Microsoft Academic Search: A Major Update and Several New Features Now Available

We will have more about this release when the holiday weekend is over but until then we wanted to let you know that the Microsoft Academic Search database has just undergone a major update that’s now live.

As we said in in March and we will say again today, look out Google Scholar. It will be interesting to see if, when, and how they respond now that “Academic” has begun to mature. Whatever happens, the addition of Microsoft Academic is good news for  info pros and researchers.

Academic Search debuted in 2009 with all new technology and not a number of enhancements to the Microsoft Live Academic product that was around several years ago and did a poor job (and that’s being very nice).

Academic Search comes from Microsoft Research with much of the development coming from MS Research Asia.

What’s New Today

• The database of searchable publications has nearly doubled.
  • From 15.7 million publications to 27.1 million publications as of today
  • Access to material from 10.5 million authors to 16.2 million authors

• Material in 14 domains available with more to come including humanities and social sciences material.

• Biology & Biochemistry
• Chemistry
• Clinical Medicine
• Computer Science
• Economics & Business
• Engineering
•  Immunology
• Mathematics
• Microbiology
• Molecular Biology & Genetics
• Neuroscience & Behavior
• Pharmacology & Toxicology
• Physics
• Psychiatry & Psychology

• The launch of Academic Map Search

• New Compare Organizations Tool

• “Compare differences in the number of publications and citations as well as research priorities and interests between two organizations.”

• Improved: Keyword Detail Info

• New stemming variations and definition context

• View History

• “All past changes to the author/paper are listed in reverse-chronological order, users can view history by clicking the “View History” tab in the user contribution center.”

• Release of a Windows Mobile app

Finally (for now), here are a couple of INFOdocket posts from March and April that discuss some of our favorite features:

• “Expansion Begins: Microsoft Academic Search Adds Physics Material to Database”

• “Microsoft Academic Search (Beta) Appears Ready to Expand Database Coverage”

That’s it for now. More after the holiday. Have a good one.

Direct to Microsoft Academic Search

Sources: Twitter, MS Academic Web Site, etc.

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