The site, science.ph (http://www.science.ph), is a local spin-off of the US science portal, science.gov.

But to avoid the impression that it contained only government-related resources, site developers decided not to enlist under the gov.ph domain address but opted to register with privately-owned registrar DotPH.

"We’ve been dreaming of creating a science portal for five years. It’s only now that this has come true," said Donna-Ruth Montalban, project head of the information technology team from the DoST’s Science and Technology Information Institute (STII).

The portal, according to her, is the first online information search service in the country that essentially serves as a gateway to consolidated S&T-related information gathered from various institutions in the science community.

Currently, there are 14 databases that are searchable in the site, which is still under the first phase of development. In the next few months, Montalban’s team promised to add more databases and integrate ecommerce support for full text documents and other resources, user personalization and customization, full semantic Web support, and collaborative filtering system.

According to Montalban, science.ph is more versatile than some popular search engines because it uses S&T-controlled vocabulary and thesaurus, which hastens the information search.

The portal was developed using funds that formed part of the regular budget of the STII, she said. "There was no additional budget that was given to us to produce this project. Our salary was the only fund used to develop the portal. This is why we’re very proud of this project."

The team adopted open source technologies in developing the site.

With the new system, Montalban said DoST clients and other information seekers need not browse and access several sites of the department’s 21 agencies before finding the information they need.

Through the portal, users can now access databases on the library holdings of DoST called the Science Information Network (ScINET), as well as biobibliographical information on Philippine scientists, profiles of S&T institutions in the country, and profiles of DoST-funded or assisted research and development projects.

The site also contains abstracts and indices of Philippine S&T publications, including theses and dissertations, and indices of foreign publications on S&T.

The portal includes other functions such as default integrated search, category search, thesauri data entering, directory service for Uniform Resource Locator (URL) link collection, recommendation and suggestive system, collaborative filtering, search within a category, personalization and customization, and semantic Web integration.

Other DoST agencies involved in the project include Technology Applications and Promotion Institute, Science Education Institute, Philippine Council for Advanced Science and Technology Research and Development, Philippine Council for Industry and Energy Research and Development, and Philippine Council for Forestry, Agriculture, and Natural Resources Research and Development.