Monday, March 3, 2008

Google and CrossRef

Somehow stumbled across this following up something completely different: the Google CrossRef Pilot. Back in 2004 45 leading journal publishers who were CrossRef members signed up with Google for the CrossRef Search Pilot.

Each publisher negotiated arrangements with Google for which parts of their sites would be indexed. Each publisher has a search page (hidden somewhere on their site) which searches all the indexed content of the pilot's participants. Effectively it's a mini Google Scholar, except that with publishers like Blackwell, Cambridge & Oxford, Biomed Central, Springer, Karger, Taylor & Francis, Thieme and Wiley it's hardly 'mini'.

Ed Pentz from CrossRef contacted me to say the project was 'on hold' but that Google was still indexing the 45 publishers so it is still up to date. Searching from on campus means you will be able to view full text of items retrieved where we have subscription access based on IP restriction (haven't tested it remotely).
Try it:


or if that doesn't work try it from Nature Online.

You can still see the original press release.

It's unclear what Google's future intentions are - but unlike Google Scholar at least the Pilot gives the researcher some indication of what's being searched. You can make your own Google search a CrossRef search by adding 'restrict=crossref' to the search url, e.g.

Turn
http://www.google.com/search?q=ulysses+butterfly

into

http://www.google.com/search?q=ulysses+butterfly&restrict=crossref