Open Access: Google Scholar Focuses on Peer-Reviewed Content

Barbara Quint, contributing editor for NewsBreaks, editor-in-chief of Searcher, and a columnist for Information Today, "Google Scholar Focuses on Research-Quality Content" (22 Nov 2004, Information Today)
Leading text: "Despite all the warnings from experienced information professionals, many scholars, researchers, and students continue to make Google their first stop for locating research information. Google has now introduced a beta service called Google Scholar that segregates research quality sources and provides special search features and result displays to accommodate scholars’ information needs. While not removing any sites from the main Google service, Google Scholar enables specific searches of scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, pre-prints, abstracts, and technical reports. Content includes a range of publishers and aggregators with whom Google already has standing arrangements, e.g., the Association for Computing Machinery, IEEE, OCLC’s Open WorldCat library locator service, etc. Result displays will show different version clusters, citation analysis, and library location (currently books only). Although claiming coverage "from all broad areas of research," early evaluation seems to show a clear emphasis on science and technology, rather than the arts, humanities, or social sciences..." [FullText] [Open Access Initiatives in Israel]