The AXYZnews information monitoring system has completed its first development phase and is preparing for launch. Originally, the AXYZnews program is the result of research in the field of content syndication and information retrieval, initiated in 2011 with the projects of the global news search engine SYNC2news煊 and the global scientific information search engine in medicine SYNC2med煊. Difficulties in obtaining adequate infrastructure and equipment to sustain experiments over prolonged periods led to the suspension of development efforts aimed at creating an online information portal.
In 2014, the project was revived under the name AXYZnews to respond to Law 21/2014, of November 4, amending the Intellectual Property Law. The law led to the closure of the news portal Google News Spain. Despite the absence of any profit motive, the law penalizes any reproduction, however minimal, of news provided free of charge by media outlets through their public and open syndication channels, which are perfectly indexed by any web search engine.
AXYZnews is an informational surveillance system very similar to Google News in many respects, designed to function as a standalone desktop web application, independent of any other platform. Therefore, it is not an online news portal but rather a personal tool for each user, who may freely download and use it on their own computer under their own responsibility. Moreover, there is also a research purpose, as tools are needed to study and understand a country’s informational output, characterize published content, generate information alerts, filter data, analyze media outlets, classify their editorial lines and opinion trends, develop automated classification systems, establish techniques for semantic relationship mapping among news articles, design weighting methods based on user profiles, and other potential advancements.
However, AXYZnews is not intended solely to provide current information on politics, economy, society, events, and news published by a country’s print, radio, and television media. For this reason, the following development roadmap for AXYZnews is presented for the near future, outlining the versions that will be prepared in the coming months.
Figure 1. AXYZnews development roadmap
AXYZnews will have two distinct versions: «AXYZ u» (user), designed for the information user and consumer, and the «AXYZ r» (researcher) version, intended for researchers for scientific purposes. The user version of AXYZnews may be downloaded freely, while the research version will require completing a form to register researchers and institutions that intend to use it. Based on this foundation, the program’s information sources may vary depending on the user’s selection among different options:
Media outlets.The user or researcher may select a country and work with its pre-classified print, radio, and television media. Resources for Spain, Portugal, and Brazil are currently prepared. Resources for Mexico, Italy, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States are pending review. Additional countries will be incorporated as the program develops and in accordance with a network of collaborators in interested countries.Documentation Sciences.It will compile the main information sources in the Library and Information Science sector worldwide, providing a comprehensive informational reference. This includes specialized scientific journals, major libraries, blogs, websites of prominent professionals and researchers, professional organizations and associations, and possibly specialized companies in the field.Medicine and Health Sciences.The prior experience of the SYNC2med project provided a catalog of over 14,000 classified sources and syndication channels according to the MESH. Plans include updating resources and developing specialized editions, for example: Addiction, Immunology, Anatomy, Anesthesiology, Biochemistry, Bioinformatics, Biology, Biomedical Engineering, Biomechanics, Biotechnology…Social Sciences and Humanities.As in previous editions, all available resources in Education, Geography, History, Anthropology, Law, Philosophy, Psychology, and related fields will be traced, generating collections of information sources for use in AXYZ.Engineering.This edition is research-oriented and will recover all information sources from specialized journals in each engineering discipline, generating specific collections for civil and infrastructure engineering, chemical, electronic, mechanical, industrial, mining, metallurgical, materials, and other fields.Pure and Experimental Sciences.Specialties planned include Astronomy, Biology in general, Botany, Chemistry, Geology, Mathematics, Physics, and others.