NEWS

ProQuest Collaborations Improve Discovery and Access of Dissertations

Researchers and authors benefit as ProQuest teams with Elsevier and Philosophers Information Center

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 organisations 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.