R&D News on the Web: off to a fast start!
In the first six weeks of its launch on the World Wide Web, the CORDIS R&D News Service was accessed over 23,000 times, making it the most frequently accessed CORDIS WWW information service. The popularity of News on the Web underscores the importance of the WWW as an efficient tool to disseminate timely information on Community R&D. The Web enables CORDIS to reach interested academic and business audiences throughout Europe and around the world. Since January 1996, information available through the CORDIS WWW Service has been accessed over 1.3 million times. Users require no prior knowledge of CORDIS to use and benefit from the R&D News Service since two dynamic and easy-to-use query options are available: a standard mode for general requests and an advanced mode for more refined queries. Several features enhance the user-friendliness of the advanced mode to guarantee users maximum flexibility and ease. For example, in addition to a free text or title search, a "clickable" index has been included which enables "and/or" searching by a variety of criteria including time span, news category, programme acronym and subject index code. Currently available in English, French and German, the CORDIS News Service on the Web was introduced to better meet the demands of the European research community. It provides quick and easy access to core R&D information and timely news breaking items at minimum cost.