To examine the open access availability of Library and Information Science (LIS) research, a study was conducted using Google Scholar to search for articles from was 20 top LIS journals. The study examined whether Google Scholar was able to find any links to full text, if open access versions of the articles were available and where these articles were being hosted. The results showed the archiving of articles is not a regular practice in the field, articles are not being deposited in institutional or subject repositories at a high rate and the overall the percentage of available open access articles in LIS was similar to the findings in previous studies. In addition, the study found that Google Scholar is an effective tool for finding known LIS articles.
From the article:
... Of the 922 articles examined, OA versions were found for 253 articles. ...
The percentage of available OA articles is the same, though, as Matsubayashi, et. al.'s findings in their study of the biomedical literature. ...
If professionals in LIS are unwilling to archive their works in repositories, it should not be surprising that repositories face difficulties in recruiting content. ...
Providing access to information is a basic tenet of librarianship. Ranganathan’s classic work, The Five Laws of Library Science, calls upon libraries to make information widely available and easily accessible to all people. While Ranganthan’s work referred to books, these principles hold true regardless of the format of the information and can be seen in the field’s support of the OA movement. Yet this study has found there is a seeming contradiction in the lack of archiving of articles appearing in the top LIS journals. This is in spite of the fact that a previous study found that 90% of these journals allow some form of self-archiving. ...
... His results show that Google Scholar is not a completely reliable means for identifying OA versions of articles. ... [T]he specific numbers that he presents should be approached sceptically. ...
Despite these quibbles, the larger point that Way makes is indisputable -- for all of the advocacy work that librarians have done in support of various OA initiatives, they have not done a very good job of making their own research output widely available and easily discoverable. Our advocacy efforts would be more persuasive if we were taking a more aggressive leadership role within our own field.
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 9/03/2009 12:41:00 AM.
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.
