What is a Gateway?

Portal, information gateway, directory, resource guide...there are so many terms for web sites that it can be difficult to keep them all straight. In this site we follow the Social Science Information Gateway (SOSIG) definition of an information gateway. A gateway, according to this definition, is a categorized collection of web sites, in which the included sites are evaluated and described by subject experts.

The key difference between a gateway and other internet search tools (such as a search engine or a directory) is the evaluation of included sites. There are many resources available on the World Wide Web, representing a wide variety of viewpoints, and sometimes containing misinformation. An information gateway helps users sort through online resources by only including high–quality web sites, and excluding those that contain faulty information.

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