New Open Access Journal portal
Open J-Gate (http://www.openj-gate.com/) is a portal and search engine for over 3000 open access (free web access) periodicals. Informatics India, Ltd, is a subscription database company specializing in business information and scholarly journals. Open J-Gate includes journals, magazines, trade journals, and newsletters from publishers around the world.
There is a basic keyword search on the main page, and the advanced search includes limiting to author, title, abstract, keyword and/or institution, plus limiting by year and by subject. You can also limit by "update", for instance only those articles loaded in the last week. Multiple keywords are treated as phrases (no need for quotes), and Boolean (AND, OR, NOT) searching is allowed, though there seems to be some discrepancies in the Boolean. I got 43 results for invasive species, 3 for invasive species AND california, and 42 for invasive species NOT california. AND and NOT searches should be complementary in pure Boolean searching.
Results include basic citation information plus keywords, a link to an abstract if available, and full text links to whatever formats are available via a drop down box. Full text opens in a new window, but abstracts open in the same window (so don't close the abstract window like I did!) There are check boxes to select particular records for viewing/printing (Internet Explorer only). The Viewing/Printing records will include abstracts if available on the J-Gate site, but not if the abstract is on an outside site.
The journal list overlaps with the Directory of Open Access Journals, but Open J-Gate has more articles (over 1 million vs. over 80 thousand as of today) available for direct searching (as opposed to subject access to the journal home pages). The DOAJ also specializes in peer-reviewed journals (current count 2065), while Open J-Gate has magazines and trade publications making up slightly less than half of the current publications (peer review count 1500+ of 3000+). Search both for best results.
This is a brand new site, and does have a few bugs as of this morning. The Next/Previous links on the results page don't go anywhere in Firefox. Luckily the GOTO, with dropdown for the pages of the results list, works just fine. The Select Records functions also don't work in Firefox. You can check the boxes, but the View and Print functions don't work. All functions do work in Internet Explorer and (slowly) in Opera.
Also, there are banner ads at the top of the results pages and an ad for the main paid access site on the right, but they aren't click through ads--they don't link anywhere. The main site banner (Open J-Gate) also doesn't link back to the home page, so if you get away from the search/results interface, it can be a bit confusing to get back. For instance, I accidentally closed the window with an abstract (same window as search), but I had a window with some marked records (new window from search). I couldn't get back to the results or even a new search page from the marked records. I suspect these will be corrected soon.
Informatics India is collecting feedback on Open J-Gate, so be sure to add your own if you experiment. I recommend using Internet Explorer only, for now.
Update: According to a message sent to the CHMINF-L listserv, Open J-Gate currently has articles only back to 2001.
There is a basic keyword search on the main page, and the advanced search includes limiting to author, title, abstract, keyword and/or institution, plus limiting by year and by subject. You can also limit by "update", for instance only those articles loaded in the last week. Multiple keywords are treated as phrases (no need for quotes), and Boolean (AND, OR, NOT) searching is allowed, though there seems to be some discrepancies in the Boolean. I got 43 results for invasive species, 3 for invasive species AND california, and 42 for invasive species NOT california. AND and NOT searches should be complementary in pure Boolean searching.
Results include basic citation information plus keywords, a link to an abstract if available, and full text links to whatever formats are available via a drop down box. Full text opens in a new window, but abstracts open in the same window (so don't close the abstract window like I did!) There are check boxes to select particular records for viewing/printing (Internet Explorer only). The Viewing/Printing records will include abstracts if available on the J-Gate site, but not if the abstract is on an outside site.
The journal list overlaps with the Directory of Open Access Journals, but Open J-Gate has more articles (over 1 million vs. over 80 thousand as of today) available for direct searching (as opposed to subject access to the journal home pages). The DOAJ also specializes in peer-reviewed journals (current count 2065), while Open J-Gate has magazines and trade publications making up slightly less than half of the current publications (peer review count 1500+ of 3000+). Search both for best results.
This is a brand new site, and does have a few bugs as of this morning. The Next/Previous links on the results page don't go anywhere in Firefox. Luckily the GOTO, with dropdown for the pages of the results list, works just fine. The Select Records functions also don't work in Firefox. You can check the boxes, but the View and Print functions don't work. All functions do work in Internet Explorer and (slowly) in Opera.
Also, there are banner ads at the top of the results pages and an ad for the main paid access site on the right, but they aren't click through ads--they don't link anywhere. The main site banner (Open J-Gate) also doesn't link back to the home page, so if you get away from the search/results interface, it can be a bit confusing to get back. For instance, I accidentally closed the window with an abstract (same window as search), but I had a window with some marked records (new window from search). I couldn't get back to the results or even a new search page from the marked records. I suspect these will be corrected soon.
Informatics India is collecting feedback on Open J-Gate, so be sure to add your own if you experiment. I recommend using Internet Explorer only, for now.
Update: According to a message sent to the CHMINF-L listserv, Open J-Gate currently has articles only back to 2001.
posted by Rebecca Hedreen at Tuesday, February 28, 2006
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