This short article discusses an emerging trend in the information-seeking behaviour of scientists, i.e. mere reliance on online information. Based on a study of physicists and astronomers, this article shows that more scientists now assume that if articles are of enough quality and significance, they must be available online and vice versa. Though still in a low minority, a number of scientists believe that what is not available online is not worth the effort to obtain it.

The federated vertical search portal scitopia.org was created through the imagination and collaboration of 15 leading science and technology societies. Searching for a better way to help researchers quickly get to the quality content they need, these society publishers developed a gateway to the research most cited in scholarly work and patents. Scitopia.org searches the entire electronic libraries of the leading voices in major science and technology disciplines and provides relevant results, without the noise of other Internet search engines. More than three million documents, including peer-reviewed journal content and technical conference papers, spanning 150 years of science and technology can be searched through the site.