Microsoft Unveils New Academic Search Tool

By Mark Hoerrner

Universities and the "publish or perish" mantra have been around for decades, but university faculty now have a new ally in the tenure race—Microsoft Live Academic Search.

Touting that simply "googling" for articles is not the best way for the academic world to access the most obscure of scholarly publications, some of which are so small that they may have as few as 300 subscribers, Microsoft released the new search product’s beta edition April 11.

"We are excited about continuing to innovate for the academic community," said Danielle Tiedt, general manager of Windows Live Premium Search in a recent release. "By working with academic publishers and customers and understanding their needs, we have been able to create a unique offering to the marketplace that is a win-win for consumers and our content providers. Windows Live Academic Search is another example of our continued efforts to bring innovative search offerings into new categories."

Microsoft didn’t develop the program without the help of some key players in the academic journal world. Industry association CrossRef and more than ten different independent publishers are participating in the organization and development of the product to catalog articles on computer science, electrical engineering, physics and more. Additional subjects will be brought online in the near future as the company develops relationships with additional industry groups and publishers. In addition, Microsoft will offer peer-reviewed content from scholarly societies such as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and leading publishers Elsevier and John Wiley & Sons Inc.

"We’re really pleased to be collaborating with Microsoft on an academic search tool that is designed both to improve the online research experience and to respect the concerns of the publishing industry," said Amy Brand, director of Business Development at CrossRef. "And we look forward to helping bring even more content into Microsoft Academic Search as the initiative develops." CrossRef is a not-for-profit organization that collaborates with publishers to make reference linking efficient and reliable throughout online scholarly literature.

Windows Live boasts nearly 465 million users and delivers content worldwide. The academic search tool can be found at http://academic.live.com.