The Best Online Home for Science and Technology Buffs

By Steve Brent

There are millions of websites on the Internet devoted to various specialized scientific topics—computers, electronics, medicine, outer space, engineering, physics, biosciences, and any other subject that might pique the interest of some scientist or researcher anywhere. For some people, the way to find exactly the information and news they’re looking for is to do an elaborate search and weed through dozens of sites before locating exactly what they’re in search of. For those people who don’t want to waste any time, there’s SciCentral.

SciCentral was developed between 1997 and 1999 by a group of professional scientists and science enthusiasts, who aggregated various breaking news stories about various scientific specialties from hundreds of professional sources. The site was designed to centralize access to information that is scattered widely throughout the Internet, to make that information easier and faster to find. SciCentral editors were actively supported during this aggregation process by SciQuest, Inc., a provider of materials management solutions for research-intensive organizations, and in January 2000, SciQuest acquired SciCentral. The service has received over 30 Web awards for the quality of its service, and leading science publishers such as Science Magazine and The Lancet have praised it highly in published reviews.

As the Internet has matured, many of the websites devoted to research news and scientific topics have become more developed and organized to provide timely and reliable information on a regularly updated basis. Because of this, in April 2003 the founders and editors of SciCentral ceased their aggregation services and instead focused all their efforts on supporting the best research and news channels they had discovered. SciCentral is now a showcase for those sites, providing fast and easy user access to them as well as rankings and reviews. All resources are reviewed monthly and assessed to ensure that they are the most extensive and useful. SciCentral editors continuosly consider new sources for possible inclusion into the site, but the number of resources indexed under any section is limited to a maximum of five. This discriminating approach ensures that SciCentral users don’t have to weed their way through dozens of links and will instead always have quick access to the "best in class" resources in any category.

The SciCentral website itself is very well designed and easy to navigate. Visitors can scan the day’s breaking science news by visiting any of the top five sources ranked by the editors. You can select from one of the specialty areas—Biosciences, Health Sciences, Physics/Chemistry, Earthy & Space, and Engineering—for a selection of the best online research news sources for that discipline. You can scan daily headline news from the top five scientific sources selected by SciCentral, which may include resources such as the BBC News, Science Daily, Universe Today, or New Scientist. The sources featured in any section of the site are hand-picked and ranked by SciCentral editors based on their reliability, timeliness of the information, extent of daily coverage, amount of multidisciplinary coverage, leads to follow-up information, and presentation and general appeal. Sci Central considers only content that is freely accessible to online readers, so publications that produce high-quality content but do not offer many online materials free are not considered for selection. Therefore, the links and resources featured on SciCentral are not simply links to paid subscription sites—they are links to actual, useful, informational sites that visitors can peruse free of charge.

The site also contains links to sites other than purely research sites, such as extensive scientific job and career resources, links to many scientific journal locators and resources, and a comprehensive directory of upcoming scientific conferences in various disciplines. There is even a page of links to scientific literature search tools that can help you fine-tune the parameters of your search for information. Non-news resources such as these are not formally ranked, but they are presented based on the level of usage observed by SciCentral editors. For professional researchers, scientists, engineers, technology enthusiasts, whiz kids, or just plan science geeks, there is no better home on the web than SciCentral.