From: Anurag Acharya <acha@google.com>

Subject: Re: [EP-tech] Are Closed Access Deposits Indexed by Google Scholar?

Date: 5 March, 2013 10:30:35 PM EST

To: Stevan Harnad <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk>

Cc: eprints-tech@ecs.soton.ac.uk, Couture Marc <marc.couture@teluq.ca>

Hi Marc: I took a quick look at the examples you mentioned. I noticed couple of issues:

First things first, you are explicitly asking for these pages to not be indexed. For the two examples you mentioned:

view-source:http://www.archipel.uqam.ca/4254/

<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" />

view-source:http://www.archipel.uqam.ca/4252/

<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" />

A noindex robots metatag on an html page asks web search services to not index the page.

Second, I don't know if this is an old version of eprints or a custom repository but looks like it doesn't include the machine-readable bibliographic metadata that eprints 3.0 and later embed using metatags. Eg: 

view-source:http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/349474/

 <meta name="eprints.creators_name" content="Ohka, Seii" />

<meta name="eprints.creators_name" content="Sakai, Mai" />

<meta name="eprints.creators_name" content="Bohnert, Stephanie" />

<meta name="eprints.creators_name" content="Igarashi, Hiroko" />

<meta name="eprints.creators_name" content="Deinhardt, Katrin" />

<meta name="eprints.creators_name" content="Schiavo, Giampietro" />

<meta name="eprints.creators_name" content="Nomoto, Akio" />

[...]

If you are using an older version of eprints, I would recommend upgrading to a version later than 3.0. If you are using a different repository software, I would recommend http://roar.eprints.org/help/google_scholar.html and http://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/inclusion.html

cheers,

anurag

On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 5:17 AM, Stevan Harnad <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote:

On 2013-03-05, at 5:12 AM, Tim Brody <tdb2@ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote:

On Mon, 4 Mar 2013 15:23:06 -0500, Stevan Harnad <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk>
wrote:

I have been told that closed access deposits for
http://www.archipel.uqam.ca are not being indexed by Google Scholar: Is
there any way around this?

(I mean the metadata, of course, not the full-text, which I know is
unharvestable till access is re-set as OA).

There's no reason that the metadata pages shouldn't be indexed, but I don't
think (?) Google Scholar will list metadata-only records from repositories.

A specific example would be useful.

It's bad news (for the Button) if GS does not index the metadata of Closed Access deposits. (GS certainly indexes plenty of papers that do not have a free full-text version on the web).

Could this (if it's true) be fixed by optimizing the way an EPrints IR presents itself to google and GS (levels of embedding or something like that)? I seem to remember Les saying that the depth of documents was important.

A DSpace IR, Orbi, has 50% Closed Access contents (for example, here). 

These are all picked up by Google, for example this one: "Tubulin isoforms identified in the brain by MALDI in-source decay"

but they appear very late in the Google hit list (especially for much-sited or multi-cited papers)

and the Orbi version does not seem to be picked up by GS at all.

This is extremely important, because it affects the efficacy of the Button, and thereby the power of an immediate-deposit mandate (and the incentive to adopt one).

Is there any way to address this problem directly in EPrints (plus advice for our cousins in DSpace)?

Many thanks,

Stevan

From: Couture Marc <marc.couture@teluq.ca>

Subject: RE: [EP-tech] Are Closed Access Deposits Indexed by Google Scholar?

Date: 4 March, 2013 6:17:13 PM EST

To: Stevan Harnad <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk>, Leslie Carr <lac@ecs.soton.ac.uk>

Hi,

My belief that Google / Scholar doesn't index closed access documents (more precisely, the HTML page with the metadata) is based upon a simple check with two closed access documents in Archipel :

1. http://www.archipel.uqam.ca/4252 

This is the manuscript of a published article (Title : So into it they forget what time it is?)

If I put the title (between quotes) in Google or Google Scholar, all I see is the published (toll access) version :

http://www.igi-global.com/chapter/into-they-forget-time/67430 

2. http://www.archipel.uqam.ca/4254 

The title is: Discretionary power of project managers in knowledge intensive firms and gender issues

Again, Google Scholar finds only the published version (Google doesn't even find it):

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cjas.147/abstract 

On the same results page, one sees another paper, available in open acces in Archipel, citing this one.

Both manuscripts have been in Archipel for more than one year (deposit date: Nov 2011).


Marc Couture