History
Science.gov 1.0 was launched in December 2002, providing for the first time wide public access and a unified search of the government's stores of scientific and technical information. Science.gov is an interagency initiative of 18 U.S. government science organizations within 14 Federal agencies. These agencies form the voluntary Science.gov Alliance.
In May 2004, Version 2.0 was launched, introducing real-time relevancy ranking to government science retrieval. This technology, funded by the Department of Energy, helps users sort through the government's research and return results relevant to individual needs. An advanced search capability and other enhancements were added. U.S. Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham and Director of the Office of Science Dr. Raymond L. Orbach both remarked positively on the launch of Science.gov 2.0 on May 11, 2004.
A free "Alert" service was released in February 2005, allowing users to receive e-mail alerts about current science developments in their areas of interest. Up to 25 relevant results from selected information sources can be delivered. Results are displayed in the Alert email and in a personalized Alert Archive, which stores six weeks of alerts results. In the Archive, past activity can be reviewed and Alert profiles edited.
Launched in November 2005, Version 3.0 provided more refined search queries of federal science databases. In addition, fielded searching and Boolean capabilities were enhanced.
In February 2007, Science.gov 4.0 was launched. The new version was reviewed by Gale Cengage and Government Computer News. Version 4.0 allowed further refinement of search queries, allowing users to search within their original results. The relevancy ranking algorithms became more sophisticated, providing ranking of the entire full text of documents on sites where searchable full text resides. Date of the document was priority-weighted for ranking purposes. A new feature allowed users to share search results via e-mail.
Science.gov 5.0 was launched in September 2008 and announced in a U.S. Department of Energy Press Release. The Oak Ridger covered the release as did UPI, Open Access News, Federal Computer Week, Econtent, and SLA Government Information Division. Clustering results into topics areas and the inclusion of Wikipedia topics and EurekAlert Science items related to the search were added.
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