ProQuest & Open Access
Introduction
ProQuest supports the important work of the world’s research and learning communities, which is why all open access publications on the ProQuest platform (www.proquest.com) are accessible via the open web without authentication. Bringing these disparate materials together on a single platform offers researchers a reliable starting point to vetted open access content and gives smaller publishers more visibility regardless of geography or discipline.
Selection criteria for all ProQuest scholarly journals
Publishers who meet the following selection criteria will be considered for inclusion, depending on resource availability.
- Journals must have an ISSN and a website which provides basic information about the publisher, editors, review process, and scope of the journal. Preprints and working papers must come from a well-established scholarly repository.
- Where there is any doubt over the scholarly legitimacy of titles, for example titles not from established scholarly publishers or societies, universities or similar research-focused organizations, then a credibility check is performed by ProQuest.
- Publishers or titles which have incomplete, inaccurate or disingenuous descriptions of themselves or their policies, or which fail to maintain a consistent publishing schedule will be rejected.
Additional selection criteria for open access journals
- Open access journals charging authors to submit or publish articles must be accepted by the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).
- Open access journals which do not charge authors to submit or publish articles (typically associated with universities, societies, research institutes and similar organizations) will be considered for inclusion, even if not included in DOAJ, provided they pass a review by ProQuest ensuring they regularly publish scholarly content. This review entails a thorough editorial check by ProQuest staff.
Benefits of including open access content in our products
- User experience - The ProQuest platform’s award-winning user experience provides features and functionality, such as the ability to cite in a variety of styles, integrate with reference management tools and more, to support not just reading, but the entire research workflow. Most open access articles ingested are directly viewable on our ProQuest platform, ensuring that content is available in a modern research experience. When open access articles are not viewable on our platform, linking services such as UnPaywall seamlessly take the user to an open access version of the full text.
- Ease of discovery - All records, including those from open access publications, are indexed with our proprietary thesauri, providing standardized subject terms that make finding relevant content simpler and uniform.
- Authority - Open access content on the ProQuest platform has been vetted for quality so that users know that it is reliable.
- Comprehensiveness - Having as much content as possible within a discipline on one platform, regardless of publishing model, provides a more comprehensive search experience.
- Reliable linking - The ProQuest platform also offers a robust article level linking syntax so that if an article citation is found outside the ProQuest platform, link resolvers can provide a more reliable path to full text than if the article were only available on a small publisher platform.
ProQuest is committed to supporting the world’s research community, including offering access to reliable and vetted open access content. For publishers and content providers interested in discussing or submitting content to ProQuest please refer to the Publisher & Content Providers page.