The Public Access section of a Google Scholar profile contains publicly available articles.
An article can be publicly available from several sources, including its publisher, an institutional repository, a research area-specific repository and others. The Google Scholar indexing system tries to include all publicly accessible versions that follow their inclusion guidelines.
For more information, see: https://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/citations.html#publicaccess
Is it accurate?
Like other aspects of Google Scholar profiles, the data is flawed. It may say papers are not freely available when, in fact, they are, and it may also wrongly attribute the funding source.
You can make corrections to your Google Scholar profile by following the advice on this webpage.
Should researchers make their papers publicly available by uploading them to Google Drive?
Google invites researchers to make their research publicly available by uploading a PDF to Google Drive. This option should only be used as a last resort. This is because Google Drive:
- Lacks a clear commitment to long-term preservation and access
- Does not make your research easily discoverable outside the Google ecosystem, so your work may never reach your audience.
How can researchers comply with open access mandates and ensure their audience can access their work?
Depositing your research papers in CRO is the best and most secure way to ensure you comply with funders’ open access mandates. CRO also ensures your research has visibility, reaching the largest audience possible, and has impact.
