Google Scholar – Public Access Tracker, Open Access, and eScholarship

A few months ago, Google Scholar launched a Public Access Tracker. This is a tool embedded in Google Scholar profiles that shows if a researcher’s work is compliant with their funding agencies’ open access mandates:

A few things to note:

• Not every source is picked up
  • i.e. Researchers may have made works open but Google Scholar didn’t find it.
• Not all funded research is captured
• Uploading a PDF to your Google Drive (as Google recommends) would NOT meet open access requirements of funding agencies.
• Some of the sources Google Scholar recognizes as ‘open’ are not in fact (e.g. ResearchGate). 

Although the tracker is not without its bugs (see above), it has spurred some researchers to make more of their work open access.

You can make your work open access by depositing with McGill’s eScholarship. eScholarship is indexed by Google Scholar and appears in many researcher profiles as a source of public access articles.

Questions? Email escholarship.library@mcgill.ca

See also McGill Library’s Open Access Services