ANN ARBOR, Mich., January 20, 2006 - Today, two key information solutions providers involved in enabling the open-access movement announced an initiative that will provide greater access to institutionally created research. ProQuest's Digital Commons open access material will be indexed within the Thomson Scientific Web Citation Index™. This new initiative means Digital Commons-hosted work will be more broadly discoverable.

“ISI Web of Knowledge ^SM has long been acknowledged as the de facto standard for creating search and discovery pathways to scholarly content,” said Suzanne BeDell, ProQuest Vice President of Publishing.  “This new product by Thomson Scientific is a perfect vehicle to expose to the widest possible audience the Open Access content that institutions place in their Digital Commons repositories.” 

“ProQuest has created a unique service offering for institutional repositories,” said James Pringle, Vice President of Development, Thomson Scientific. “We are very pleased to be working with ProQuest, given the number of scholarly institutions that have chosen Digital Commons since its introduction last year.  The Web Citation Index already includes repositories based on a variety of platforms. Adding significant content from ProQuest’s service will make it even easier for users around the world to discover pathways to material that includes preprints, post-prints, technical reports, dissertations, proceedings, and other gray literature.” 

ProQuest’s Digital Commons is an OAI-compliant digital institutional repository service powered by technology supplied by The Berkeley Electronic Press. Digital Commons maximizes the visibility and availability of scholarship at a significantly lower cost than open-source alternatives.  The alliance between Digital Commonsand Web Citation Index creates a central point of access for finding the most up-to-date and relevant research available. 

Web Citation Index is the multidisciplinary citation index of scholarly content from institutional and subject-based repositories.  Web Citation Index transcends the capabilities of traditional Web search engines, providing users with a robust citation-based discovery vehicle for content hosted on institutional repositories.  Thomson Scientific content editors select only those Web repositories deemed scholarly. This ensures Web Citation Index delivers only the highest-quality, most-relevant content.

 

ProQuest Information and Learning announces the launch of Twentieth Century House of Commons Parliamentary Papers, the second collection of the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers -- the most detailed primary source for the past two centuries for Britain, its colonies and the wider world.

About The Thomson Corporation
The Thomson Corporation (www.thomson.com), with 2004 revenues of $8.10 billion, is a global leader in providing integrated information solutions to business and professional customers.  Thomson provides value-added information, software tools and applications to more than 20 million users in the fields of law, tax, accounting, financial services, higher education, reference information, corporate e-learning and assessment, scientific research and healthcare. With operational headquarters in Stamford, Conn., Thomson has approximately 38,000 employees and provides services in approximately 130 countries. The Corporation's common shares are listed on the New York and Toronto stock exchanges (NYSE: TOC; TSX: TOC).

Thomson Scientific is a business of The Thomson Corporation. Its information solutions assist professionals at every stage of research and development—from discovery to analysis to product development and distribution. Thomson scientific information solutions can be found at www.scientific.thomson.com.

About ProQuest
ProQuest creates specialized information resources and technologies that propel successful research, discovery, and lifelong learning. A global leader in serving libraries of all types, ProQuest offers the expertise of such respected brands as Chadwyck-Healey™, UMI®, SIRS®, and eLibrary®. With Serials Solutions®, Ulrich's™, RefWorks®, COS™, Dialog® and now Bowker® part of the ProQuest brand family, the company supports the breadth of the information community with innovative discovery solutions that power the business of books and the best in research experience.

More than a content provider or aggregator, ProQuest is an information partner, creating indispensable research solutions that connect people and information. Through innovative, user-centered discovery technology, ProQuest offers billions of pages of global content that includes historical newspapers, dissertations, and uniquely relevant resources for researchers of any age and sophistication—including content not likely to be digitized by others. Inspired by its customers and their end users, ProQuest is working toward a future that blends information accessibility with community to further enhance learning and encourage lifelong enrichment.

For more information, visit www.proquest.com or the ProQuest parent company website, www.cambridgeinformationgroup.com.