ProQuest Streamlines Discoverability of Subscription and Open Access Content

ProQuest is improving the accessibility of subscription and open access content on its award-winning platform with a series of enhancements designed to boost research, teaching and learning outcomes.

These enhancements include:

• A new starting point for research: Now, users can begin their search from the open web by visiting search.proquest.com. Through their search results, they’ll be delivered straight to the resources their library subscribes to.
• New preview feature: Users can search, find and preview the content of nearly a billion ProQuest documents directly from the open web for better discoverability.
• Broader discovery of open access content: Researchers can access an ever-expanding universe of scholarly full-text open access sources directly – all indexed and delivered with the same level of quality and precision as ProQuest’s subscription content.

These enhancements are a major step toward improving discoverability, simplifying access for distance learning, and driving more users to their library’s subscribed content.

“As librarians, we are always concerned with helping students find the right content, but even more so in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis,” said Michael Gonzalez, Librarian at the University of Technology Sydney in Australia. “How students move to and from the library’s resources and how we capture students outside of these environments is a constant challenge  for a library’s discovery strategy. The ProQuest platform enhancements provide safe, familiar and intuitive entry points, along with quick and frictionless access to full-text content.”

“We know that many users, especially undergraduates, start their search on the open web,” said Chris Burghardt, Vice President of Product Management at ProQuest. “These enhancements increase access points and expose students, faculty and researchers to their library’s resources, ensuring that they never miss what they’re looking for.”

“Any change that draws people more easily towards the content that’s valuable to them is a positive change, especially given the continued push toward digital and hybrid learning models,” said Mark Hughes, Head of Libraries at Cardiff Metropolitan University. “Many of our users begin their search on the open web, so these enhancements provide another important route into the library’s ProQuest resources.”

These enhancements are now live, with no action required by libraries or their users to activate. They’re part of ProQuest’s larger, ongoing initiative to add value to its solutions, expand pathways to access and help libraries increase usage of their resources.