WorldWideScience - A Step towards Open Science?

The 22nd of June 2007 the Department of Energy (USA) and The British Library of the United States of America opened the new search portal www.worldwidescience.org which has a Declaration of Intention that moves in the direction of Open Science.

The portal has ambitions of becoming a similar gateway as I suggested in my manifest the 29th July, the need for releasing the holds on Science is needed for a dynamic development. This is clearly also the intent of WorldWideScience:

WorldWideScience.org is the prototype for a global science gateway connecting you to national and international scientific databases. WorldWideScience.org accelerates scientific discovery and progress by providing one-stop searching (see advanced search) of global science sources.

Though I welcome this initiative as a step in the right direction, it is still just a collection of databases, made searchable, containing existing information. It undoubtedly (if used) will bring project partners closer to each other in their field of interest, but not necessarily improve or accelerate scientific discovery in its present form.

I wish their project the best and hope to see it develop.