Our research report on Improving Open Access Discovery for Academic Library Users has just been published. It is a study into strategies to make scholarly, peer-reviewed open access (OA) publications more discoverable for library users. The findings are based on research conducted at seven academic library institutions in the Netherlands. We interviewed library staff about their efforts around OA discovery and surveyed library users about their experiences with OA. The synthesis of these findings provides new insights in the opportunity to improve OA discovery.
From OA availability to discoverability: bridging the gap
From the very beginning we co-designed and carried out the OA discovery study in collaboration with two Dutch academic library consortia—Universiteitsbibliotheken en Nationale Bibliotheek (UKB) and Samenwerkingsverband Hogeschoolbibliotheken (SHB)—which have been, and still are, instrumental in the progress toward full OA to Dutch scholarly publications. Precisely because they were at the forefront of the shift to OA and investing heavily in OA publishing, they had arrived at a point that they wanted to assess the discoverability of OA publications and address the emerging gap between OA availability and discoverability.
This gap was first revealed by findings from the 2018-2019 OCLC Global Council survey of open content activities in libraries worldwide. The results clearly indicated a disbalance in academic library investment: more effort went into making previously closed content open than into promoting the discovery of open content. Yet, most respondents indicated that the latter was equally important to them. Also noteworthy was the near unanimity with which respondents indicated that OCLC had a role in supporting libraries to make open content discoverable. This was an encouraging acknowledgment of the importance of OCLC’s role in the open access ecosystem.
A series of knowledge sharing consultations with the Dutch academic library community in 2021 confirmed this perceived gap and the need to better understand the role of OA in user discovery behavior. As a result, UKB, SHB, and OCLC decided to carry out a research study that would investigate how expectations and behaviors of academic students, teachers, researchers, and professors could inform libraries’ efforts in making OA discoverable. This was the genesis of the Open Access Discovery project.
The making of the OA discovery landscape: libraries have a role to play
Library staff we interviewed described the emergence of a complex landscape for making OA publications discoverable. New players were eagerly staking out their territory while librarians did what they thought was best, but OA publications did not fit in their traditional processes. There were no guidelines, best practices, or benchmarks for adding OA publications to their collections and integrating them into user workflows. Although national collaborations and new processes were in place to create and expose metadata for institutionally authored OA publications, library staff faced challenges with publication deposits and metadata quality.
Our interviewees were not convinced that their efforts were making a difference for their users, but our report shows they were.
While they were correct in believing that the library was not the first place that users searched, the library search page was in the top three most searched systems. Users’ survey responses paint a somewhat confused picture of the role that OA plays in their discovery journey. Respondents did not find OA publications very easy to search for and access, and nearly half reported not knowing much about OA. However, most relied on OA alternatives when they encountered barriers to full-text access. Although OA was not their first consideration, the increasing amount of OA publications downstream affected their processes of discovery, access, and use. These findings led to the following observation in the report:
“Library staff’s outreach and instruction had been primarily focused on increasing users’ awareness of publishing OA. Users needed additional instruction on discovering, evaluating, and using these new types of publications.”
Introducing the report to the Dutch library community
It was with pleasure and pride that Ixchel Faniel and I presented the final report, with findings and main takeaways, to UKB and SHB representatives at the OCLC Contactdag on 8 October 2024, in Amersfoort, the Netherlands. Contactdag is an annual gathering of professionals from Dutch academic and public libraries interested in the latest news about OCLC’s strategic direction and product development. It is also a forum where they share practices and innovative project results.
In my short remarks introducing the OA discovery report, I shared the main takeaway for the Dutch library community as follows:
“If you’re wondering whether your library’s investment in OA discovery is worth it, the answer is a resounding YES!”
The cover of the report—a photo of a Dutch polder landscape—is a nod to the Dutch setting of our research. It also serves as an analogy to the hard work needed to make OA publications discoverable. A polder is created by digging ditches and building dams and dikes to drain the tracks of lowland from water. As I told the audience, similarly to the polder, “there is still much work to be done. OA is still unchartered territory that needs to be explored and cultivated. We cannot afford to sit and watch!”
Next steps: working smarter together
During the afternoon session of the OCLC Contactdag, participants discussed findings, challenges, opportunities, and next steps in break-out groups. Many recognized the dilemmas around OA discovery, as reflected in the report. They also were interested in using the findings to strategize how to proceed with improving OA discoverability.
A recurring theme was the need to collaborate. Participants discussed the potential benefits of working together on selecting OA titles by subject area and increasing users’ awareness of OA resources. They wanted to share practices on exposing institutional metadata, cooperating on metadata harvesting, and partnering with OCLC to improve the quality of metadata. They also talked about greater engagement, on campus and nationally, with recent Diamond OA publishing initiatives to advocate for discovery metadata that worked well both for library workflows and user needs. These ideas illustrate the need for cross-stakeholder collaboration from OA publishing to discovery and align nicely with the closing words from our report:
“Truly improving the discoverability of OA publications requires all of the stakeholders involved to consider the needs of others within the lifecycle.“
Read the report to learn more about bridging the gap between the availability and discovery of OA publications. https://oc.lc/oa-discovery
Titia van der Werf is a Senior Program Officer in OCLC Research based in OCLC’s Leiden office. Titia coordinates and extends OCLC Research work throughout Europe and has special responsibilities for interactions with OCLC Research Library Partners in Europe. She represents OCLC in European and international library and cultural heritage venues.
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