Philippines - The Department of Science and Technology (DOST) recently unveiled Science.ph, which it billed the country’s first S&T search engine and a comprehensive website on various science and technology-related issues.
The website launch was held at the Arts in the City center in Bonifacio Global City on the evening of February 24. At the same event, DOST also honored the country’s top science journalists at the Gawad Jose L. Guerrero Awards and commemorated the 25th anniversary of DOST’s Science and Technology Information Institute.
The website was created by STII. The institute’s IT unit head and science.ph project leader Alfon Narquita explained the benefits of the website at the launch event, including the advantage of its search engine over Google: its ability to search through the “hidden web” categories that crawlers can’t access because the sites are database-driven and therefore do not show up on a Google search. Since DOST has partnered with agencies such as NAST, government institutions, academe, NGOs and private groups, the information from these sources can be found by the science.ph user through the site’s search engine. Demand for information has grown, and now the accessibility of this information has to keep pace with the demand. Its creators hope that the website addresses this need. To date, the website has indexed almost 300,000 records from 56 institutions. “We did the searching in advance for you,” said Narquita. “We research your research.”
Science.ph also features news items, photos and videos.
“Science.ph was developed for the use of researchers, teachers, students, communicators or any individual who wants to know more about the latest breakthroughs and developments in the Philippine science scene,” said Aristotle Carandang, leader of Changing the Mindset, a program that included the development of the website.
At the event, Phivolcs director Rene Solidum relayed Secretary Mario Montejo’s congratulations to STII on the launch of the website, hailing it as a comprehensive source of Philippine scientific and technological information and databases.
Solidum also launched the website that evening by ceremonially “pressing” a “button” on the screen, making the website available to visitors and information seekers.
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