Our Role

For more than six decades, Gale has provided students, educators, and libraries with authoritative content. As a publisher and aggregator, we partner with libraries to deliver essential information to educators, researchers, and learners of all ages.

Libraries are epicenters of information access and literacy, and we respect their unique expertise as information professionals to identify and select the content and tools they feel best meet the needs of their communities. Gale offers flexible curation options, for eBooks down to the title level, as well as administrative tools to help libraries tailor their collections and database content to specific audiences, as they see fit.

Gale embraces the core value of the American Library Association (ALA) to provide equitable access to information for all. Additionally, Gale helps librarians balance their general commitment to freedom of information with the particular collection development policies of their communities and schools.

How We Select & Create ContentWho Reviews Our Content?

Gale content users depend on us for accurate, authoritative, peer-reviewed material. Gale relies on a global network of scholars, subject matter specialists, professionals, and educators to create content aligned to national and state curriculum standards, like Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards. Content is reviewed by subject matter experts for accuracy, reading and skill level, bias, balance, and diversity. Our subject matter experts include teachers, scholars, librarians, historians, Gale editors, historical societies, and advisory council members from various races and ethnicities who have extensive knowledge in a particular area of study.

We update our databases continuously, being mindful of current events, changes in curriculum, and important topics and people of note. For databases supporting elementary, middle, and high school students, we look to national and state curriculum standards and pedagogy as guides. Then we select content aligned to students’ skills, learning expectations, and areas of knowledge.

  • Featured Content Within Gale Databases

    When selecting content for Gale databases, the focus is on top-ranking searched subjects, topics tied to curriculum, social issues, people, and current events in the news. Special emphasis is also placed on diversity and inclusion, and Gale strives to include content representative and respectful of diversity and cultural relevance including, but not limited to, race, ethnicity, culture, gender, and sexuality. This includes content created and/or reviewed by subject matter experts and academics reflecting diverse identities and experiences.

    Landing pages are edited by a staff of experienced editors dedicated to ensuring the credibility, relevancy, currency, and age appropriateness of content on the topics. Editors collaborate with a large network of contributors, such as librarians, educators, and in-field professionals, who are subject matter experts in their respective fields. Curation includes hand-selecting featured content so students and educators can quickly access some of the best and most authoritative content on a specific issue or topic.

    When covering social issues and current events, efforts are made to provide fairly balanced and often opposing viewpoints on the issue. All viewpoint material comes from previously published editorials, opinion pieces, and commentary from a variety of publications, including newspapers and magazines. Gale strives to include a wide range of opinions, including those from differing political stances, viewpoints that influence lawmakers and policy influencers, and viewpoints that reflect current public opinion.

    For our Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints database, all selected viewpoints are preceded by a commentary section written by Gale subject matter experts that summarizes the viewpoint, explains the author’s position on the topic, and provides contextual information. The commentary opens with a quote from the article and also includes guided reading or critical-thinking questions.

    Gale biographies cover thousands of notable figures, including politicians, authors, artists, and athletes. We’ve expanded coverage of LGBTQ+, women, scientists, and historically underrepresented groups (like Latinx, Native Americans, African Americans, Arab Americans, and Asian Americans). Further, data from a million daily users informs editors of who is trending, which ensures the most-accessed content is also the most up to date.

  • Selecting Periodicals & eBook Partners

    Periodical publications—newspapers, magazines, journals, and government publications—comprise the core of Gale OneFile databases. Thousands of titles are selected based on customer feedback, advisor input, publisher solicitations, and general collection development research. In addition to aggregating reputable, high-circulation news, trade, and popular periodicals, special emphasis is placed on scholarly, peer-reviewed journals. Gale relies on information provided by publishers and publication websites to determine peer-reviewed status, and consults other sources, such as Ulrich’s, as needed.

    Open access (OA) content is included so users can incorporate this material into their research, while benefiting from the tools and ease of a single platform. International content of regional and global appeal continues to make up a growing segment of content. All titles meeting basic quality considerations—including adherence to stated publishing frequency and at least two issues of sample content in place of publication reviews or established publisher reputation—will be considered for inclusion. To ensure discoverability, every day we index tens of thousands of articles using trained indexers or sophisticated algorithms.

  • Digitizing Primary Sources

    Gale is the global leader in digitizing primary sources, including historical newspapers; periodicals; books; diaries; letters; government documents; pamphlets; and visual images of maps, renderings, and photographs. Gale Primary Sources not only digitally preserves historically significant documents but creates text-searchable versions that students, educators, and libraries can use as a research tool. They allow broader access to the rarest and historically significant documents from around the world, covering topics from incunabula, or early printed books, to contemporary topics, like women’s history, political extremism, sexuality, and gender. As a pioneer in digitization, Gale has developed a comprehensive metadata and indexing process to ensure that rare and unique content is easily discovered:

    For more insight about our Gale Primary Sources digitization process, check out our blog post “Behind the Scenes at Creating a Digital Archive—Technical Processes.”

Diversity & Inclusion

Like all Cengage companies, Gale is powered by people of diverse thoughts and backgrounds, and is actively pursuing inclusion and anti-racist programs in our organization, communities, and content. We’ve introduced additional measures to eliminate implicit racial bias within our publishing program. We have an end-to-end audit of the people and processes that bring our products to market, including ensuring diversity among our global network of scholarly advisors and a balanced representation of individuals and groups within our products. Looking ahead, our publishing strategy remains focused on providing historical perspectives that deepen our collective understanding of social justice issues, like racism, sexual orientation, and gender identity, to shape a better future.

Curating Content for Students and Researchers

Gale uses a variety of methods to create and collect the most suitable content for a database’s specific purpose, relying on our internal expertise as a publisher; the reputation of the potential partner; and our customers’ needs, feedback, and requests. In curating content, Gale editors consider the quality, currency, and relevance of the published content and the particular needs of the intended audience for each Gale resource. For K‒12 audiences, content is aligned to established learning objectives for each grade band and is developmentally appropriate, including suitable reading levels.

  • Technology Ensures Age-Appropriate Content

    As many of our publishing partners cover a vast assortment of topics, the subject matter of individual articles may occasionally fall outside of what we consider appropriate for certain school-age audiences. We leverage extensive technology to prevent the discovery of such content outliers.

  • Elementary, Middle School, and High School Researchers

    We curate materials that are authoritative, age appropriate, and curriculum aligned, as well as respect the historical role of libraries as safe places for students to explore and understand their own concerns, like health and social issues or current events. We’re proud to offer young researchers access to comprehensive and credible information from a variety of sources through platforms whose search algorithms aren’t influenced by ad revenue or sponsored content.

  • Peer-Reviewed Academic Content

    For our academic reference content, we recruit academic advisory boards consisting of scholars and specialists who are led by an editor in chief. The boards define the scope of the work as well as recruit and approve the contributors and authors, along with reviewing the work once it’s submitted.

How We Govern Content

Since Gale aggregates millions of pieces of content, we use technology and finding aids to programmatically govern content. Our proprietary K - 12 algorithms are programmed to look for inappropriate language and material to make mature content more difficult to discover as searches are executed. We recognize that automated technologies can over- and under-identify the content they aim to manage, so we pair the process with an ongoing manual review by a staff of expert content strategists and acquisition editors, and remain vigilant and responsive to requests from libraries and schools. Beyond these practices, we offer the following safeguards:

  • Gale In Context resources allow for customer configuration of featured topics.
  • Power Search, a tool that allows users to search across multiple Gale products at once, can be configured to only draw content from resources defined by Gale as part of the K - 12 suite.
  • Gale's experienced customer success managers and educational consultants can provide customized recommendations for a specific library or institution on how to best present resources through library websites and Gale-owned promotional or access pages.

For the rare exceptions where content may be called into question, escalation processes are in place for any customer requesting a manual review of any articles, images, or publications included within our K ‒ 12 resources. Our expert editorial teams evaluate the maturity level and academic value of content in question and, based on the conclusion of that review, make any recommended adjustments, up to and including permanent removal from select resources.

If you need any further assistance or guidance with the implementation of state requirements or with localized database curation, please contact Gale technical support .

Censorship

Gale resources don’t take a specific position on an issue or topic. We develop content with the guidance of scholars, subject matter specialists, and the academic community with the goal of providing credible, bias-free information for learners. Understanding the historical context of a topic, including the potential prejudices or biases imposed by society or authors, gives students the opportunity for critical conversations that support a sound education.

For Gale Primary Sources, the nature and value of the archives are to present artifacts as they existed, without censorship by our editors. The fact that the beliefs and opinions from a different era may be shocking to modern sensibilities supports the value of this content to researchers. They provide historical context from a wide range of viewpoints on controversial issues and how they’ve shaped past, present, and future ideas. This allows students and researchers to make comparisons and connections, enabling greater understanding and open dialogue to inspire change and cross-cultural awareness.

Whether content is from historical archives or today’s news media, Gale aims to present complete collections—every story from every issue or the whole archive from a particular source library. Censoring individual stories, issues, chapters, or images, even if they offend, compromises the integrity of a collection and is to be avoided with databases designed for scholarly research by mature students or adult learners.

Inquiries about Gale's Content Curation Practices and Policies 

Complete this brief form to inquire about our curation practices and policies or specific content within a Gale resource.