SPARC Partners with U.S. Department of Energy's E-Print Network

["John D'Ignazio" <john@arl.org>]

**Please note that live, online demonstrations of the U.S. Department of
Energy's E-Print Network, the newest SPARC partner, will be available at
the SPARC booth at the upcoming ALA meeting in Boston.  SPARC will be
located at Booth 201 on Level 1 of the Hynes Convention Center.**

For Immediate Release
January 10, 2005

For more information, contact:
Alison Buckholtz, SPARC, alison@arl.org
Susan Tackett, OSTI, tacketts@osti.gov

DOE/OSTI's E-PRINT NETWORK SELECTED AS SPARC PARTNER

Provides Research Communications and Full-Text Searching of Science
Websites and Databases

Washington, DC - SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources
Coalition) today announced that the E-print Network, a free service of the
U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Scientific and Technical
Information (OSTI), has been chosen as a SPARC Scientific Communities
partner. The selection recognizes the contribution of the E-print Network
to expanded availability and use of open-access scientific and technical
research on the Internet.

The E-print Network (www.osti.gov/eprints) reveals a wealth of valuable
research mainly in physics but also in chemistry, biology and life
sciences, materials science, nuclear sciences and engineering, energy
research, computer and information technologies, and other disciplines.  
The E-print Network utilizes a unique deep Web search capability that
combines full-text searching through PDF documents residing on e-print Web
sites with a distributed search across e-print databases. The Web search
pulls to the desktop documents that are often hard to find.

Users of the E-print Network, which was first launched as PrePRINT Network
in January 2000, can perform full-text searches on over 16,000 Web sites
and in 39 major databases of e-prints from around the world.  All this
content - close to 20 million pages of full text - is available to users
at no charge. The E-print Network also offers a weekly alert service that
provides patrons notification of new documents, as well as links to 2,300
scientific societies.

"The E-print Network takes all these isolated islands of information and
pulls them into a searchable whole, said Dr. Walter Warnick, director of
OSTI. "The result is enhanced search, expanded audience, ease of
scientific collaboration, and advancement of science. We are pleased to
become a partner in SPARC's endeavor to encourage scholarly communication
and to disseminate research."

"The E-print Network is a pioneer in harnessing open-access research
across the Internet," said Rick Johnson, director of SPARC. "Besides
contributing to more efficient information sharing and accelerated
discovery, the E-print Network gives us an eye-opening glimpse of the vast
extent of open archiving today."

The resources available via the E-print Network are located on a wide
range of sources residing at academic institutions, government research
laboratories, scientific societies, private research organizations, and
the Web sites of individual scientists and researchers. The Network
facilitates access to these resources as well as communications between
researchers. When a document is displayed or downloaded, the patron
actually downloads the e-print directly from the Web site where the
document resides. The document is not stored or maintained by the E-print
Network. From the author Web site, the user can rapidly access supporting
documents, background material and contact information.

E-prints are scientific or technical documents circulated electronically
to facilitate peer exchange and scientific advancement.  To find out how
to add e-prints to the E-print Network, contact Dr.  Dennis Traylor at
traylord@osti.gov, at phone 865-576-3327, or by mail at Office of
Scientific and Technical Information, U.S. Department of Energy, P.O. Box
62, Oak Ridge, TN 37831. Having e-prints in the network increases
awareness of research and promotes the dissemination of information to a
broader audience.

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About OSTI

OSTI's mission is to advance science and sustain technological creativity
by making R&D findings available and useful to DOE researchers and the
American people. OSTI has been delivering science information since 1947.
With its suite of Web tools (www.osti.gov), OSTI has proved to be a leader
in government science search.

About SPARC

SPARC and SPARC Europe are alliances of academic and research libraries
working to unleash the potential of the Internet to enhance scholarly
communication. SPARC partnerships, advocacy, and educational activities
encourage expanded dissemination of research and reduced financial
pressure on libraries. Worldwide membership currently includes over 300
institutions and organizations. SPARC is located on the web at
<www.arl.org/sparc>. SPARC Europe is at <www.sparceurope.org>.

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