Begin forwarded message:
From: Betsy Coles <[email protected]>
List-Post: [email protected]
List-Post: [email protected]
Date: February 17, 2012 5:48:42 PM EST
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [EP-tech] Re: Google Scholar discoverability of repository
content
I'm the technical manager for the main IR at Caltech, CaltechAUTHORS
(MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from
"authors.library.caltech.edu" claiming to be
http://authors.library.caltech..edu), currently running EPrints
3.1.3. Â
Tim's conjecture 1) below seems to account almost exactly for the
result
the article authors found: 87.7% of the 25,072 eprints in
CaltechAUTHORS
have OA documents attached; the remainder have only documents that
are
either restricted to campus or to repository staff. Â I don't think
there are very
many cases of Tim's conjecture 2), since we have concentrated on
adding
current content.
I haven't read the article in question (we don't subscribe), but the
percentage
of open access eprints is almost exactly the same as the authors'
report of GS
indexed items in Table 2. Â I haven't tested specifically, but it's
tempting to
conclude that GS is indexing 100% of our open access content.
Betsy Coles
Caltech Library IT Group
[email protected]
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Tim Brody
Sent: Friday, February 17, 2012 3:33 AM
To: [email protected]
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: [EP-tech] Re: Google Scholar discoverability of repository
content
Hi All,
Here is some specific advice for existing repository administrators
from Google Scholar:
http://roar.eprints.org/help/google_scholar.html
As far as I'm aware there isn't anyone running EPrints 2 now, so
EPrints-based repositories are already (and for a long) the "best in
class" for Google Scholar.
Right, this paper ...
Table 1 is irrelevant and misleading. Scholar links first to the
publisher and, only if there is no publisher link, directly to the
IR version. That's a policy decision on the part of Scholar and
nothing to do with IRs.
Table 2 gives us some useful data. The headline rate for EPrints is
88% (based on CalTech). Unfortunately the authors haven't provided
an analysis of what happened to the missing records. I've done a
quick random sample of CalTech and I suspect the missing records
will consist
of:
1) Non-OA/non-full-text records (I'm sure a query to the CalTech
repository admin could supply the data).
2) A percentage of PDFs that Scholar won't be able to parse. CalTech
contains some old (1950s), scanned PDFs from Journals. Where the
article isn't at the top of the page Scholar will struggle to parse
the title/authors/abstract and therefore won't be able to match it
to their records e.g. http://authors.library.caltech.edu/5815/
The remainder of the paper describes the authors' process of fixing
their own IR (based on CONTENTdm).
The authors then wrongly conclude:
"Despite GSâs endorsement of three software packages, the surveys
conducted for this paper demonstrates that software is not a
deciding factor for indexing ratio in GS. Each of the three
recommended software packages showed good indexing ratios for some
repositories and poor ratios for others."
The authors looked at one instance of EPrints and, despite being a
relatively old version, found 88% of its records indexed in GS.
It is unfortunate that this paper has suggested that IR software in
general is poorly indexed in GS. On the contrary, some badly
implemented IR software is poorly indexed in GS.
After all that is said, the most critical factor to IR visibility is
having (BOAI definition) open access content. Hiding content behind
search forms, click-throughs and other things that emphasise the IR
at the expense of the content will hurt your visibility.
Lastly, Google will index your metadata-only records while Google
Scholar is looking for full-texts. Your GS/Google ratio will
approximate how many of your records have an attached open access
PDF (.doc etc).
Sincerely,
Tim Brody
(EPrints Developer)
On Wed, 2012-02-15 at 11:31 +0000, Stevan Harnad wrote:
Can we enhance the google-scholar discoverability of
EPrints (and
DSpace) repositories?
http://linksource.ebsco.com/linking.aspx?sid=google&auinit=K&aulast=Ar
litsch&atitle=Invisible+Institutional+Repositories:+Addressing+the+Low
+Indexing+Ratios+of+IRs+in+Google+Scholar&title=Library+Hi+Tech&volume
=30&issue=1&date=2012&spage=4&issn=0737-8831
Kenning Arlitsch, Patrick Shawn OBrien, (2012)
"Invisible
Institutional
Repositories: Addressing the Low Indexing Ratios of IRs
in Google
Scholar", Library Hi Tech, Vol. 30 Iss: 1
Purpose - Google Scholar has difficulty indexing the
contents of
institutional repositories, and the authors hypothesize
the reason is
that most repositories use Dublin Core, which cannot
express
bibliographic citation information adequately for
academic papers.
Google Scholar makes specific recommendations for
repositories,
including the use of publishing industry metadata
schemas over Dublin
Core. This paper tests a theory that transforming
metadata schemas in
institutional repositories will lead to increased
indexing by Google
Scholar.
Design/methodology/approach - The authors conducted two
surveys of
institutional and disciplinary repositories across the
United States,
using different methodologies. They also conducted three
pilot
projects that transformed the metadata of a subset of
papers from
USpace, the University of Utah's institutional
repository, and
examined the results of Google Scholar's explicit
harvests.
Findings - Repositories that use GS recommended metadata
schemas and
express them in HTML meta tags experienced significantly
higher
indexing ratios. The ease with which search engine
crawlers can
navigate a repository also seems to affect indexing
ratio. The second
and third metadata transformation pilot projects at Utah
were
successful, ultimately achieving an indexing ratio of
greater than 90%.
Research limitations/implications - The second survey
was limited to
forty titles from each of seven repositories, for a
total of 280 titles.
A larger survey that covers more repositories may be
useful.
Practical implications - Institutional repositories are
achieving
significant mass, and the rate of author citations from
those
repositories may affect university rankings. Lack of
visibility in
Google Scholar, however, will limit the ability of IRs
to play a more
significant role in those citation rates.
Originality/value - Little or no research has been
published about
improving the indexing ratio of institutional
repositories in Google
Scholar. The authors believe that they are the first to
address the
possibility of transforming IR metadata to improve
indexing ratios in
Google Scholar.
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