ProQuest Collaborations Improve Discovery and Access of Dissertations
ANN ARBOR, MI, September 15, 2015 – ProQuest is teaming with a variety of other information providers to improve ease of access to dissertations and theses by making them discoverable in context with other relevant content. The company’s massive database of graduate works is being indexed in such research tools as Ei Compendex, The Philosopher’s Index and others adding major new avenues of discovery. Users of these resources will benefit from a more comprehensive literature search from their existing discovery workflow, while dissertation authors benefit by having their work exposed to more researchers.
“Dissertations are vital tools for finding cutting-edge research, important supplemental material like data sets and long-form versions of research that is often shortened when published as journal articles,” said Austin McLean, director, scholarly communication and dissertations publishing at ProQuest. “Collaborations with publishers of essential databases enables ProQuest to broaden access to these important sources by surfacing them within researchers’ established discovery workflows.”
The content being indexed comes from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global (PQDT Global), the seminal repository of intellectual property and emerging research from the world’s great universities – now discoverable in more than 35 scholarly databases. ProQuest is teaming with such organizations as Elsevier, publisher of Engineering Village, the home of Ei Compendex, to index engineering and other relevant sci-tech dissertations in this widely-used discovery tool.
“Ei Compendex is often described by users as being the most precise and comprehensive engineering literature research database available,” said Judy Salk, Director of Product Management–Content, Engineering Village. “The addition of ProQuest Dissertations, with a focus on all engineering and engineering-related disciplines – fully integrated within Ei Compendex and indexed with the Ei Thesaurus controlled vocabulary – provides an important source of additional context and new ideas.”
In the Humanities, ProQuest is teaming with the Philosopher’s Information Center, publisher of The Philosopher’s Index. Philosophy dissertations will be discoverable via The Philosopher’s Index, supporting a burgeoning demand by researchers and educators to find and use content beyond scholarly journal articles and books.
PQDT Global encompasses more than one quarter billion pages, creating a unique, continually growing trove of emerging research and landmark works from the world’s great universities, including all Ivy League and Russell Group institutions. Researchers rely on this database as both a source of enlightening information and as a pivotal component in making their own scholarly production available to the world’s intellectual communities.
About Engineering Village, Ei Compendex
Engineering Village is the home of Ei Compendex, the broadest and most complete engineering literature database available to engineers. Ei Compendex comprises over 18 million records from thousands of publications published worldwide, spanning 190 engineering disciplines, 1970-present. Content is indexed specifically for engineers using the Ei Thesaurus, enabling precise search and discovery of relevant engineering research.
Elsevier is a world-leading provider of information solutions that enhance the performance of science, health, and technology professionals, empowering them to make better decisions, deliver better care, and sometimes make groundbreaking discoveries that advance the boundaries of knowledge and human progress. Elsevier provides web-based, digital solutions — among them ScienceDirect, Scopus, Elsevier Research Intelligence and ClinicalKey — and publishes over 2,500 journals, including The Lancet and Cell, and more than 33,000 book titles, including a number of iconic reference works. Elsevier is part of RELX Group plc, a world-leading provider of information solutions for professional customers across industries. www.elsevier.com.
About The Philosopher’s Index (http://www.philindex.org)
The Philosopher’s Index is the most authoritative online bibliography in philosophy. Serving philosophers worldwide, it contains over 650,000 records from publications that date back to 1902 and originate from 139 countries in 37 languages. It provides the highest quality indexing, which yields superior search results, and features author-written abstracts for most articles, many of which cannot be found in other reference resources. The Philosopher’s Index is published by the Philosopher’s Information Center.
About ProQuest (www.proquest.com)
ProQuest connects people with vetted, reliable information. Key to serious research, the company’s products are a gateway to the world’s knowledge including dissertations, governmental and cultural archives, news, historical collections and ebooks. ProQuest technologies serve users across the critical points in research, helping them discover, access, share, create and manage information.
The company’s cloud-based technologies offer flexible solutions for librarians, students and researchers through the ProQuest®, Bowker®, Coutts® information services, Dialog®, ebrary®, EBL™, and SIPX® businesses – and notable research tools such as the Summon® discovery service, the Flow® collaboration platform, MyiLibrary® ebook platform, the Pivot® research development tool and the Intota™ library services platform. The company is headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with offices around the world.