Students in seven Irish third-level institutions are to be given direct Internet access to the world's most comprehensive academic database, Web of Science, comprising some 8,400 influential journals on science, social science and arts and humanities.
The Minister of State for Science and Technology, Mr Noel Treacy, yesterday announced an agreement between the database's provider, the Philadelphia-based Institute for Scientific Information, a consortium of the institutions' librarians and HEAnet, Ireland's on-line education and research network.
The new service, which will be managed by HEAnet, will provide bibliographical data, author abstracts and cited references. The Irish institutions using the service will be UCD, TCD, DCU, UCC, NUI Galway, the University of Limerick and Dublin Institute of Technology.