From ProQuest:
The full text of its scholarly content – including journals and working papers – is now indexed in Google Scholar, enabling Google Scholar users to seamlessly discover and access their library’s ProQuest collections. Efficiency and productivity for both ProQuest and Google Scholar users is improved, while libraries benefit from increased usage for their subscribed collections.
The collaboration between Google and ProQuest enables authenticated ProQuest users to be recognized at the ProQuest platform after they search using Google Scholar and connects them to full-text scholarly content in their libraries’ collections. Users who are not recognized are sent to a landing page with the abstract or an image of the first page, protecting all rights holders. To read full text, the users authenticate themselves using their library credentials. There is nothing for libraries to set up – the linking is seamless and automatic.
Read the Complete Announcement
A Couple of Notes and Questions From Gary Price, infoDOCKET Founder/Editor:
My point here is to ask some questions and cause discussion and not to say this and many other Google Scholar metadata initiatives are a bad idea.
1. As Google’s own documentation point out, the Google Library Links program, specifically the new Google Scholar Browser Button (for Chrome), “works best on campus.” Yes, Library Links will work from off-campus but it requires additional steps that can take time and a bit of effort in configuring.
2. The Google Library Links lookup can produce multiple results from the same institution (I’ve seen this many times) leaving the user confused and overwhelmed. Plus, I’ve noticed entering the name of an institution will not produce results even if they’re part of the program.
Examples
- Two entries for the University of Chicago. Three entries for Syracuse University. Six entries for the University of Toronto? Which one should a student select? There is no help available on a results page.
- Entering Oakton Community College (located just outside of Chicago) returns zero results. However, entering “Oakton” returns the correct entry.
- Montgomery College (located outside of DC) has duplicate entries for Gale and one for ProQuest. Again, which one does the student select? All three?
3. It’s one thing to set-up Library Links to work “off campus” on a regular web browser but even more of a challenge to get it working on a mobile device.
4. Questions
A. If the metadata provided to Google shows that an article is available in a ProQuest database as well as on the authors web site, repository, etc. will Google note the published/final versions? Does this even matter to most users?
B. What will Google do (rank highest? lowest?) if an article is available from a PQ database, another vendor also supplying metadata to school as well as an open repository/author web site? Which version goes first?
C. What would make a user decide to use the ProQuest result (of an article) available (via Google Scholar) vs. using the approved for publication/preprint versions? Do users know the difference? Does faculty care about the version used? Remember, a user does not need to do any special configuration of their browser to get the preprint/open access version.
D. Bottom Line: Does all of this confuse the user? What does all of this mean as libraries spend big bucks on discovery layers? Will users take the time to make it all work correctly?
About Gary Price
