<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div>Begin forwarded message:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1);"><b>From: </b></span><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium;">Betsy Coles <<a href="mailto:bcoles@LIBRARY.CALTECH.EDU">bcoles@LIBRARY.CALTECH.EDU</a>><br></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1);"><b>Date: </b></span><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium;">February 17, 2012 5:48:42 PM EST<br></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1);"><b>To: </b></span><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium;"><a href="mailto:JISC-REPOSITORIES@JISCMAIL.AC.UK">JISC-REPOSITORIES@JISCMAIL.AC.UK</a><br></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1);"><b>Subject: </b></span><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium;"><b>Re: [EP-tech] Re: Google Scholar discoverability of repository content</b></span></div><br><div>I'm the technical manager for the main IR at Caltech, CaltechAUTHORS</div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div>(<a href="http://authors.library.caltech.edu"><font color="red"><b>MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "authors.library.caltech.edu" claiming to be</b></font> http://authors.library.caltech..edu</a>), currently running EPrints 3.1.3. <br><br>Tim's conjecture 1) below seems to account almost exactly for the result</div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div>the article authors found: 87.7% of the 25,072 eprints in CaltechAUTHORS</div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div>have OA documents attached; the remainder have only documents that are</div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div>either restricted to campus or to repository staff. I don't think there are very</div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div>many cases of Tim's conjecture 2), since we have concentrated on adding</div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div>current content.<br><br>I haven't read the article in question (we don't subscribe), but the percentage</div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div>of open access eprints is almost exactly the same as the authors' report of GS</div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div>indexed items in Table 2. I haven't tested specifically, but it's tempting to</div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div>conclude that GS is indexing 100% of our open access content.<br><br>Betsy Coles<br>Caltech Library IT Group<br><a href="mailto:bcoles@caltech.edu">bcoles@caltech.edu</a><br><br>-----Original Message-----<br>From: eprints-tech-bounces@ecs.soton.ac.uk [mailto:eprints-tech-bounces@ecs.soton.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Tim Brody<br>Sent: Friday, February 17, 2012 3:33 AM<br>To: eprints-tech@ecs.soton.ac.uk<br>Cc: JISC-REPOSITORIES@JISCMAIL.AC.UK<br>Subject: [EP-tech] Re: Google Scholar discoverability of repository content<br><br>Hi All,<br><br>Here is some specific advice for existing repository administrators from Google Scholar:<br>http://roar.eprints.org/help/google_scholar.html<br><br>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.<br><br><br>Right, this paper ...<br><br>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.<br><br>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<br>of:<br>1) Non-OA/non-full-text records (I'm sure a query to the CalTech repository admin could supply the data).<br>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/<br><br><br>The remainder of the paper describes the authors' process of fixing their own IR (based on CONTENTdm).<br><br><br>The authors then wrongly conclude:<br><br>"Despite GS’s 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."<br><br>The authors looked at one instance of EPrints and, despite being a relatively old version, found 88% of its records indexed in GS.<br><br>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.<br><br><br>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.<br><br>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).<br><br><br>Sincerely,<br>Tim Brody<br>(EPrints Developer)<br><br>On Wed, 2012-02-15 at 11:31 +0000, Stevan Harnad wrote:<br><blockquote type="cite">Can we enhance the google-scholar discoverability of EPrints (and<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">DSpace) repositories?<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">http://linksource.ebsco.com/linking.aspx?sid=google&auinit=K&aulast=Ar<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">litsch&atitle=Invisible+Institutional+Repositories:+Addressing+the+Low<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">+Indexing+Ratios+of+IRs+in+Google+Scholar&title=Library+Hi+Tech&volume<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">=30&issue=1&date=2012&spage=4&issn=0737-8831<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Kenning Arlitsch, Patrick Shawn OBrien, (2012) "Invisible <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Institutional<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Repositories: Addressing the Low Indexing Ratios of IRs in Google <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Scholar", Library Hi Tech, Vol. 30 Iss: 1<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Purpose - Google Scholar has difficulty indexing the contents of <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">institutional repositories, and the authors hypothesize the reason is <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">that most repositories use Dublin Core, which cannot express <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">bibliographic citation information adequately for academic papers.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Google Scholar makes specific recommendations for repositories, <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">including the use of publishing industry metadata schemas over Dublin <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Core. This paper tests a theory that transforming metadata schemas in <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">institutional repositories will lead to increased indexing by Google <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Scholar.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Design/methodology/approach - The authors conducted two surveys of <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">institutional and disciplinary repositories across the United States, <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">using different methodologies. They also conducted three pilot <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">projects that transformed the metadata of a subset of papers from <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">USpace, the University of Utah's institutional repository, and <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">examined the results of Google Scholar's explicit harvests.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Findings - Repositories that use GS recommended metadata schemas and <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">express them in HTML meta tags experienced significantly higher <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">indexing ratios. The ease with which search engine crawlers can <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">navigate a repository also seems to affect indexing ratio. The second <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">and third metadata transformation pilot projects at Utah were <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">successful, ultimately achieving an indexing ratio of greater than 90%.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Research limitations/implications - The second survey was limited to <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">forty titles from each of seven repositories, for a total of 280 titles.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">A larger survey that covers more repositories may be useful.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Practical implications - Institutional repositories are achieving <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">significant mass, and the rate of author citations from those <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">repositories may affect university rankings. Lack of visibility in <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Google Scholar, however, will limit the ability of IRs to play a more <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">significant role in those citation rates.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Originality/value - Little or no research has been published about <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">improving the indexing ratio of institutional repositories in Google <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Scholar. The authors believe that they are the first to address the <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">possibility of transforming IR metadata to improve indexing ratios in <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Google Scholar.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">*** Options: <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/eprints-tech<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">*** Archive: http://www.eprints.org/tech.php/<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">*** EPrints community wiki: http://wiki.eprints.org/<br></blockquote><br><br>*** Options: http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/eprints-tech<br>*** Archive: http://www.eprints.org/tech.php/<br>*** EPrints community wiki: http://wiki.eprints.org/<br></div></blockquote></div><br></body></html>