The new version offers more subject-specific content and features like expanded information types (including Company Homepages), dynamic teasers that highlight search terms within the results list, and improved relevance ranking. According to the announcement, the enhancements were made based on a study of scientists who use the service.

Scirus' index now contains over 107 million science-specific pages, with new full-text additions like NASA reports, CogPrints pre- and postprints, and preprints from the Chemistry and Mathematics Preprint Servers. Scirus now offers more than 17 million proprietary records that cannot be found using generic search engines. In addition, Scirus includes a continuously updated news feed—provided by the LexisNexis Web Publisher News Database—that delivers the latest science headlines.

Scirus was launched in April 2001 by Elsevier Science and is part of the ScienceDirect family of products. FAST search technology is used by IBM, InfoSpace, Reuters, and Terra Lycos.

Source: Elsevier Science, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 011-31-20-485-3851; http://www.elsevier.com.