Open Access News

Quick notes on this beta release. Like all things search, it's going to be some time before we know just what type of product this will really be.

1) Academic Live contains material direct from publishers (how much of each journal in the database is available via the service is unknown) coupled with some material from OAI-compliant repositories. What are the plans for articles that are available via a publisher and on the open web. Will preprints, uncorrected versions, etc. be marked?

2) Kudos to MS for providing a journal list (GS [Google Scholar] doesn't offer one and we've asked several times). However, for a journal list to be really useful we need to no more than the title. What issues/volumes of the publication are in the index?

3) No information about how often the database is updated. Hourly? Daily? Weekly? Monthly?

4) Preview pane to view abstracts on results page. Good idea. Saves clicks and user time.

4) At launch MS Academic Search ONLY contains material in three disciplines: Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, and Physics....

Academic Live documentation mentions that Citeseer content is included in the database. One big difference however, Citeseer offers citation searching and Academic Live doesn't at the present time. Citeseer also offers acknowledgment searching, Academic Live does not. Citeseer also offers many other features (document conversion, caching, direct links to the authors home page....

5) Microsoft says they are "not ready" to offer a "detailed timeline" when content from other disciplines will be available. OK, that's fine but how about a rough outline? When can we look for something new? Will new content be added during this version of the beta?

6) Material from OAI compliant repositories will be included. At launch, material from ArXiv.org is in the database.

7) Fast Facts and Questions:
+ No advertising on results pages. What is MS's business plan for the product? Do they have any plans to make this a revenue generator? If so, how? Will content from the MS Live Book Search be included in the database in future releases?
+ Open URL is available via vendors. "In a subsequent release, we will add in the functionality for the user to choose his/her affiliation from a list of institutions."
+ No advanced search functionality in this release however results pages allow the user to sort results (via a pull-down), "by author of paper, journal, conference, date published or releance [sic]."
+ Get article info by hovering over title on a results page.
+ Keyword-based RSS feeds available. Good idea. Question. What will trigger a new article? Your keywords and those words in the Title? Author Field? Abstract? Full-Text?

8) From SearchDay, "The beta service is available in English versions in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan, and Australia. Additional markets, and content in additional subject areas will be added throughout the beta period."

8) From the FAQ for Librarians, "which, in turn, will increase your libraries' value to your members." Excellent point but come on Microsoft. If you're going to write a document for the librarian how about using terminology that librarians use. While it's true that some libraries offer memberships, we've rarely heard of library patrons/users/remote users/visitors referred to a members.

9) Confusing. We've seen several articles quoting MS officials saying that material comes only from peer-reviewed journals. Also, note this banner from a results page. However, documentation also points out (see the home page) that material also comes from repositories like ArXiv.org with more repositories on the way. For example, note the citation in this screen cap. It doesn't list a journal and the article itself sits on a server at San Jose State. It's also not a peer-reviewed article. We're have no issues with this type of content being included but the documentation needs to be clearer about what is available.