Incorporating Open Access Resources in the Library

Emma Norris
Dominican University
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The saying goes, if you cant beat them, join them. This is exactly the strategy of libraries

beginning to incorporate open access resources in their collections. Open access publications -

once thought to threaten the purpose of the library - actually allow librarians to adopt new roles

as information mediators for their users. Proactive librarians advocating for the inclusion of open

access publications in their libraries are making strides towards a brighter future for scholarly

communication. As such, this paper seeks to examine two factors of incorporating open access

resources in a library collection: (1) open access and its role in collection development and

management; and (2) making open access resources more visible to library users.

For the purposes of this paper, open access is defined as full text scholarly articles made

completely free and unrestricted to all users to read, copy, download, and distribute over the

World Wide Web (Schmidt et al. 2005). The open access movement began in 2002 when the

Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) set forth a declaration calling for free, unrestricted

journal literature. The BOAI recommended two strategies to increase open access in the

scholarly realm - these two approaches are simplified as Green Open Access and Gold Open

Access. Green Open Access, otherwise known as self-archiving, refers to articles available

through a digital repository. Ideally, self-archived work conforms to standards developed by the

Open Archives Initiative; as a result, tools such as search engines can be used to locate articles

(BOAI 2002). In contrast, Gold Open Access refers to open access journals that do not charge

subscription or access fees (Grabowsky 2015). These publications ensure free access by relying

on other sources of revenue - such as advertising and authors fees - to cover publication costs.

Open access removes both price barriers and permission barriers (BOAI 2002), ensuring that the

most current research is disseminated freely among scholars and students, instead of being held

captive behind pay walls.

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Some scholars predict that open access will become the dominant mode of scholarly

communication as more open access publications come into existence and rise in popularity. One

of these scholars, David Lewis, expects this major shift within the next 10 years, and

recommends that academic libraries continue to support open access initiatives (Grabowsky

2015). Moving forward, libraries should aim to incorporate more open access resources within

their collections. The selection process for open access resources is similar to the process of paid

resources. First, materials must be identified. This step is notably more challenging for open

access resources simply because a majority of open access publications lack marketing to make

themselves known, in contrast to the strong marketing of big publishers. However, resourceful

librarians may seek open access publications in alternative ways such as review lists, listservs,

suggestions from patrons and colleagues, and other tools like the highly-revered Directory of

Open Access Journals (DOAJ).

Second, once potential open access resources have been selected, they must be evaluated.

Bradley Long laid out five criteria for evaluating open access journals: appropriateness of

subject, authoritativeness, publisher reputation, inclusion in bibliographic databases, and

inclusion in lists of recommended journals (Collins and Walters 2010). The evaluation process

is especially crucial for open access publications due to predatory or false open access

publications. Predatory publishers produce OA journals that lack the rigorous review standards

of higher-quality journals and publish any articles if the authors are willing to pay a fee

(Lehman 2014). Fake open access journals can be spotted in a variety of ways; to avoid imposter

publications, librarians should look for the association of a reputable publisher, established

database systems, the validity of the editorial board, the length of the peer review process, the

style of the peer review report (vague or blanket reviews are a sign of a fake publication), and the
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quality of authors who are published in the journals (Mehrpour and Khajavi 2014). Fake journals

may endanger the reputation of open access resources; so thorough evaluation is critical before a

resource is added to the librarys collection.

Librarians should also assess if the resource in question would fit the research needs of

their users. After all, maintaining a large collection of open access resources isnt necessarily

free of cost - with flat or decreasing budgets, most libraries cannot afford to add resources

which are not used, even when those resources are open access. Although OA materials are free

to acquire, there is cost associated with them in time spent cataloging, processing, and

maintenance (Grabowsky 2015). Furthermore, as with any paid resource, open access resources

should also be subject to periodic re-evaluation to ensure that they continue to meet user needs.

Regular weeding of open access resources is necessary for several reasons, to begin, it is

reasonable to assume that [open access] journals will be at least as prone to name changes, splits,

mergers, URL changes, changes in subject coverage, and cessation as their print counterparts

(Schmidt et al. 2005).

Once open access resources are selected and evaluated, librarians must consider how to

make these resources known to library users. Resources will not be useful to patrons unless

libraries communicate their existence and usefulness and integrate them into their virtual

collections (Schmidt et al. 2005). Library users may be unaware of the existence of open access

resources, so librarians have a special opportunity to expand their role as information mediators

to introduce users to these resources. The logical first steps for facilitating user discovery are

incorporating open access resources into library holdings and A-Z lists (Petit 2011) while

providing access to them through link resolvers (Burpee 2013). However, libraries cannot rely

on indexers and aggregators to lead their patrons to every relevant open-access resource
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(Schmidt et al. 2005). Librarians may need to take the initiative to add open access resources to

their librarys catalog themselves.

However, one possible alternative for the busy librarian is acquiring and incorporating

brief MARC records for open access resources. Auraria Library at the University of Colorado in

Denver experienced success when they loaded brief MARC records for open access books into

their library catalog. Despite the low quality of the records...making the records available

through the catalog, as opposed to merely linking to the entire collection from the Librarys web

page, was considered to be valuable because of the aggregation a catalog provides and because

the [OA collection] helped fill in gaps in the librarys physical collection (Beall 2009). Having

bare-boned MARC records are better than having no access points whatsoever. Sets of brief

MARC records are becoming increasingly more available for free, or they may be purchased

from library vendors. The expense of acquiring MARC records may be minimal compared to the

expenses of purchasing paid, subscription, or fee based resources (Beall 2009).

The potential exists for information seekers to bypass the library altogether since open

access resources are freely available on the Web. However, as their awareness increases,

patrons will expect librarians to be able to help them navigate a chaotic and complex OA

environment (Schmidt et al. 2005). Librarians have the unique opportunity to join forces with

the open access movement and serve as information mediators to users. By evaluating and

incorporating open access resources in library collections, librarians empower both themselves

and their users.

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