The First Comprehensive Search Engine Dedicated to Science

Scirus Background

Responding to the needs of Scientists for focused, comprehensive and reliable overviews of relevant scientific information, Elsevier has developed the powerful Internet search tool Scirus. Scirus is a scientific search engine with a number of innovative features including:

• Skips websites without scientific content

• Covers more than 167 million science related pages

• Finds more peer-reviewed articles than any other search engine

• Reads non-text files in PDF, Postscript and others

• Yields more precise results because it indexes complete documents

Scirus enables scientists to chart and pinpoint data, locate University sites, and find reports and articles in a clutter-free, user-friendly and efficient manner.

Elsevier worked with FAST Search and Transfer to provide state-of-the-art search engine technology to its users. Scirus crawls and indexes scientific sites and adds a classification to these sites, which gives scientists the possibility of searching within subject related areas.

About the name "Scirus"

Scirus was a seer who came from Dodona at the time of the war between Eleusis and Athens. He was killed in this war, and the place Scirum near Eleusis was named after him. The business of seers or prophets has been thought to be that of judging the signs of what is yet to come. For example, a seer knew whether a man would meet death, disease or loss of property, or in time of war, whether he would meet victory or defeat. They often interpreted the will of heaven by explaining dreams, watching the flights of birds, or gazing at the entrails of sacrificed victims.

Elsevier chose the name Scirus for their scientific search engine because science is a visionary discipline in which scientists are continuously working on new ideas and developments. Scirus supports scientists in their role as seers.

Contact:

Susan Vugts

Marketing Manager