Microsoft announced the beta release of its Windows Live Academic Search service in seven countries, and focused the search service on conducting research across a spectrum of academic journals.
The Windows Academic Live search engine currently indexes content related to computer science, physics, and electrical engineering. Microsoft will work with journal publishers and sources on adding more content to the service.
Microsoft said it is working with scholarly societies like the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), as well as the Nature Publishing Group and the British Library, to provide content for its launch content categories.
Presently English-language readers in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan, and Australia can try out the Academic Live search. During the beta period, Microsoft plans to add more content to the service and open it to more markets.
Academic Live offers a number of features for its search users. Microsoft listed those on the website:
• Slider bar: This allows you to expand or contract the amount of information contained in the search result
• Preview pane: This pane allows you to obtain more information on the result that you are hovering over with your mouse on the results pane
• Abstract: one of the options in the preview pane – choosing this option will allow you to see the abstract of the article that you are hovering over with your mouse on the results pane
• BibTeX/EndNote: citation options in the preview pane – choosing this option will allow you to see the formatted citation (BibTeX or EndNote format) on the preview pane for the search result that you are hovering over with your mouse on the results pane
• Search result: the actual search result; this includes links to the full text of the paper, link to search the web for that paper and potentially links that allow you to search your library for access to the full text from their subscription
• Sort by options: this drop down menu allows you to sort the search results by author of paper, journal, conference, date published or releance
Microsoft noted that it is not using citation count as a determination of relevance. Instead, Academic Search uses its algorithm to find the quality of match of the search term with the content of the paper, and the authoritativeness of the paper.
To avoid any potential problems with publishers, Microsoft noted that users will not be able to select their affiliated institution at this time. Instead, Academic Live will “automatically detect your institution based on the information that the link resolver vendors provide us.”
We opted for an explicit permission approach, where link resolver companies work with their customers and provide us with the information necessary to detect the institution of the searcher and provide a link to the institution’s link resolver. Now that we introduced Academic search, we are working with the libraries and resolver vendors to determine the list of institutions that want to be listed in Windows Live Academic.
—
Tag:
Add to document.write(“Del.icio.us”) | DiggThis | Yahoo! My Web | PreFound.com
Bookmark murdok: 
David Utter is a staff writer for murdok covering technology and business.
