In what may be a first, Springer U.S., a major publisher of science and business texts, has begun sponsoring a social networking site that focuses on academic users. Called CiteULike, the site combines features of social networks, social bookmarks, and blogging platforms. The most notable utility of the site is the ability to track information on academic articles. You can place a CiteULike bookmark on your browser. Once you find an online article you want to keep track of, you can click the CiteULike bookmark and a new window will pop up giving you a chance to fill in the bibliographic information, an abstract, and your own notes. CiteULike can even automatically fill in this information from some of the major science and technology databases. In addition, once you save an article, you can upload a PDF copy of the article (so you can access it again anywhere), and see what notes others have added for the article. You can also export the materials you have saved into formats that can be read by bibliographic programs such as Zotero or EndNote. In addition to saving and tracking online articles, CiteULike allows users to create profiles, host blogs on their research process, and maintain networks of colleagues (called "Connections"). It will even look at the articles you are saving and identify "neighbors": users you may or may not know, but who are bookmarking the same articles that you are. Instructors and research team leaders can also form groups that are either private (open only to a specific group of students or researchers) or public (open to any researcher or student with an interest).

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