ScienceDirect Expands Search Capabilities with FAST ESP

With FAST ESP, ScienceDirect provides a more powerful search experience enabling users to access over eight million full-text scientific, technical and medical articles. FAST ESP was recently voted 'Top Search and Retrieval Technology' in Information Today's People's Choice Awards and is a finalist for the 2007 SIIA CODiE Awards.

Leveraging the impressive capabilities of FAST ESP, ScienceDirect will enable researchers to quickly find the most relevant information in their area of interest and expertise. Due to the enormous amount of information available via ScienceDirect, accurate, reliable and rapid search is critical to enabling users to leverage the information in a timely and efficient manner. ScienceDirect recently reached a major milestone by supporting its one-billionth full article download. Through the use of FAST ESP, ScienceDirect ensures the ability to continue to support this high volume of search and download activity.

FAST works with other Elsevier products and services, including Scopus (http://www.info.scopus.com/), the largest abstract and citation database of research literature and quality Web sources. Scopus has relied on FAST ESP for more than two years and has experienced positive response from its user community for its exceptional search experience and result relevance. By using FAST search technology, ScienceDirect and Scopus will be able to improve the interoperability of the sites and further streamline the user experience for professionals who use both resources for research.

“ScienceDirect and Scopus are dedicated to bringing researchers the high-quality information they need, when they need it,” said Amanda Spiteri, marketing director, ScienceDirect. “The implementation of the FAST search platform offers users an easy to use, yet customizable way of retrieving and ranking information. The interoperability between ScienceDirect and Scopus will be enhanced greatly by using the same search technology.”

“FAST works closely with forward-thinking organizations like ScienceDirect and Scopus to provide the best possible user experience for their customers,” added Julie Ginches, senior director of corporate communications for FAST. “As a result, it comes as no surprise to us that these products are dominating their market sectors.”