RSSMicrosoft Launches Academic Search
By Nate Mook | Published April 12, 2006, 12:23 PM
Microsoft has given its answer to Google Scholar with a beta version of Windows Live Academic Search designed for students and researchers. The service has indexed a spectrum of academic journals and peer-reviewed content, and is intended to aid with research.
While the beta release focuses on the topics of computer science, electrical engineering and physics, Microsoft plans to bring new subjects online in the near future. The company has partnered with the IEEE, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and publishers Elsevier and John Wiley & Sons, along with a number of other groups.
CrossRef, a not-for-profit organization that works with publishers to ensure reliable reference linking, has collaborated with Microsoft on Windows Live Academic Search. The group plans to bring more content into the service as it progresses.
Features of the new service include a preview pane for viewing the abstract of a result by hover the mouse over a link; sorting of results by author, journal, conference and date; built-in citation support; and links to the full text of an article located on a publisher's Web site.
"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," commented Danielle Tiedt, general manager of Windows Live Premium Search.
Like its other Live search offerings, a slider enables customers to control the amount of information they see contained in each result listing. In addition, users can setup macros to finely tune search results and subscribe to RSS feeds of a specific topic and author.
"We are looking forward to hearing from our customers during this beta period, which will help us improve upon what is available today," Tiedt added.
Just for starters, you have to type quotes around an author name to get any kind of accuracy. I typed Robert Edwards (a researcher I work with) and got back a first result combining Edwards in one name and Robert in another. Google Scholar is smarter than that.
I'd rather have accuracy than a "pretty" interface. Personally, I don't think it's all that pretty either. I prefer Google's lack of bloated graphics.
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|I must say, the Windows Live interface is far nicer then that of the google interface, little slow to load, but it still gives you more info then the scholars interface. It is nice to get a decent abstract of a book without having to follow a link(thats assuming there is one). There are a number of things that could be imporved, but since it is in early beta, I don't have high expectations and can wait to see if they do clean things up.
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|I agree with you on that one. I feel though that AJAX isn't the best idea for a search engine. I think that Windows Live could actually be something good churned out by MS. At least it supports Firefox and Opera.
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|And Google doesn't???
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|Agreed, the abstract feature is nice, as is the endnote ref.
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|Why does Microsoft feel the need to emulate every Google feature to the dime? I'm not a big critic of Microsoft (unlike many)... but I'm getting a little tired of this non-innovation. Are they "stuck"?
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|Compare it with google scholar and you will see the difference. It has a much better interface and a summary section
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|Its not necessarily copying or emulation. Usually what happens is that Google happens to release their software much earlier so we hear about it first. In fact, I would say that the one big thing that MS does emulate Google on now is the whole "Beta" thing. MS has always had open betas but not like Google which seems to always be in a state of beta. But now MS is starting to release websites to the public in beta mode.
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