Database Platforms

ProQuest

Address

ProQuest
The Quorum,
Barnwell Road,
Cambridge,
CB1 2BL,
UK

URL

http://www.proquest.co.uk

Contact Email

Information not provided

Contact Tel

Information not provided

Databases

• ABI/INFORM
• Academic Research Library
• Accounting & Tax with Standards
• Banking Information Source
• Dissertations & Theses
• Dissertations & Theses: A&I
• Hoover's Company Records
• OxResearch
• Pharmaceutical News Index
• ProQuest Agriculture Journals
• ProQuest Asian Business and Reference
• ProQuest Biology Journals
• ProQuest Central
• ProQuest Computing
• ProQuest Historical Newspapers
• ProQuest Health and Medical Complete
• ProQuest Health Management
• ProQuest Medical Library
• ProQuest Newspapers
• ProQuest Nursing & Allied Health Source
• ProQuest Pharma Collection
• ProQuest Psychology Journals
• ProQuest Science Journals
• ProQuest Social Science Journals
• ProQuest Telecommunications
• Snapshot Series
• UK Newsstand

See our website for other products.

Summary

ProQuest offers a large number of full-text and bibliographic databases on the ProQuest Platform (ProQuest). Subject coverage includes general reference, business, health, arts, children's, computing, education, humanities, international, law, military, medicine multicultural, newspapers, nursing, psychology, sciences, social sciences, telecommunications, women's interests, genealogy, and many more.

ProQuest also offers a large number of highly specialist research databases, available on discipline-specific platforms, through the Chadwyck-Healey brand. This document only refers to ProQuest platform databases. Please contact us for information on Chadwyck-Healey and other specialist databases.

Content

Restrictions

Yes, although please see responses regarding embargoes and publication coverage below. Access to full-text and abstract and index coverage of individual titles will depend on the exact content in individual subscription agreements.

Embargo Rules

ProQuest endeavours to keep all embargoes to a minimum. However, in the interests of preserving mutually beneficial publisher agreements with some content providers, and to bring a wider selection of key journals to our end users at a right price to libraries, a minority of titles are embargoed.

Embargoes (whether they exist, and their duration) are determined by individual publishers on a title basis. We maintain a complete online title list facility that allows anyone to check any of our databases and titles, determine whether embargoes exist, and their length.

Update Frequency

Daily

Content Classification

ProQuest categorises its journal content carefully. A Peer Reviewed/Scholarly journal as defined by ProQuest must be:

• Authored by academics for a mainly academic target audience
• Published by a recognized society with academic goals and missions
• Academic in focus with the intent to report on or support research needs as well as advance one's knowledge on a topic or theory
• Targeted for professional / academic researchers and have in-depth analysis typically focusing on one discipline or academic field
• Peer reviewed or refereed by external reviewers
• Publisher is a professional association or an academic press

ProQuest uses information provided by publishers to determine whether a publication is peer reviewed. In some cases, referenced sources such as Ulrich's International Periodicals Directory that gather information on publishers are consulted.

Access Control

Authentication

• Username/Password
• IP Address
• Classic Athens
• SAML Compliant (e.g. Shibboleth)

Notes

You can provide access to ProQuest with any or all of the following means.

• ID/password protection. You can locally establish the need for login by ID and password, as well as the IDs and passwords themselves.
• Authentication by IP address. As part of your implementation, or any time subsequently, you can provide specific IP addresses and/or ranges of addresses employed by your users. ProQuest will validate these users based on the provided address information. Users attempting to connect to ProQuest from these workstations need no private login information.
• Referring URL. This remote access method requires locally secured pages.

We recommend that you employ these means in a variety of combinations based on the needs of your library, the individual libraries in your consortium, or as any given situation dictates.

For remote users, you can choose any or all of the following methods.

• Locally authenticate users via the Web simply by providing a link to ProQuest on a secure Web page (or secure portion of a page) - most often, the library home page. A user clicking on this link is asked for authentication information (for example, a library card number). The user then enters the requested information. To locally authenticate, you can either use referring URL authentication or install authentication scripts on your server to allow for a secure transfer of the user to ProQuest.
• Have authentication performed by ProQuest. ProQuest remote access is administered with a Local Administrator (LAD) account. When you select a remote access method, a unique, direct URL to your library's remote user login page is created. Available remote access methods are described following; both allow you to customize header text, text of the prompts to enter information, and include a link to a library graphic.
• Barcode validation / pattern matching. Validation parameters include the following options: check digit, barcode length, prefix length, and pattern matching include alphanumeric and wildcard support. This option does not require upload or maintenance of barcodes on the ProQuest system. Rather, the system administrator merely defines the parameters that uniquely identify the institution's user identification (e.g. barcode, student ID, etc.).
• ID/Barcode lookup with (or without) password. Validates the patron by looking up the barcode. Barcodes can be uploaded in batch or individually edited.
• Distribute ID/password combinations.
• Request that your Internet service provider(s) (ISPs) set aside a fixed range of IP addresses (allowing IP verification).
• Use an authenticated proxy server in conjunction with IP authentication.

Other enhancements to ProQuest authentication have greatly improved the flexibility with which any user can connect. "Cascading" authentication makes it possible, for example, for a laptop user to connect from the library, then return to a remote location with cable modem and seamlessly connect to the library's authentication system without the need for any changes. Cascading authentication, in order:

• validates the IP address,
• validates the referring URL,
• checks the URL and cookie for site identifiers (if these identifiers are present, the user will be redirected to the local authentication service), and
• attempts ProQuest user/password authentication.

Please note that 'Native' Shibboleth authentication is in development.

Concurrency Limit

Not at this time. The number of simultaneous users has no impact on the performance of the system. The ProQuest Online System has been specifically engineered to support thousands of simultaneous users with no impact on performance.

Restrictions

There are no major restrictions on access, subject to the terms of the ProQuest electronic product license agreement (EPLA)

Free Trials

Typically, 30-day trials are available for all products on the ProQuest platform. Other trials may be available on request. Trials can be set up using username/password, and/or IP address.

Search

Features

• Advanced Search
• Boolean AND
• Boolean NOT
• Boolean OR
• Exact Phrase
• Keywords
• Search by Author
• Search by Citation
• Search by Content Type
• Search by Date
• Search by Language
• Search by Subject
• Search by Title
• Simple Search
• Spell Check
• Wildcards

Notes

You can search ProQuest with a variety of search types:

• Basic searching allows you to search for specific (key)words. To help users consistently retrieve relevant search results, ProQuest allows searches in multiple primary indexes (author, title, subject, etc.) and in article full text. Basic search can also be administered to support Natural Language searching, retrieving relevant results when users enter queries in everyday English.
• Advanced searching enhances Basic searching by providing a series of drop-down menus offering users point-and-click selection of qualifiers, Boolean operators, dates, etc.
• The Topic Guide permits simple, point-and-click subject qualification. Users can continue to click on the available choices to progressively focus their subject search. The Guide can be searched or browsed.
• Publication searching allows you to locate a source publication by entering words from the publication title. When you find the title of your choice, you can browse through the table of contents for any given issue, or search within the publication. The Publication search also allows you to list every publication in your database subscription, and provides detailed information including coverage date ranges and publisher address.
• ProQuest Smart Search compares your search terms to the available index terms, index term pairs, and publications for the database(s) searched, and then provides suggestions that can help focus a search. The Suggested Topics option provides topics related to the entered search terms. Suggested topics appear in order by relevance (best suggestions and matches first) and often contain pairs of index terms to help focus results. The Browse Suggested Publications option lets you select a publication relevant to the entered search terms. Clicking on a publication name displays the Publication Search page, from which you can select an issue or search within the publication.

You can further qualify Basic and Advanced searches with the qualifiers listed below:

• Author. Search for articles written by a particular author.
• Company Name. Search for a company or organization featured prominently in an article.
• Document Title. Search for text in the title of the document.
• Subject Terms or Code. Search for terms that identify the content of a document.
• Publication Type. Search only for publications of type scholarly, magazine, trade publication, or newspaper.

Special Fields:

• Abstract. Search for text in the document abstract.
• All Indexing. Search using all indexing.
• Article type. Used to define articles by the kind of information they contain (biography, recipe) or the way that information is presented (news, editorial).
• Author Affiliation. Search by academic affiliation of the author.
• Caption. Search for text in the caption of the document.
• Classification Code. Search using the ProQuest Information and Learning classification code.
• Classification Name. Search using the general ProQuest Information and Learning identifier.
• Company Name. Search for a company or organization featured prominently in an article.
• Date (alpha). Search for documents based on a date in alphabetical format (for example, December 1 1995).
• Date (numeric). Search for documents based on a date in numeric format. See "Options for Searching by Date" below.
• Document Column Head. Search for the title of a column in a periodical, such as "The Week in Review." This field finds all documents where the search words are in the column head.
• Document Type. Search for documents of a particular type.
• DUNS. Search for numbers assigned by Dun & Bradstreet.
• Footnote. Search for text in the footnote of the document.
• Geographic Name. Search for a location that is the subject of the document.
• Headnote. Search for text in the headnote of the document.
• ISBN. Search for documents with a particular ISBN number.
• ISSN. Search for documents with a particular ISSN number.
• NAICS/SIC Codes. Search for NAICS/SIC codes associated with companies featured in a document.
• Personal Name. Search for an individual prominently discussed.
• Product Name. Search for brand names of products featured in a document.
• Source. Search a particular publication.
• Ticker Symbol. Search for US stock exchange ticker symbol.
• Words. Search for documents less than or greater than a given word count.

Options for Searching by Date (may vary by database):

• Past 7 Days. Articles published in the past 7 days.
• Past 30 Days. Articles published in the past 30 days.
• Past Year. Articles published in the past year (365 days).
• Before a Date. Articles published before a certain date.
• After a Date. Articles published after a certain date.
• Between Two Dates. Articles published between two specific dates

Indexing

We maintain a professional staff to index and abstract journals and newspapers. Editorial staff review the same publications consistently, in the process becoming experts on format and content of those publications. The educational and training levels of these staff guarantee the relevance and specificity of our indexing and abstracts.

We use a proprietary, hierarchical vocabulary that is developed from the language employed in source publications. At most recent count, the ProQuest Controlled Vocabulary included nearly fifteen thousand entries (over ten thousand subject descriptors and nearly five thousand "used for" references). Additionally, we maintain almost fourteen thousand "broader term," "narrower term," and "related term" relationships, and approximately 2,500 terms include scope notes defining how the term is used.

With so many vocabulary entries, our level of indexing detail is high. This allows researchers to develop searches that will retrieve only the most relevant citations.

Our thesaurus is a continuously evolving work. We add terms several times a year following a thorough review of need based on the literature. To be added to our thesaurus, a term must be relevant and of lasting value. Additionally, we add new scope notes and "use" references frequently to enhance the ease with which editors and researchers can employ the thesaurus in their indexing and searching.

In addition to the controlled subject vocabulary, we maintain authority files containing hundreds of thousands of corporate entries, personal names, geographic terms (in some cases, down to the neighbourhood level), and product names. New names are added to these files daily. All of these are available as index entries.

Cross Database Search

Yes. Users may select to search one, multiple, or all of the databases in their subscription. This is done with point-and-click, and can be changed at any time.

Web Search

This is not available on ProQuest platform databases, although the ability to return results from other sources outside ProQuest is available - for example, ABI can be customized to return results from Safari Business Books Online (a separate web-based database), and ProQuest Medical databases can return results from the MyiLibrary ebook web platform.

Saved Searches

Yes. ProQuest My Research functionality allows users to save recent searches as a web page, with links to the searches

Search Tips

Yes. ProQuest includes online context-specific help, a number of online tutorials, a number of Quick Reference Guides that can be consulted online or printed for recurring use, and the ProQuest Training Resource Centre (TRC). The TRC, free to ProQuest subscribers, is a Web-based resource that provides online tutorials and materials to those who will administer ProQuest, use it, and teach others to use it.

The TRC makes searching simple, and provides instruction at the skill appropriate for the user. It allows new users to begin searching ProQuest almost immediately. The TRC directs administrators to system controls and technical resources, provides librarians the means to teach ProQuest to end users, and allows end users to answer most questions on their own.

Training programs include:

• An overview of ProQuest and what it can do for you
• Step-by-step lessons for searchers at all levels, with demonstrations, practice questions and sample searches
• In-depth explanations of the most popular ProQuest features
• Downloadable class materials, documentation, exercises, and other teaching aids to help you teach others what you've learned
• A technical support section including tools, information, and a FAQ for administrators
• Downloadable Quick Print Guides
• A Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section

The Learning about ProQuest section is available in translation to multiple languages for non-English speakers.

Search Results

Features

• Deduplication
• Include Abstracts
• OpenURL linking

Notes

Other search result features include:

• ProQuest Smart Search taps into ProQuest's powerful indexing to supercharge results, analyzing a user's search, and then offering suggestions for related topics and publications at the top of the results screen. It uses a variety of techniques to map a user's search terms to relevant items in ProQuest's controlled vocabulary. These techniques analyze index term occurrence patterns, as well as comparing a user's current search against previously run searches. Smart Search engages our extensive controlled vocabulary, enabling users to navigate quickly to the most relevant articles. It is especially valuable for less-experienced researchers, users who are less experienced of the subject thesaurus or constructing Boolean queries. It also provides greater transparency of content in the databases being searched so more experienced researchers can refine their search strategy as they go. Usage statistics indicate that Smart Search increases users' search success rate by more than 20%.
• "Did you mean" spell checking functionality

Ordering

As a default, ProQuest displays results in reverse chronological (most recent first) order. Users can sort results by relevance, if preferred. Results from a Publication search can be sorted in either alphabetical order (by article title) or by table of contents order (i.e., the order in which the articles appear in the publication).

From an index of hits, users can choose display results only from Scholarly Journals, Magazines, Trade Publications, Newspapers, Dissertations and Books.

A user can choose an alternative sort merely by clicking on a link or button, or choosing from a menu.

Exporting

• Endnote
• RefWork
• Reference Manager
• Email

Other

ProQuest supports automatic citation formatting. This functionality allows users to mark articles and then choose from several citation formats. The library can choose the format employed as a default.

Citation formats currently available include the following.

• AMA
• APA
• Chicago: Author-Date
• Chicago: Humanities
• MLA
• ProQuest Standard
• Turabian

Other Functionality

Citation Linking

Citation linking is available for selected distributed bibliographic databases available on ProQuest, including CINAHL. It is not currently available for full-text databases on ProQuest, although this may be a possible future enhancement.

However, other "lateral" search features include ProQuest supports lateral searching on individual index terms (e.g. subject, author, organization, person, etc.) and on combinations of the index terms associated with the article. A user can perform a lateral search on an index term by simply clicking on that term from the article display page. A search for that term is performed on that specific index field and a list of matching articles is displayed to the user. The ProQuest interface also includes a "More Like This" feature as a convenient and precise way for users to find similar articles. A user who finds an article of interest can select several of the index terms associated with the article as well as the publication name and any authors and perform a search for matching articles.

Full Text Linking

ProQuest is an OpenURL Target and OpenURL Source compliant with the San Antonio Profile Level 1 (SAP1). ProQuest OpenURL technology allows users to access, from external sources, full text articles not available in ProQuest. You can create title-level or article-level links to resources of all types - to any library OPAC, e-journals, and link resolvers.

ProQuest finds the article citation and displays a "linking" icon. When a user clicks on this icon, the full text article from your library's other holdings is displayed. You can even specify a custom format for a dynamic URL, and ProQuest will populate the link with the article's bibliographic information.

ProQuest OpenURL provides links to any resource (for example, e-journals, catalogs, document delivery services, and link resolvers) that is OpenURL compliant. More information about ProQuest linking capabilities.

Additionally, we can provide custom linking and e-journal management solutions through our Serials Solutions brand. With our E-Journal A.M.S. service, you can employ a variety of access and management tools to find e-journals, learn more how your patrons access your e-journal collection, and better understand overlap within your collection. We can also load comprehensive and customizable MARC records into your OPAC, and provide your patrons with a full-featured OpenURL link resolver that links to full text articles and to your entire collection. Each service is supported by an underlying knowledge of e-journal metadata that is unparalleled within the industry.

We also provide dedicated customer service teams that specialize in creating custom linking solutions to meet individual customer needs.

Help Information

• Help pages
• Contextual help
• Training

Training

ProQuest provides full training support for both librarians and end-users.

• End-users: we would provide training materials, self-training material and online help, as well as a webmaster query service. We would also promote the databases to end-users in consultation with library customers.
• We can provide training sessions and marketing materials for librarians. Subject to the terms of any specific agreement, we generally provide free, face to face or online training sessions for librarians.

Interface Customisation

Multiple levels of ProQuest customization are available:

ProQuest is a standard application that runs on standard web browsers. Any user can configure the workstation browser, and employ custom colours, fonts, etc. in ProQuest.

Your users access ProQuest with accounts. The library can create as many accounts as it likes, and completely customize each one. These accounts are created in consultation with, and with the assistance of, our Electronic Technical Support Department. if desired, you can arrange for ProQuest training that covers account creation and setup, and setting options to optimize ProQuest for your library and user environment. Later, you can modify accounts locally at any time with the ProQuest Local Administrator.

ProQuest accounts give the library a wide variety of options for customizing access, including the following:

• Library branding - add (up to two) logos, (up to three) links, and a 250-character free text message to ProQuest
• Select the appropriate default search mode (Basic, Advanced, Topic Guide, or Publication Search) for your library
• Elect to search either article full text and indexing or just indexing and abstract by default
• Elect to let users e-mail articles, or turn function off
• Enable or disable search preferences such as Spelling Variants and Related Terminology
• Change the default number of search results per page from 10 to 20 or 30
• Choose whether to display the Subject Directory by default (on the Topic Guide page)
• Choose whether to display ProQuest Smart
• Search suggestions for index terms and publications on the results page and where they should appear on the page.
• Select the default citation style for Print Bibliography
• Display links to other ProQuest Information and Learning databases such as Chadwyck-Healey-branded products (that cannot be cross-searched with "traditional" ProQuest databases)
• The ProQuest interface is available in multiple languages, including French, Spanish, German, Italian, Norwegian, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Korean and Japanese. Administrators can select which interface language should appear as default.
• Elect to remove the interface language selection box

ProQuest custom login options also allow you to create custom login URLs with their own default settings (that can override settings for other local accounts, if desired). These custom URLs are routinely used by ProQuest customers to search only specific ProQuest databases - for example, a library can provide a link to a business database from the library business page, and a link to nursing titles from the medical page. Custom login links also allow you to specify the interface language preference (i.e., to allow a session to start in the Spanish interface).

Complete information about customization options is available via ProQuest's Local Administrator interface.

Alerting

Yes. ProQuest provides point-and-click creation of two types of alerts: search alerts and publication alerts.

Search alerts notify a user when new content is added that matches an established search. By clicking on the Set Up Alert button that appears in ProQuest result sets, a user can create an alert that provides notification on the desired schedule (daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly).

Publication alerts notify a user when a new issue is available for a favourite publication. Users can click the Set Up Alert button on a title page in the ProQuest Publication Search to set up alerts that provide notification when either a citation or full text becomes available.

ProQuest alerts include the following security measures.

• After setup, the alert e-mails a confirmation message (including a link) to each new email address. Each recipient must choose to accept to begin receiving alerts.
• Another link within the e-mail provides point-and-click deletion of the alert.
• We can block delivery of alerts e-mail to particular addresses upon request.
• Our future plans include a password-protected interface that would allow individual users to manage their alerts.

ProQuest also provides functionality known as My Research Summary that allows users to save hypertext links to marked articles, recent searches and visited publications. These saved links can be used for later review, or shared with friends and colleagues. Links can be saved either as web pages or HTML files. Saved information can be edited at any time.

Links to records and full text contained in alert e-mails and My Research Summary are subject to ProQuest cascading authentication. This ensures that the content is used within the limits of your subscription access. If you set up remote authentication for your subscription, it will also be available for alerts and My Research Summary.

We also provide RSS feeds for selected databases and listserv notification of content changes.

Usage Stats

• Available Online
• COUNTER Compliant Vendor

Technical Integration

We have long recognized the importance of delivering our content through a variety of technologies to researchers and the library community. To that end, we have supported a Z39.50 interface as a means for libraries to use third-party applications to search ProQuest content. Today, many federated search vendors use Z39.50 to reliably support access to ProQuest.

We continue to pursue and implement the best possible technological solutions for content delivery. The ProQuest XML Gateway, available to libraries and systems vendors since 2004, is a web services application that enables searching ProQuest with XML technology. This gateway provides enhanced convenience, flexibility, and powerful search capabilities to support any library's federated search application.

We are committed to advancing these technologies in the library and content provider community. As such, we actively partner with all of the major metasearch and federated search application providers. Additionally, we participate in standards organizations such as NISO. Their efforts include the Z39.50 International-Next Generation (ZING) standard and the Metasearch Initiative. The ProQuest XML Gateway was developed with a standards-based approach, was based on the SRW/U model from the ZING working group, and is consistent with objectives and the draft standard of NISO's Metasearch Initiative. We are also committed to continuous enhancement and development of the ProQuest XML Gateway in ways consistent with the appropriate standards produced by these initiatives.

ProQuest is an OpenURL Target and OpenURL Source compliant with the San Antonio Profile Level 1 (SAP1). ProQuest OpenURL technology allows users to access, from external sources, full text articles not available in ProQuest. You can create title-level or article-level links to resources of all types - to any library OPAC, e-journals, and link resolvers.

ProQuest finds the article citation and displays a "linking" icon. When a user clicks on this icon, the full text article from your library's other holdings is displayed. You can even specify a custom format for a dynamic URL, and ProQuest will populate the link with the article's bibliographic information.

ProQuest OpenURL provides links to any resource (for example, e-journals, catalogs, document delivery services, and link resolvers) that is OpenURL compliant. More information about ProQuest linking capabilities.

Additionally, we can provide custom linking and e-journal management solutions through our Serials Solutions brand. With our E-Journal A.M.S. service, you can employ a variety of access and management tools to find e-journals, learn more how your patrons access your e-journal collection, and better understand overlap within your collection. We can also load comprehensive and customizable MARC records into your OPAC, and provide your patrons with a full-featured OpenURL link resolver that links to full text articles and to your entire collection. Each service is supported by an underlying knowledge of e-journal metadata that is unparalleled within the industry.

We also provide dedicated customer service teams that specialize in creating custom linking solutions to meet individual customer needs.

VLE Integration

There is no specific support for VLE’s built into ProQuest. However since we have support durable links to articles, journals and searches ProQuest has been included in VLE’s for years

Social Bookmarking

Information not provided

Language Support

The ProQuest interface is available in a total of 18 languages: English, Arabic, Chinese (both simplified and traditional), German, Spanish, French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Turkish, Russian, Polish, Italian, Norwegian, Hungarian, Thai and Indonesian.

We currently support translation of ASCII text articles and abstracts from English into French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, Chinese (both simplified and traditional), Korean, and Turkish. Additionally, we support article translation from Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German into English. Article translations are done by machine, are very rough, and are intended to give the user the gist of the article in the selected language.

Other

Information not provided

Accessibility

W3C Compliance

ProQuest includes fully ADA compliant interfaces. Development of these interfaces has been guided by evolving accessibility requirements. The accessible interfaces meet all Section 508 regulations with the following features.

• accessible to users with limited hand use and low or no vision
• compatible with major third-party screen reader and magnification software such as JAWS, Window-Eyes, and ZoomText
• frameless

Another set of accessibility requirements guiding our development is the priority checkpoints developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). These checkpoints are arranged in three levels, and determine the accessibility of a website or page. Web content developers must satisfy Priority 1 checkpoints for their website to be considered accessible by W3C. We are complaint to Level A of these guidelines.

Browser Compatibility

PC

• IE
• FireFox
• Netscape

Mac

• IE
• Safari

The ProQuest web client is optimized to operate with Netscape Navigator Version 4.5 or higher, or Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher. The use of one of these browsers, regardless of operating system, is strongly recommended. We also test Firefox for compliance.

For the Mac OSX operating system, Mozilla, Safari and Netscape 7.1 are tested. For the Mac 9.X operating system, Mozilla is tested.

Plugins Required

The ProQuest web client interface does not require plug-ins for searching, browsing, record display, or any associated research functionality (for example, download of document information into a bibliographic management tool). The ProQuest Local Administrator (LAD) application, which is used for local account management, uses an embedded Java application, requiring the accessing browser to be able to support a Java Runtime Environment.

Many publishers provide their data to ProQuest in PDF format, or have their page images available in PDF format. Viewing these documents requires Adobe Acrobat Reader (a free download) or a similar program.

Availability & Uptime

24/7 Uptime

Yes

Downtime (as specified in service level agreements)

The architecture of ProQuest has been designed to minimise service disruption during server upgraded; multi-path network routing and the distributed search servers with in-built redundancy. Where service disruption is essential it is managed in the form of a series of formally planned maintenance windows. Maintenance windows are the responsibility of a dedicated IT team based in the ProQuest Data Centre. The IT team follow strict internal procedures for the communication of the downtime and the technical tasks that must be achieved during the maintenance window. Communications plan, staffing levels, start and end times and back-out policies must all be agreed before a maintenance window will be approved by senior management.

An internal procedure ensures a minimum of a two-week period for communication of planned service disruption to Product Management. Maintenance windows are scheduled for periods of low system usage based on historical analysis of customer usage trends. The timing of maintenance windows is cycled through International time zones to minimuze any one geographic market being adversely impacted by service disruption.

The Service Level Objective for the ProQuest platform is to be available 99.8% of in service hours. In service hours exclude a predefined number of windows available for system maintenance, application releases, etc.

In addition to the support services previously described, we maintain a ProQuest mailing list to which any staff member is welcome to subscribe. We use the mailing list to distribute product announcements of a general nature, and to announce maintenance windows.

For planned maintenance, customers receive notification at least 2 weeks in advance, including the date/time and duration for the outage. When the system must be taken down for unplanned maintenance, we notify customers via the mailing list. Additionally, users receive notification at the ProQuest login screen that includes maintenance hours.

Mirror Sites

Information not provided