Unlike other providers of such information, io-port for the first time pools information from world-wide publications - CompuScience, DBLP, LeaBib and CCSB
Semantic web, software engineering, bio-informatics: scientists from all over the world do research on current topics in informatics.
Consequently, the results and theories published in this scientific area are usually not available from one single source.
Now this service is available: The informatics portal io-port is the first one to offer computer scientists centralised access to more than two million publications.
Up to now, conference proceedings, electronic journal articles, dissertations or technical reports on research in informatics were only available from different databases.
Unlike other providers of such information, io-port for the first time pools information from world-wide publications - CompuScience, DBLP, LeaBib and CCSB.
Thus it is possible to quickly and easily search for comprehensive information on informatics topics.
io-port.net also provides exclusive access to all texts from the series 'Lecture Notes in Informatics' (LNI) published by the Gesellschaft fur Informatik (GI).
"This large data pool for computer scientists is unique in the world", says Sabine Brunger-Weilandt, president and CEO of Fiz Karlsruhe.
Her organisation is one of the partners who have jointly developed io-port.net; the others are the Gesellschaft fur Informatik (GI), and experts from the universities of Karlsruhe, Trier and Munich.
The German version of the portal went online in January 2006, the English version has been launched in July 2006.
Useful features create value-add Documents stored in io-port can either be directly accessed online or ordered through an automatic document broker service.
All results from a search query are interconnected and also linked to further internal or external data.
An e-mail alert service informs the user if new publications matching a predefined search query have been added to the database.
Particularly useful for computer scientists working on various research topics is the Document Manager.
This tool allows them to create and annotate a personalised data collection, sorted by topic and relevance.
The tool Recommender sorts search results according to a working context which the user has defined by means of the Document Manager.
The Query Refinement tool suggests relevant terms to be added to a search query in order to refine it.
Free basic services To meet the needs of scientists, io-port offers free basic services and chargeable value-add services.
Among the basic services are the simple search without access to full-texts; the informatics lexicon provided by the GI, and special pages with extensive information on various informatics topics.
"Thus scientists can have a first look at io-port.net, without the need to register for a personalised, chargeable user ID," explains Ute Rusnak, head of the universities, research and public institutions department at Fiz Karlsruhe.
The annual fee for a single-user license including access to value-add services like the Document Manager or the alert service is 125 Euro.
Members of the German Informatics Society are granted special rates.
A similar license for all scientists of an institute or university department costs 800 Euro per year.
