Information resources and technologies provider ProQuest, US, and the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) have announced an initiative to dramatically increase the organisation's working papers available through ProQuest's popular ABI/INFORM business information product as well as ProQuest Central and a variety of niche databases. Working papers will double to more than 100,000 by the close of 2012 and will grow to more than 150,000 over the next three years.
The expanded agreement follows some key findings by ProQuest in the types of resources most valued and used by academic researchers. Access to pre-publication working papers is becoming increasingly vital for researchers looking to find the latest research and ideas in their field. ProQuest's research with business faculty shows that working papers are used 85 percent of the time when doing active research as part of creating a scholarly work.
Access via ABI/INFORM, widely considered the industry standard for business research, will enable researchers to discover the latest SSRN working papers in fields such as economics, finance, management, corporate governance, entrepreneurship, political science and health. Researchers can access papers within a feature-rich environment that allows for the easy management, sharing, and manipulation of content. ABI/INFORM also includes thousands of full-text journals, periodicals, downloadable data, market and industry reports, trade publications and dissertations.
