According to the article "Changes at Google Scholar: A Conversation with Anurag Acharya," Google Scholar has begun a small-scale, targeted journal digitization effort.
Here's a quote from the article:
Representing another effort to reach currently inaccessible content, Google Scholar now has its own digitization program. “It’s a small program,” said Acharya. “We mainly look for journals that would otherwise never get digitized. Under our proposal, we will digitize and host journal articles with the provision that they must be openly reachable in collaboration with publishers, fully downloadable, and fully readable. Once you get out of the U.S. and Western European space into the rest of the world, the opportunities to get and digitize research are very limited. They are often grateful for the help. It gives us the opportunity to get that country’s material or make that scholarly society more visible.”
Source: Quint, Barbara. "Changes at Google Scholar: A Conversation with Anurag Acharya." NewsBreaks 27 August 2007.
