[GOAL] Re: Google's role in sustaining the public good to research parallel to developments in open access?

Sat Jul 14 22:46:58 BST 2012

Gary,

I think your one-stop shop reason is not why Google scholar dominates.  I
think instead it is because libraries lack the inhouse capability to build
search.

Discovery tools are almost universally built by vendors, then libraries
rent use of the tool, specifically in order to allow cross database search
of paid subscription databases.  Open access is not the goal for discovery
tool.  No, the goal is to get central access and tracking or expensive paid
resources.  In fact, I have heard criticism of Google Scholar's indexing
preprints of articles, and the need to eliminate from student research
the non-authoritative materials indexed in Google Scholar, put out as a
reason why a discovery tool is a good thing.  That goes against discovery
of open access, because of course open access is where preprints and drafts
may be posted then mistaken for final copies.

In my land, law library land, the institutional repository platform Digital
Commons has a monopoly on all US law school institutional repositories
other than Texas Tech.  Digital Commons lets you publish metadata in a
format compatible with OAI-PMH harversters, but acording to the
documentatoin on its website does not allow you to harvest
metadata.  A library renting Digital Commons doesn't get an OAI-PMH
harvester, and can't use this rented tool to make a portal to other
institutions' open access resources.  The trend towards this particular
hosted platform is not just a trend towards high levels of customer support
and a hidden IT backend (probably necessary for widespread participation),
but also a trend away from the ability for the library community to build
searches across collections (a less obvious and maybe negative direction to
go).
Google is a go-to place for search because the people who work at Google
are able to build a search engine.  They are able to build Google.  The
people who work at the library are, for the most part, unable to build a
search engine.  They are able to do an RFI, decide what to pay, look at
some products, and then pay lots of money to rent access to a search
engine.  Librarians are not able to build EBSCO Discovery Service.
(Applause to consortiums building in-house discovery tools.  But presently,
they are few and far between.)  Librarians aren't able to build Google
Scholar.  That's why Google Scholar is dominant.  That's why search is
controled by a private corporation.

The way to get better discovery of open access resources is to (1) be aware
of it and try to get your open access material indexed in whatever search
engine people are using, and (2) eventually build the search engine from
within the library community and make biases in that search engine
transparent.

Oh, and let's all keep in mind, Google Scholar indexes open access
material, but it is not an open access search engine.  Google Scholar
indexes subscription resources as well as open access.  As a
library, you report to Google Scholar what resources you subscribe to, so
that it gives patrons your link-resolver.  It's clearly not trying to be
solely an open access discovery tool.

-Wilhelmina Randtke

On Sat, Jul 14, 2012 at 1:39 PM, Omega Alpha Open Access <
oa.openaccess at gmail.com> wrote:

> Les/Peter,
>
> The problem I see with the "many" is the problem of FRAGMENTATION of
> search and discovery. If I put my academic librarian hat on for a moment
> and observe the way our students (and frankly, faculty too) tend to seek
> for needed/relevant information, they want one-stop convenience. They don't
> want to have to go to numerous sites to search for stuff. That is why
> Google is such a compelling experience. We have recently implemented EBSCO
> Discovery Service on our campus as a way to bring that convenience of
> Google-like search and discovery to vetted library resources. But at
> present, open access resources are only a small portion of this (though I
> believe EDS does search OAIster, DOAJ [though mainly at the journal level
> only], BioMed, etc.).
>
> OK, we might applaud Microsoft for trying to bring competition into the
> market by providing a similar experience to academic search. But am I
> REALLY going to duplicate my search efforts between 2 or more search
> engines? This brings me back to the original point: Google is great. But
> can/ought we continue to rely so heavily on Google (or Bing/Academic
> Search, etc.) to assure continued indexing to open access literature?
>
> Second, I noticed you referred to REPOSITORY indexing services. Here I
> think we may encounter a disciplinary difference. In the humanities, and
> especially religious studies/theology, I believe the growth of open access
> has a much better shot via the JOURNALS (Gold) route. I don't see any
> problem with humanities scholars utilizing repositories for practical
> preservation and supplemental discoverability. But this is not going to be
> enough to encourage a shift to OA. Scholarly tradition in the humanities
> strongly values associating one's research with textual artifacts and
> textual communities that create a sense of historical continuity. They want
> their research to appear as articles in journals of reputation within their
> discipline, and to be preserved in the archives of those journals.
>
> The first step (and this is the role I have assumed as an OA advocate in
> religious studies) is to reassure humanist scholars that open access
> journals can function just as effectively as well-known and well-reputed
> subscription-based journals have done in the past. Humanities scholars are
> also concerned with discoverability. Here we have been stressing that OA
> can do a BETTER job with discoverability because, among other things, we
> can easily submit their research to indexing through search engines such as
> Google. Here too, this brings me back to the original point: Google is
> great. But can/ought we continue to rely so heavily on Google (or
> Bing/Academic Search, etc.) to assure continued indexing to open access
> literature?
>
> Good weekend to all!
>
> Gary F. Daught
> Omega Alpha | Open Access
>
> On Jul 14, 2012, at 7:00 AM, goal-request at eprints.org wrote:
>
> > Message: 2
> > Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2012 10:29:37 +0000
> > From: Les A Carr <lac at ecs.soton.ac.uk>
> > Subject: [GOAL] Re: Google's role in sustaining the public good to
> >       research parallel to developments in open access?
> > To: "Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)" <goal at eprints.org>
> > Cc: "Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)" <goal at eprints.org>
> > Message-ID:
> >       <EMEW3|d148925cce8122914a7e596c5be81781o6DBYf03lac|ecs.soton.ac.uk
> |485FF2DB-FC83-4818-B60B-CDEFCA30452C at ecs.soton.ac.uk>
> >
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
> >
> > I'm finding these sentiments puzzling. There are many repository
> indexing services, such as OAIster, BASE, OpenAIRE and any number of
> indexing services from the DRIVER stable. (There's also Bing and Microsoft
> Academic Search.) None of these get much use because Google is so dominant,
> but there ARE a number to choose from. As Peter says, it's not that
> difficult.
> >
> > There's all sorts of searching innovations that I'd like to see beyond
> Google, and Microsoft are trying hard in this space. I'd like to see even
> more community efforts offering greater utility than "spot the word" but I
> guess that these will emerge with the network effect of more OA from more
> authors.
> >
> > Sent from my iPhone
> >
> > On 13 Jul 2012, at 17:14, "Peter Murray-Rust" <pm286 at cam.ac.uk<mailto:
> pm286 at cam.ac.uk>> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Jul 13, 2012 at 4:51 PM, Omega Alpha Open Access <
> oa.openaccess at gmail.com<mailto:oa.openaccess at gmail.com>> wrote:
> > Les,
> >
> > Greetings. I wasn't questioning the public good Google has contributed
> *to date*, and I know they aren't the only game in town. However, they are
> the dominant player. To the degree that indexing is vital for open access
> research discoverability on the web, don't you think that it is a potential
> problem for a commercial entity to serve such a crucial role with nothing
> more than "market forces" and a promise to be a good corporate citizen to
> sustain the effort indefinitely? Google Scholar is not yet serving-up ads,
> but there is really nothing to stop them.
> >
> > I agree with these sentiments - I think it is irresponsible for academia
> not to index its own scholarship. They could and they don't.
> >
> > There are several domain-specific repositories (PMC, RePEC, DBLP,
> Citeseer, etc.) which systematically index large chunks of the scholarly
> literature and which are Open.
> >
> > It is also relatively easy to crawl the open electronic scholarship and
> index it. We have done this for crystal structures (except those hidden
> bethind paywalls) and have ca 200,000. We have a system PubCrawler (funded
> in part by JISC) that creates systematic inxdexes of metadata.
> >
> > It is particularly unfortunate that university repositories are not
> systematically indexed (e.g. for theses). But many universities prefer to
> give their thesis management to commercial companies and buy back the
> metadata.
> >
> > P.
> >
> > --
> > Peter Murray-Rust
> > Reader in Molecular Informatics
> > Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
> > University of Cambridge
> > CB2 1EW, UK
> > +44-1223-763069
> > _______________________________________________
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