Open Access Collections

Current Scenario in
American Academic
Libraries

Anjana H Bhatt
E-resources Librarian
FGCU Library Services
abhatt@fgcu.edu
 Objectives

OA Statistics…few examples

OA Collections: Concerns
OA Collections at FGCU library
OA Survey Results
Reference & Documents
 OA Statistics….1.
 Electronic Journals Library contains 52,944 free journals, comprises 85475
titles, 608 participating institutions.
http://rzblx1.uni-
regensburg.de/ezeit/index.phtml?bibid=AAAAA&colors=7&lang=en
 DOAJ contains more 11,601 journals, more than 2,277,898 articles from 136
countries. https://doaj.org/
 DOAB contains more than 4609 books from 151 publishers and is
experiencing more than 40% annual growth rate. Growing at an annual
growth rate of over 40%. http://www.doabooks.org/
 DOAR contains 2600 Repositories. http://www.opendoar.org/
 Highwire Free includes over 2.3 million free articles and 160 completely free
sites. http://highwire.stanford.edu/lists/freeart.dtl
 PubMedCentral contains more than 3.7 million free full text documents.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/
 OA Statistics….2
 Internet Archive includes over 430 billion web pages and 8.8 million texts
in public domain. https://archive.org/index.php
 arXiv provides open access to 1,139,732 e-prints in STEM, finance and
statistics http://arxiv.org/
 RePEC (Research Papers in Economics) contains more than 1800 archives
from 86 countries….2 million research pieces from 2300 journals and
4300 working papers. http://repec.org/
 ROARMAP lists 771 OA policies. http://roarmap.eprints.org/
 Social Science Research Network (SSRN) includes 558,693 full text
papers http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/DisplayAbstractSearch.cfm
 In the last 12 months, 12,1777,940 full text papers were
downloaded from SSRN web site and 307,858 authors have
published with SSRN
 Experiencing an annual growth rate of 13%.
 OA Collections Concerns…..1

 Confusing when you have access to commercially subscribed collection by the

same vendor and both are available through a same search interface, for ex:
Blackwell Synergy or Wiley Interscience.
 No translations available for some international collections.
 Image signatures for login or to read PDFs: problematic if in foreign language
fonts.
 Web site issues: download times.
 Virus issues and pop blockers.
 Government collections: currency, missing documents, shifting responsibilities
and website errors.
 May not be optimum for use with centralized Inter Library Loan (ILL) systems
such as U-borrow etc. due to occasional broken full text.
 OA Collections Concerns....2
 Beta collections: what happens when they move to pricing models? No answers.
 PDFs: in various language, article by article, full issue of a journal or page by page
format.
 Problematic when publisher moves free journals to subscription models, ex:
Informaworld.
 Download times and http errors.
 Outdated “About” information.
 Special equipment/monitors might be required to read some of the newspapers
digitized collections.
 OA Collections at FGCU library
 Currently provide access to 88 Collections available in SerialsSolutions
Knowledgebase
 Access to more than 50,000 journals
 List of FGCU library’s Open Access Collections at Google Docs
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11ty8gJ1gm0-o92BQ6gnnZ0UpSwi5-
G9L0l_pQYS3VDE/edit?usp=sharing
 Subject Librarians responsible for selecting, trialing and recommending OA
collections that are not available in SerialsSolutions knowledgebase
 Use Hybrid approach to provide access to OA collections
 MARC records via SerialsSoltuions
 E-journal portal
 Database Locator
 Indicate OA collections via an Open Lock Icon
 Database Type category for searching OA collections in one place

 Subject LibGuides
 OA Survey Results

 US libraries have comprehensive collection development policy but no clear

policy for OA collection development process
 Some loose guidelines about selection and maintenance of OA collections
 Provide access to OA collections available via the knowledgebase of their
ERMS vendor
 Prefer OA collections only if they are indexed and discoverable through their
discovery services
 Clearly indicate that OA collections can be dropped without providing any
reason or due to curriculum changes
 No specific team responsible for selecting OA collections
 Distributed OA collection/selection process among subject librarians
 Prefer to MARC OA collections with an “Open Lock” m “Internet Link” or “Free
Resource”
 OA Survey Results

 Idea of mixing paid and open resources is not advisable

 Some libraries follow hybrid approach- DBL and/or Subject LibGuides
 Preferred access points include
 OPAC
 Database locator page,
 A to Z portal,
 Subject LibGuides
 OA LibGuides
 PubMED link out feature
 Browzine App
 Discovery Services
 OA Survey Results

 Do not have specific staff members assigned to manage and troubleshoot OA

collections
 Office of e-resources librarian is the first point for trouble shooting activities
 Troubleshooting OA collections is considered to be a waste of time, hence
usually full text access issues are not trouble shooted—it is not a core duty
 First priority for trouble shooting activities is reserved for paid resources
 No account of time for troubleshooting OA activities is maintained or justified
 DOAJ most proffered and reliable OA collection
 References
 Bhatt, A. H. (2010). Positioning Your Library in an Open-Access Environment.
Journal of Electronic Resources Librarianship, 22, (3 & 4) July 96-101
 Beall, Jeffrey. Potential list of predatory scholarly open access publishers.
Retrieved from http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/
 List of Fake Publishers:
https://sites.google.com/site/fakeresearchjournalpublishers/home
 Morrison, H. Dramatic Growth of Open Access December, 2015. Retrieved from
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.ca/2015/12/dramatic-growth-of-open-access-
december.html
 Morrison, H. Dramatic Growth of Open Access, September 30, 2014: Some useful
numbers for open access week. Retrieved from
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/2014/10/dramatic-growth-of-open-
access.html
 ERIL Survey Results on Google Docs
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ruOkLTFGCVWoVobJj8nnCr-
gSqoj2Yu9yQd0IZWe158/edit?usp=sharing
Thank You