There seems to be some mis-givings in Shalini's mind about the context in which I have used the term database. Let me clarify. The term "database" is used synonymously by two different groups. For a Librarian or a content user database means compiled content in a structured format. It could be bibliographic or full-text like J-Gate, JSTOR, Web of Science, Google Scholar, ProQuest/ABI etc., Science Direct etc. For the software engineers a database is a set of application programs like Oracle, SQL, DB2 (IBM), Informix, etc. for creating and managing structured databases. These tools are also known as Database Management Systems (DBMS). Google, of course is the most popular search engine, would definitely be using some DBMS application in its back end which we don't know. But, its core product/strength is indexing and retrieval of huge mass of content open for harvesting from millions of public domain webistes. Yahoo, the earliest search engine, as we know by its expanded name - Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle - used Oracle as its DBMS. As regards Google Scholar and its coverage, it would be certainly interesting to know more about its OA Journal coverage. Our J-Gate is by far is the largest database in the world in terms of number of OA Journals indexed from cover-to-cover from both scholarly and popular domain. J-Gate indexes only source articles and does not index cited references. *Sathya* *N.V. Sathya Narayana* *Informatics (India) Ltd, Bangalore. India. * *www.informindia.co.in http://www.informindia.co.in* On 23 June 2014 15:18, Shalini Urs wrote:

As fas as I have understood, some of the "issues/facts' raised/mentioned by both Vyasamoorthy and Sathya are not necessarily accurate.

* First-- both Google and Google Scholar are databases essentially. The humungous database is working behind both

* Google Scholar's goal is to find all scholarly work ­Journals, conferences, preprints, reports from all countries, all languages, all sources ( including repositores and open access journals including SciELO--the Latin American giant

* Decisions about article inclusion is on a per-article basis because they believe -- Good work can come from anywhere!

* Of course Access will depend on variety of factors

* Ranking is based on ­ who wrote it, where it was published,how many people cite it, where citations are from Plus usual information retrieval techniques

* Google ranks /citation counts are based on "work' and not instances - it tries to group Single work which may have many forms/versions ­Preprint, report, conference paper, journal article

* Coverage of Latin American countries Open Access literature coverage in Google Scholar ( was never bad) because Google Scholar's policy is to include all forms of articles ( including abstracts and citations)

* And has improved very much since the beginning of 2014,because of the efforts made by SciELO, which has been expanding alliances and international partnerships in indexing and interoperability, such as in the operation of the SciELO Citation Index in Thomson-Reuters¹ Web of Science platform beginning in 2014, the improved interoperability with Google Scholar, CROSSREF, ORCID, and information management and information exchange platforms such as Mendeley.

* Google is GOD because it has Got Oversees every Damn thing online including who searches what :)

* The Power of Google comes from not only its superior indexing algorithm but also from the "intelligence" it has built over the last 15 years of its existence,which is very very difficult to beat that intelligence!

Shalini

Dr. Shalini R.Urs Executive Director and Professor International School of Information Management University of Mysore Manasagangotri Mysore - 570006 Phone : + 91 821 2514699 Fax : + 91 821 2519209 www.isim.ac.in ISiM - Management School of IT. Technology School for IM

On 22/06/14 6:39 PM, "Sathya" wrote:

...

To the extent I understand, Google and Google scholar are completely two different services.

Google is simply a search engine. It scrawls almost the entire web at different frequencies (some sites once an hour and many sites may be once a month or quarter a year), caches the scrawled web and does machine indexing. It does not store and compile the content. It is simply a temporary index to cached content.

Google Scholar is a database. It is a citation database like Scopus or Web of Science. The content is harvested, stored, compiled and indexed. Unlike other databases which may have manually controlled editorial process, Google does not seem do anything with the data that needs manual intervention. This could be one of the reasons why data quality in Google scholar is not dependable. Coverage of OA content in Google Scholar is very limited. But, we all trust Google a lot because Google has acquired the reputation of "the God" of the information world ....... the mysterious unknown.

Google's search engine is of course very powerful and highly advanced.

On Friday, 20 June 2014, Padmanabha Vyasamoorthy wrote:

...

http://arxiv-web3.library.cornell.edu/abs/1406.4331

Interesting paper: The dark side of Open Access in Google and Google Scholar: the case of Latin-American repositories. "Since repositories are a key tool in making scholarly knowledge open access, determining their presence and impact on the Web is essential, particularly in Google (search engine par excellence) and Google Scholar (a tool increasingly used by researchers to search for academic information). The few studies conducted so far have been limited to very specific geographic areas (USA), which makes it necessary to find out what is happening in other regions that are not part of mainstream academia, and where repositories play a decisive role in the visibility of scholarly production. The main objective of this study is to ascertain the presence and visibility of Latin American repositories in Google and Google Scholar through the application of page count and visibility indicators. For a sample of 137 repositories, the results indicate that the indexing ratio is low in Google, and virtually nonexistent in Google Scholar; they also indicate a complete lack of correspondence between the repository records and the data produced by these two search tools." ==============

Dr P Vyasamoorthy President: Society for Serving Seniors 30 Gruhalakshmi Colony, Secunderabad 500015 Telengana LL 040-27846631 / Mobile: 9490804278

Did not know that Mumbai Samachar (Gujarathi) is the oldest (192 years) surviving Daily in India

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