Defining discovery: Is Google Scholar a discovery platform? An essay on the need for a new approach to scholarly discovery

Kelly Achenbach; Marta Błaszczyńska; Stefano De Paoli; Francesca Di Donato; Suzanne Dumouchel; Paula Forbes; Peter Kraker; Michela Vignoli

doi:10.12688/openreseurope.14318.2

Defining discovery: Is Google Scholar a discovery platform? An essay on the need for a new approach to scholarly discovery

Open Res Eur. 2022 Jun 7:2:28. doi: 10.12688/openreseurope.14318.2. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Kelly Achenbach¹, Marta Błaszczyńska², Stefano De Paoli³, Francesca Di Donato⁴, Suzanne Dumouchel⁵, Paula Forbes³, Peter Kraker⁶, Michela Vignoli⁶

Affiliations

¹ Max Weber Stiftung - Deutsche Geisteswissenschaftliche Institute im Ausland, Bonn, 53173, Germany.
² Institute of Literary Research, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, 00-330, Poland.
³ Abertay University, Dundee, Scotland, DD1 1HG, UK.
⁴ Istituto di Linguistica Computazionale "A. Zampolli", Consiglio Nazionale delle ricerche (CNR), Pisa, 56124, Italy.
⁵ TGIR Huma-Num, CNRS, Aubervilliers, 93300, France.
⁶ Open Knowledge Maps, Wien, AT-1060, Poland.

Abstract

This essay discusses the concept of discovery, intended as content discovery, and defines it in the new context of Open Science, with a focus on Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH). Starting from the example of Google Scholar, the authors show that this well established service does not address the current needs, practices, and variety of discovery. Alternatives in terms of technical choices, features, and governance, do however exist, offering richer and more open discovery. The paper presents in particular the implementations and research work of the H2020 project TRIPLE (Transforming Research through Innovative Practices for Linked Interdisciplinary Exploration). Dedicated to the building of a discovery platform for the SSH, the project is meant to address the specificities and evolution of discovery in this field. Prevailing scholarly resource platforms like Google Scholar limit discovery by focussing only on publications, and favouring through their algorithm well-cited papers, English content, and discipline-specific resources. A limitation in the context of cross-disciplinary and collaborative Open Science, such a service more specifically hinders discovery in the SSH. Characterized by a fragmented landscape, a variety of languages, data types, and outputs, research in the SSH requires services that fully exploit discovery potentialities. Moreover, a survey conducted within the TRIPLE project showed that most SSH researchers use Google Scholar as their starting point, and that they recognise the lack of control they have with this system. Beyond the extension of features and content, transparency is the other important criterion for the building of an Open Infrastructure actually serving the research community. In light of this, we present in some detail the GoTriple platform, which exploits today's technological potential and incorporates the best known functionalities in order to unveil more and innovative scholarly outputs and lead to international and interdisciplinary research project collaborations.

Keywords: Content discovery; Humanities; Information seeking; Infrastructure; Multilingualism; Open Science; Search engines; Social Sciences.

Grants and funding

This research was financially supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the grant agreement no. 863420 (TRIPLE).