Purpose – This paper seeks to describe a pilot project for the Federal Science eLibrary to measure the impacts on Government of Canada researchers when provided with seamless, equitable access to an expanded core of electronic journals in science, technology and medicine (STM). The Federal Science eLibrary is an initiative supported by the Strategic Alliance of Federal Science and Technology Libraries to provide improved access to information at the desktop for the 22,000 Canadian federal scientists, policy analysts and decision makers. The pilot project was designed to evaluate the benefits of increased access to e-journals at the pilot sites and test network performance in connecting to a central digital repository.
Design/methodology/approach – A total of 500 users in three Canadian government sites with limited access to electronic resources were provided with full text access to a digital repository of over 3,000 e-journals over a 12-week period. Questionnaires, teleconferences, usage statistics and e-mail correspondence were used to gather and measure researchers' response and show impacts on their ability to do their work.
Findings – Pilot groups reported significantly reduced time finding and verifying information. Time saved was redirected into critical activities such as research, laboratory activities, manuscript preparation, peer review activities and professional reading. Participants found that increased desktop access had a very positive impact on their ability to do their work.
Originality/value – This study shows the benefits of expanded access to electronic journals for federal government scientists through a Federal Science eLibrary initiative.
Comment. This study directly confirms the claim of OA proponents that OA accelerates research and increases the productivity of researchers --in case anyone actually doubted it.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 2/20/2007 09:01:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
