Open Access publishing has led to a proliferation of peer-reviewed articles. Librarians and researchers have a more challenging task when it comes to finding what they need.

It has never been a simple task to locate relevant information. Entire disciplines of library science are devoted to the complicated task of indexing and retrieving published findings. However, under traditional models, that process was relatively predictable. Now, with the rise of Open Access (OA) for peer-reviewed articles, the task has become more complicated. We spoke with several academic librarians to explore this trend.

Basic Issues

One complication is the fact that OA is not a single publishing model. The “Green” and “Gold” models, described in the first article of this series, each result in discoverable data, but with potentially different descriptions or metadata. The former reside in data repositories maintained by academic and other institutions. The latter are maintained in the databases of OA publishers. One solution for keeping journal content consistent, and therefore findable, is the Open Archives Initiative (OAI), an effort that began in 1999. The OAI is a common XML framework designed to promote interoperability between institutional data repositories and digital libraries—the venue for Green OA content. The idea is to make such data “harvestable” by service providers, such as indexing organizations. This has not always been entirely successful, however. Metadata, by its very nature, is complex, and subject to exceptions and special cases. While indexing services are becoming increasingly sophisticated, it is not a trivial matter to classify all the types of information that he peer-reviewed journal may contain.

Shifting Models

Before Open Access, there were plenty of databases indexing published journal content. Most of these are available by subscription. For any given field, there were usually a finite number of these sources. “There used to be a more traditional, one-stop solution,” said Allen Lopez, Collections Librarian at the University of Texas: MD Anderson Cancer Research Medical Library. “For medicine, people went to PubMed, for example. Now, with Open Access, there is less exclusivity and many more options. It’s not a question of credibility, but whether articles are being indexed correctly and included in the appropriate databases.” Lopez and others we interviewed agreed that authors and researchers (and the librarians who serve them) now have to work harder—not only to find relevant research but also to make their own work known to others. The good news is that expanding Internet connectivity has given rise not only to Open Access proliferation, but also to new means of connecting with fellow authors and researchers, particularly social media. Lisa Marie Schiff, Technical Lead at the California Digital Library at UCLA, noted that social media, particularly Twitter and LinkedIn, are much more a peer-to-peer phenomenon among academic researchers and authors. Indexing services and databases do not consider these a factor, but are more focused on the reputation and credibility of the journals. “Chatter is not one of the metrics,” she said. “However, each article is going to have a potential audience greater than the audience for a specific journal, so why not do a little work yourself to get it in front of the people in that broader audience.” The evolving field of altmetrics is designed to capture these sorts of references. Lopez noted that scientific researchers and authors are often very focused on their respective disciplines, and are not typically up on the many, rapidly changing models for publishing. The role of librarians will undoubtedly the central in filling that gap.

Sources, Solutions, and Skills

Those we interviewed acknowledged that Google and Google Scholar (GS) are typically used to search for academic journal content, including both OA and traditionally published material. While some expressed stronger feelings than others, the consensus seemed to be that GS can be a good starting point, particularly for those with less experience in a given field. However, Google itself indexes content algorithmically, so journals with more experience in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) are more likely to be findable in Google Scholar than some OA sources, with less SEO experience. Another issue is replication. GS searches can make it hard to distinguish between abstracts and full texts, requiring more effort to weed out duplicates. Librarians familiar with the subject matter often recommend specialized indices to help researchers narrow the “big net” results of a GS search. Indexing services and databases are also increasingly aware of OA journals (using the Gold model) and institutional data repositories (where Green OA content resides). The latter involves a significant amount of replication, since authors are increasingly required to place copies in such repositories—albeit not necessarily the same exact version published traditionally. Inevitably, the task of sorting through this abundance of data falls to the library professional. However, new search tools and algorithms are being developed—in part by the traditional sources. PubMed, for example, has a free, full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature, PubMed Central. Like Open Access itself, the current “wild west” of overlapping and duplicate search results will mean not only a richer trove for academic researchers, but also a continuing call for librarians to improve their skill set.