SELECT - Rating and filtering of scientific, technical and other network documents

• Research unit: EU RFP
• Project number: 98.0065

Key words (English)

Information Filtering; Collaborative Filtering; World Wide Web; Groupware; Usenet News

Alternative project number (English)

EU project number: RE 4008 (RE)

Research programs (English)

EU-programme: 4. Frame Research Programme - 1.1 Information technologies

Short description (English)

See abstract

Partners and International Organizations (English)

Omega Generation SRL (I); Starlab / Riverland (B); MediBRIDGE NV (B); Hungarian Academy of Science (HU); Technische Universität Wien (A); KTH and Stockholm University (S); EuroSeek AB, (S); University of Edinburgh, (UK); University of Lancaster, (UK);International Software Consulting Network Ltd, (IRL)

Abstract (English)

Internet started as a network for science and technology, and still a large part of the documents available on the Internet are scientific and technical documents provided by universities and other research and educational organisations. However, the spread of availability of the Internet to commercial organisations and to undergraduate students has meant a decline in the reliability of the documents available on the net. Nowadays, when you use the web to look up a document, or read a message in e-mail or Usenet News, you cannot trust the correctness of the document. This has reduced the usefulness of the network for use by scientific and technical professionals.
In normal scientific and technical communication, a number of instruments are available to safeguard the quality of the information. Examples of this are peer-reviewed journals and conferences and the academic traditions of thesis development and presentation. Other EU-funded projects have tried to remedy this problem by copying the traditional methods onto networked applications, for example by peer-reviewed electronic journals. The disadvantage with this method is that it is expensive, time-consuming, and in practice will only provide quality for a small number of networked documents.
SELECT aims at helping to solve this problem in another way. Rating and intelligent filtering tools will be developed, to help users find the information of value. Filtering for one scientific and technical user will be based on ratings provided by other users with similar competence and on other filtering criteria. Rating and filtering will be provided on documents in mailing lists, in Usenet News, in other messaging services like TAP Web4Groups and on Web documents. EuroSeek, one of the most successful European providers of Internet search services, will provide our rating and filtering services to their users.

References in databases (English)

Swiss Database: Euro-DB of the
State Secretariat for Education and Research
Hallwylstrasse 4
CH-3003 Berne, Switzerland
Tel. [phone]
Swiss Project-Number: 98.0065