectures, platforms, formats, software, and search engines to manage and
retrieve data. The E-print Network pulls these vast and widely dispersed
data together through a Deep Web search capability that allows the patron to
search across and into full text as it resides at the various hosting sites and,
using the technical capabilities available at each site, returns results that
can be combined, assimilated, and used in support of scientific research.
In addition, access is provided to a vast store of e-print information available
on the Web through a browse capability across more than ten thousand sites.
The E-print Network, however, is more than a source for scientists
and engineers to find, assimilate, and use scientific and technical e-prints in
their fields of interest. Also central to research
efforts are the interpersonal activities which occur on a one-to-one
basis, in small groups, in classrooms and seminars, and at large or small
conferences. These interpersonal activities are in fact research
communications, too, and it is frequently through these research communications
that much of the strategically important activities in which researchers engage
are shared. The E-print Network: Research Communications for Scientists and
Engineers aims to facilitate and encourage the exchange of these strategically important
research communications to help the user fully understand the content of the e-prints
on the Network, to assist contributors in gaining wide circulation of
their documents and in forging new contacts with colleagues, and to support
research sponsoring agencies' interests in seeing that the greatest possible
good results from their research investment.
The E-print Network then is about the professional communications that are
fundamental to the way science progresses. Counted among these communications
are those among colleagues pursuing common research objectives, between
experimental and theoretical scientists, between those in the basic and those in
the applied sciences, between scientists and engineers, and between established
investigators and those in academic programs. These communications may be formal, as publications, and less formal in ways described above. The
E-print
Network plans to employ advances in information technology to facilitate
advances in science, to aid the workers in the sciences to better achieve their
objectives, and to enhance the federal government's return on the R&D
investment.
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Who uses the E-print Network?
As the name implies, the target users for the E-print Network are professional
researchers in basic and applied sciences. These users
will find e-prints useful in comparing and validating research results with
those of peers, keeping abreast of the activities of other investigators whose
efforts are likely to impact their research, learning about researchers with
whose work they may not be familiar, and identifying areas of common interest
with other researchers.
The E-print Network can also be of great value to students in scientific and
technical studies at the graduate level for locating and using a broad range of
information in support of their fields of interest. It can also help them
discover behind-the-scenes interactions between the principals involved in their
chosen research areas. Undergraduate science students
contemplating graduate studies can find information about graduate programs and
gain a better understanding of what pursuing these studies would entail.
Of interest to those at or approaching the post-graduate level is that many
established investigators announce the availability of post-doctoral positions on
their Web pages. Post-doctoral investigators can become aware of such
opportunities and compare how available opportunities align
with their own career goals.
The E-print network will also be useful to those involved in research
administration and management. Not only should the enhanced level of
communication facilitate funded research, but reviewers should be able to
gain an understanding of the dynamics of funded research programs.
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How does the E-print Network help the user?
The E-print Network system brings together a variety of e-print servers and
resources into one location. By eliminating the need to locate e-print sites
through Web searching, researchers can find more information while saving time.
In addition, the Alerts capability allows users to set up profiles matching
their specific interests. As new information is indexed or added to databases, users
are notified automatically, thus eliminating the need to manually check for
recent additions.
As with other Internet sites, the e-prints sites and resources may be
transient in nature and may be modified or removed at the discretion of the site
owners with or without prior notification. The e-prints themselves are also
dynamic. Many of them have not yet been peer reviewed, or are currently
undergoing peer review. Substantial changes may occur prior to formal
publication, and it is possible that the preprint may not be formally published
at all.
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How the E-print Network Works
What's in the E-print Network?
The E-print Network does not "house" information
on a centralized site. Instead, it uses information residing at remote
sites on disparate databases and Web sites to create and compile real-time
search results on demand for each user. Therefore, it is important to
remember that the Network's interface is a tool, not a repository for
information. Its content is determined by what is available on the sites
we have chosen to include in the search mechanisms we make available to
users. With that caveat in mind, as of April 2004, the E-print Network
provides one-stop browse/search access to more than 14,880 Web sites containing
e-prints, full text searching of over 400,000 e-print documents indexed
from Web sites, deep Web searching across 39 major databases containing a total
of over 1,000,000 e-print records with searchable full text, and links to more
than 2,200 professional scientific societies.
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What are the criteria for inclusion in the E-print
Network?
In order for a Web site, database, or e-print document to be considered for
inclusion in the E-print Network, it must meet the following criteria:
The content must be applicable to the Department of Energy's research and
development (R&D) programs, projects, activities, or interests. The
Disciplines page includes many of the categories of R&D considered
within scope for the E-print Network.
- The E-print Network seeks to support researchers with electronic e-print
information primarily in physical sciences, but also including other areas of basic and
applied science, research engineering, and various aspects of mathematics and computer science. Content and selection criteria
are governed by the research information needs of the U.S. Department of
Energy's (DOE) research and development missions, programs, projects, activities and
interests. DOE is a major federal science agency that sponsors a
far-reaching, diverse variety of research conducted at national
laboratories, project sites, universities, smaller dedicated research
institutions, other government agencies, and private research entities.
Content must meet DOE's definition for scientific and technical information
as defined in Order DOE 241.1 (Section 8a):
- Useful information products, in any format or medium, that are derived
from scientific and technical studies, work, or investigations that relate
to research, development, demonstration, and other specialized areas, such
as environmental and health protection and waste management.
Content for the E-print Network must meet the criteria of being e-print
information as defined in the What are e-prints
section above.
- Note: E-print coverage of different DOE-related science and technology
areas is quite uneven as a result of disparities in e-print use among the
various scientific disciplines. Some areas, like high energy physics, are
e-print pioneers and are very well represented. Other areas, such as clean
coal technology, have so far provided very limited e-print capability.
Patrons are encouraged to
nominate Web sites, databases and individual
documents for addition to our E-print Network collections.
Content must be in reusable electronic format that allows access to all
users.
- Access limitations, such as password controls or registration
requirements, are not conducive to the operation of certain functions of the
E-print Network. For inclusion in E-prints on the Web,
documents much be in a format retrieved by the E-print Network.
At present, PDF documents are the only format indexed for this feature, but
others are planned for the near future. For Deep Web searching,
databases must have a readily accessible search engine operating on a set of
freely available information.
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How Does the E-print Network function?
The E-print Network uses a unique concept and a set of innovative features to
allow patrons to perform a variety of Deep Web search operations that take
advantage of the strengths of the individual sites where information resides and
leverages those strengths to enable cross-searching of disparate data sources,
assimilation and discovery of information, and reuse in advancing science.
The resources available via the E-print Network are located on a wide range
of sources residing at academic institutions, government research laboratories,
scientific societies, private research organizations, and the Web sites of
individual scientists and researchers. The Network facilitates access to these
resources. It does not change the content or data provided by the originating
site or author in any way. When a document is displayed or downloaded, the
patron actually downloads the e-print directly from the web-site where the
document resides. The document is not stored or maintained by the E-print
Network.
The primary mechanisms that provide the functionality for the E-Print Network
are Distributed Explorit and Explorit Focused Crawler. Developed
by Deep Web Technologies, Inc., these products are derived from Explorit,
a highly-configurable and easily customizable interface to commercially
available, off-the-shelf (COTS) full-text search engines from Lextek
International and Verity. Explorit provides the capability to deploy
small to large-scale collections of information on the web - fully searchable
and easily navigable - to a wide range of user communities. Large organizations
or information purveyors with many collections of heterogeneous information
benefit from the consistency and usability of the Explorit user
interface. Whether they deploy one collection or one hundred, users quickly
learn that all Explorit applications operate essentially the same way,
and variances are determined by content rather than inconsistent design.
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An overview of tools and services
Search
The E-print Network offers a unique combination of search capabilities to search
two distinct areas where scientific and technical information resides
electronically, on Web sites and in databases. By focusing on access to the full
text of e-prints in each of these areas, the Network provides a degree of
specificity that greatly enhances the value of search results and allows recovery, assimilation,
and reuse of heretofore hard to find information to facilitate scientific
research. The two search capabilities are:
- Web Site Searching. Search full text of 400,000 e-prints
indexed directly from Web sites. At present, PDF documents are searchable,
but other
document forms will be included in the near future. These documents reside
at the originator's site, but have been indexed for inclusion in a virtual
collection for search and retrieval alone or in conjunction with a Deep Web search.
- Database Searching. Perform a Deep Web search
across the full text of documents residing in selected databases containing
e-print material with a single query. This unique distributed search pulses
in real time a wide variety of databases and returns the most current information
available to a substantial level of depth within each record of each
database. A Web Site Search described above can be easily incorporated into a Deep Web
search.
Browse by Disciplines
This option offers patrons the ability to browse over 14,880 Web sites of
individual researchers, college and university departments,
academic/professional societies and associations, laboratory sites, and other
resources organized by Disciplines. It includes e-prints servers,
sites, and
individual e-prints posted by scientists on their own sites. Users may browse
the list of sites in the discipline directories and readily access
research-oriented Web sites of interest.
Find Scientific Societies
To facilitate scholarly communication and expand access to additional
scientific information, we provide an extensive list of scientific societies and
associations that focus on topics related to the Department of Energy's research
and development initiatives. A list of Japanese societies and associations is
also included.
Receive E-print Alerts
Select this option to establish a routine search based on your specific
area(s) of interest and automatically receive a periodic alert via e-mail
notifying you whenever documents matching your search terms are indexed or added to the
Deep Web selected databases. This Alert Service can also be utilized to
automatically receive notification of new e-prints
emanating from particular laboratories.
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A Note to Site Owners
You may be interested in how the E-print Network accesses your site. When a user
does a search on the E-print Network and selects a paper for his/her own use, the
actual request for a copy of the e-print is directed back to the Web source for
this paper. For example, a user wishing to obtain a copy of one of the papers
at your site would select the paper from the E-print Network, but would be directed to
your site for the download. You maintain full control of the distribution of
your e-prints. Along with each e-print retrieved by the search engine in this
portion of the E-print Network is also a link to the web-page associated with
the document so that the user can easily become familiar with the research
program that generated the work. We hope you will find that the E-print Network
will help bring other researchers to your site to discover your program and that
some of these scientists will become interested in your work.
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Meet the Messengers
Dr. Dennis Traylor is the Director
of the E-print Network. He has research experience in
biochemistry and in toxicology of synthetic fuels and is well versed in
all aspects of scientific and technical information through his extensive
experience with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Scientific and
Technical Information.
Ms. Michelle Turpin is the Product Manager for the E-print Network,
responsible for the operation of the system. She has extensive experience
in the design, development, implementation, and oversight of scientific and
technical information management and delivery systems during her tenure at the
Office of Scientific and Technical Information.
Comments or questions can be directed to them by specifically mentioning
either name in the text of a Contact Us message.
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Updated: 1/5/2004
