Mitch Garcia of UC Berkeley seems to be far more expert with the latest web 2.0 tool that lets you produce your own search algorithms than I, so I asked him to look into creating a Yahoo Pipe to allow anyone to search as many chemistry journals as possible that offer ASAP and in press papers online. And, much kudos to him, he has done just that. Here’s chemistry journals search pipe. He explains the process and the limitations in a little more detail on his own blog.
Give it a try and let us know what you think. What makes this tool totally tubular is that once you’ve run a search using a pipe, the results are their own RSS feed, which means you can subscribe to the results with your news reader (My Yahoo, Bloglines, Google Reader etc). Even more intriguing is the idea that you could presumably then use that feed as the basis for creating an even more sophisticated Pipe of your own.
For instance, this feed displays the results from Mitch’s Pipe searching all those chemistry journals for the word greenhouse. It’s quite unlikely that there will be any gardening papers in the ACS, RSC or Wiley chemistry journals, so you can be fairly sure that this feed will bring you the latest papers on greenhouse gases and their effects. Combine that with a feed for global warming, and one for climate change, and you should have the niche covered.