Product Overview of CiteSeerX
CiteSeerX is a comprehensive digital library search engine and repository that provides free access to a vast array of scholarly documents, primarily in the fields of computer and information science. Here’s an overview of what CiteSeerX does and its key features:
History and Development
CiteSeerX originated as CiteSeer in 1997 at the NEC Research Institute in Princeton, NJ. It was later transitioned to the College of Information Sciences and Technology at Pennsylvania State University in 2003, where it has been directed by C. Lee Giles. The service was renamed CiteSeerX in 2008 to reflect its expanded capabilities and new architecture.
Core Functionality
- Document Access: CiteSeerX offers access to over 6 million scholarly documents, including journal pre-prints, papers, conference proceedings, and technical reports. Users have full-text access to all searchable documents on the website.
- Autonomous Citation Indexing: CiteSeerX was the first digital library search engine to implement autonomous citation indexing, allowing users to find related papers using citation graphs and evaluate literature based on citation statistics.
Key Features
- Automatic Metadata Extraction: The system uses machine learning methods to extract metadata such as titles, authors, affiliations, abstracts, and citations from PDF files harvested from the web. This metadata is then indexed and made searchable.
- Document Classification and De-duplication: CiteSeerX employs AI techniques for document classification and de-duplication to ensure that the database remains accurate and efficient.
- Citation Context and Related Documents: Users can view the context of citations to a given paper, see what other researchers have to say about an article, and browse related documents using citation links.
- Table, Figure, and Algorithm Indexing: CiteSeerX performs automatic extraction and indexing of tables, figures, and algorithms, which is a rare capability among scholarly search engines.
- Open Access and Data Sharing: CiteSeerX is an open access digital library, providing all documents and metadata under a Creative Commons license. The data is shared through an Open Archive Initiative (OAI) service interface and bulk downloads on Amazon S3.
Architecture and Technology
- SeerSuite Framework: CiteSeerX is built on the SeerSuite framework, an open-source platform that can be deployed on similar sites. The framework uses Apache Solr and other Apache and open-source tools, making it a testbed for new algorithms in document harvesting, ranking, and information extraction.
- Web Crawler and Data Servers: The system uses a web crawler to harvest PDF files from the web, which are then processed by data-extraction modules. The data is stored on repository servers, and metadata is retrieved from database servers.
Usage and Impact
- User Base: CiteSeerX has nearly one million users worldwide and receives millions of hits daily. Annual downloads of document PDFs are substantial, with nearly 200 million downloads in 2015 alone.
- Sustainability and Community: The project is funded by various organizations, including the National Science Foundation, NASA, and Microsoft Research. It aims to create a sustainable system with low operational overhead and high-quality data and metadata.
CiteSeerX stands out as a pioneering platform in the open access movement, enhancing the dissemination and access to academic and scientific literature through its innovative use of AI technologies and open-source architecture.