Microsoft Academic Search: A Major Update and Several New Features Now Available
We will have more about this release when the holiday weekend is over but until then we wanted to let you know that the Microsoft Academic Search database has just undergone a major update that’s now live.
As we said in in March and we will say again today, look out Google Scholar. It will be interesting to see if, when, and how they respond now that “Academic” has begun to mature. Whatever happens, the addition of Microsoft Academic is good news for info pros and researchers.
Academic Search debuted in 2009 with all new technology and not a number of enhancements to the Microsoft Live Academic product that was around several years ago and did a poor job (and that’s being very nice).
Academic Search comes from Microsoft Research with much of the development coming from MS Research Asia.
- The database of searchable publications has nearly doubled.
- From 15.7 million publications to 27.1 million publications as of today
- Access to material from 10.5 million authors to 16.2 million authors
- Material in 14 domains available with more to come including humanities and social sciences material.
- Biology & Biochemistry
- Chemistry
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Clinical Medicine
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Computer Science
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Economics & Business
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Engineering
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Immunology
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Mathematics
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Microbiology
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Molecular Biology & Genetics
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Neuroscience & Behavior
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Pharmacology & Toxicology
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Physics
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Psychiatry & Psychology
- The launch of Academic Map Search
- New Compare Organizations Tool
- “Compare differences in the number of publications and citations as well as research priorities and interests between two organizations.”
- Improved: Keyword Detail Info
- New stemming variations and definition context
- View History
- “All past changes to the author/paper are listed in reverse-chronological order, users can view history by clicking the “View History” tab in the user contribution center.”
- Release of a Windows Mobile app
Finally (for now), here are a couple of INFOdocket posts from March and April that discuss some of our favorite features:
That’s it for now. More after the holiday. Have a good one.
Direct to Microsoft Academic Search
Sources: Twitter, MS Academic Web Site, etc.
Filed under: Associations and Organizations, Journal Articles, News, Patrons and Users
About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.