Esta Tovstiadi: And we're going to talk about optimizing open access and primo and the session will be recorded and the recording will be made available later today after the session.
Esta Tovstiadi: So the goals of this training.
Esta Tovstiadi: Are to understand some issues surrounding discover ability of open access content and to talk about some strategies that you can use to improve or a discovery and primo
Esta Tovstiadi: What exactly is open access, probably most of us already know, but just to go over it again. Open Access is a method of publication that allows for free access to scholarly output.
Esta Tovstiadi: Including journal articles monographs and data sets. A recent study found that open access articles made up almost 30% of all articles that had to do it.
Esta Tovstiadi: So, oh, a it's definitely growing and becoming a larger portion of the scholarly ecosystem that us and our users are interacting with every day.
Esta Tovstiadi: Oh, a presents some unique challenges to discover ability
Esta Tovstiadi: Open Access like closed access research has many versions available, such as pre parents or post prints.
Esta Tovstiadi: However, unlike closed access research open access tends to have more versions and flavors of versions floating around in different places.
Esta Tovstiadi: Such as the publishers website and institutional repository. Other repositories, etc. This makes accurate and complete metadata even more important to the discover ability of open access
Esta Tovstiadi: But unfortunately, oh, a metadata metadata, especially in institutional repositories tends to be incomplete or inconsistent.
Esta Tovstiadi: This means that even though these articles are open access if no one can discover them. Then there are as good as hidden or even closed access
Esta Tovstiadi: Here's what open access currently looks like in the pre most central index as of December 2019 there are 355 full or partial open access collections in the PCI
Esta Tovstiadi: X LIBOR says that there are more than 100 million open access items and PCI, most of these have English language content. But actually, this is an international company that serves
Esta Tovstiadi: Users who speak many different languages. So there are many collections in PCI that are not in English.
Esta Tovstiadi: Open Access records and primo have a specific indicator applied to them, which I'm going to talk about more later.
Esta Tovstiadi: This indicator doesn't distinguish between different types of open access, such as gold or green, it just indicates that a resource is open access
Esta Tovstiadi: So that's all good and well. But how on earth are our users supposed to filter through 100 million open access items.
Esta Tovstiadi: Many of you are already aware of how hard it is to filter through so much content.
Esta Tovstiadi: SLS S has heard concerns from campuses, particularly ones who haven't deactivated much. Oh, a in their PCI
Esta Tovstiadi: That open access collections have too much foreign language content that isn't relevant to their users. Too many patents or other irrelevant formats and that having too much open access content activated pushes down local content in the primo search results.
Esta Tovstiadi: So this brings us to our first strategy for improving away discover ability which is actually to clean up your PCI, so the more collections, you have activated.
Esta Tovstiadi: For searching and primo, the more results are you your users are going to have to filter through AND FOR SOME CAMPUSES content, for example, such as foreign language content might be relevant to certain users. But for most of us, it probably isn't
Esta Tovstiadi: There is a link in this slide to the X Leber's documentation on where to click to activate or deactivate collections, how to get to the PCI
Esta Tovstiadi: I'm not going to focus so much on that workflow today. Instead, I want to talk more deeply about some of the some reviews that I found of collections in the PCI
Esta Tovstiadi: The first one I'm going to talk about is the men pals CRM work group review, they presented this at SUNY la midwinter last year. So you may have heard about it.
Esta Tovstiadi: And we also SLS is also has an FAQ that links to their presentation and talks about it a little more. So what they did was they reviewed all of the Open Access collections and PCI, and then made recommendations about what to activate
Esta Tovstiadi: They had three sort of
Esta Tovstiadi: Categories further recommendations yes activated. It's an optional thing to activate or no don't activate it, and here's why.
Esta Tovstiadi: Here's a screenshot of their data. They used an ex Libra spreadsheet of PCI collections as a starting point and then they added three columns.
Esta Tovstiadi: Whether or not to activate the resource. They added a subject or description of the resource and then a column indicating the reason for why not to activate
Esta Tovstiadi: They didn't add a description or subject for about two thirds of the resources they reviewed, which is too bad because they would have been pretty helpful in reviewing these open access collections.
Esta Tovstiadi: Another important thing is that they didn't consider where discover ability issues such as whether or not the resource with full text searchable.
Esta Tovstiadi: Whether or not the resource included index subjects headings or keywords. This information is available on the X LIBOR spreadsheet that they used
Esta Tovstiadi: So we can actually consider it in our decision making. If we want to
Esta Tovstiadi: Most of the collections that they recommended did have subject headings or keywords index, which I think is a positive thing.
Esta Tovstiadi: But only a handful of those collections were actually indexed at the full text level, which is probably going to impact discover ability when compared to a collection that is indexed at the full text level.
Esta Tovstiadi: Here's the list of the resources they recommended activating and I indicated also whether or not those had subject headings or or full text indexed. There's also a link to our FAQ on this slide. And we're going to update it with the subject heading and full text information.
Esta Tovstiadi: If you're interested, there's also a link to their data from our FAQ. So if you want to read more, I encourage you to
Esta Tovstiadi: Alright, so there was another recent project evaluating open access and PCI
Esta Tovstiadi: Greg them and Sue was maniac, who are librarians at the Lake Washington Institute of Technology conducted a review of the away collections and PCI from May to August last year 2019
Esta Tovstiadi: So they looked at some very different data than the men pals review. So for each Oh a database. They collected information.
Esta Tovstiadi: listed on this slide, such as whether or not the resource contained actual full text access or was actually open access
Esta Tovstiadi: They also looked at information about accessibility or V pat availability and finally they included some qualitative data some comments about the collection just general. Other comments.
Esta Tovstiadi: Here is a snapshot of some of their findings.
Esta Tovstiadi: They found that not everything that was classified as okay and PCI was fully away or even partially in some cases.
Esta Tovstiadi: There is a link to their report on this slide, which includes a link to their data. They also did a review of PCI and 2017 and 2018. So if you're interested in looking at how the PCI and how owais in PCI has changed over the past few years, I recommend
Esta Tovstiadi: Taking a look
Esta Tovstiadi: A few other takeaways from their study which I just took a quick look at their data and did a quick analysis.
Esta Tovstiadi: Because I thought it was interesting that they looked at peer review and accessibility looks like the majority of content and PCI, they found that
Esta Tovstiadi: It isn't peer reviewed.
Esta Tovstiadi: Or it wasn't clear that it was peer reviewed it probably is not accessible or doesn't have information about its accessibility and as we already know a lot of it isn't an English. According to this study.
Esta Tovstiadi: Their data, I think is a really helpful starting point. If you're looking for additional Oh a collections to activate
Esta Tovstiadi: Their ADDITIONAL COMMENTS column on their spreadsheet offers a lot of great information about some of the resources.
Esta Tovstiadi: I, I recommend looking at it, particularly if you're interested in limiting your activations to peer reviewed or a or a that have a reasonable accessibility statements.
Esta Tovstiadi: Or things like that.
Esta Tovstiadi: Okay, so we've talked a lot about the actual content of the open access content and PCI, so now let's look at the other side of things, which is what open access actually looks like in premium.
Esta Tovstiadi: I think the best way to see what it looks like in your primo is to go start searching in your primo any keywords keywords that
Esta Tovstiadi: Your users might use or if you're looking at any reports keywords that your users have used in the past.
Esta Tovstiadi: And then filter simply filter by open access
Esta Tovstiadi: From there you can use other filters to see like what records are available in various formats languages from what providers and in what numbers because, like we said that the amount of content really matters to the users experience.
Esta Tovstiadi: Here's an example. I did a search for climate change in one of our primo instances. And this particular instance defaulted to expanding the search to include non full text items.
Esta Tovstiadi: And then I filtered by open access, I got over 4 million results and I just did a few other filters few examples.
Esta Tovstiadi: You could look at peer reviewed content so out of that 4 million
Esta Tovstiadi: About 80,000 was peer reviewed, you could look at content in a certain date range.
Esta Tovstiadi: Not, not so much older content so that's that's a positive thing for this particular search term.
Esta Tovstiadi: Here's a few screenshots of some of the other ways you can look at the records using filters for example formats nearly 4 million patents. So, yikes, maybe that's not such a helpful.
Esta Tovstiadi: Resource to have been primo for our users.
Esta Tovstiadi: You can look at the language you see majority English and some other languages.
Esta Tovstiadi: You probably noticing that
Esta Tovstiadi: The sum of all those languages, definitely adds up to more than 4 million. So what's going on there. I don't know, but definitely deserves a deeper dive at some point.
Esta Tovstiadi: Then you know what databases or or providers, this is coming from. And you can really see I think you really quickly see where the junk is in your primo using this method.
Esta Tovstiadi: So let's say you wanted to get rid of those patents, because your users are never asking for patents. They're never using them.
Esta Tovstiadi: But you weren't sure which collection, they came from, you can first just filter by type format type patent and then open an individual record and then you can just see where the full text is coming from. In this example, it's coming from the European Patent Office.
Esta Tovstiadi: You can see under view online flexibility availability view online and European Patent Office and then you can go into PCI or on them. If that's where you activated a collection and just deactivate it
Esta Tovstiadi: So I went digging and this this campuses PCI, and there it is. Millions and millions of patent related items and all you have to do is just click on
Esta Tovstiadi: Active for search and make it not active for search and wait for primo for the index to update and then then it's gone and your users, no longer have to deal with it.
Esta Tovstiadi: As I mentioned earlier, the only indicator is how open access content is identified by user and primo
Esta Tovstiadi: This feature is already active out of the box. So unless you've suppressed it or hidden it, you don't. You don't have to do anything, but I just want to talk about how it works. So everyone can understand that.
Esta Tovstiadi: So either the collection provider or X Leber's identifies something as open access and PCI, and I've listed their criteria here. Basically, if it's freely or openly accessible.
Esta Tovstiadi: The publisher says it is or if it's an unknown away repository database thing like that.
Esta Tovstiadi: Also, if it's coming from the records coming from almost community zone.
Esta Tovstiadi: Actually Russ uses all Rick's data to identify it as open access
Esta Tovstiadi: And here's what that oh a indicator looks like you've probably seen it already a user can also filter by open access, like we just talked about using the availability facet.
Esta Tovstiadi: And then again in the brief info record view. You've got your little unlocked icon with the words open access next to it.
Esta Tovstiadi: Okay, so we have talked about discover ability
Esta Tovstiadi: But let's talk about access. So when you activate an open access collection in PCI
Esta Tovstiadi: Or Alma generally you are activating both discovery and access
Esta Tovstiadi: But there is another way to improve access to open access in primo and that is to activate the unpayable link resolve or integration and you've, you've probably heard about it. But again, I want to go over how it works so that we're all on the same page here.
Esta Tovstiadi: I've linked to an FAQ on how to activate it in this slide. It's really simple.
Esta Tovstiadi: When you activate this integration and Alma, what it does is it creates a link to the unpayable database of open access content and then anytime your users navigate
Esta Tovstiadi: To the full record of a result in primo then on paywall this integration is going to check that database to see if there's an open access version.
Esta Tovstiadi: And if there is a version available, then the integration will create a link in the view online area of the record. I've highlighted highlighted that here in the screenshot and link that link goes out to the open access version of the resource.
Esta Tovstiadi: Just a little more information on all that data and where it's coming from.
Esta Tovstiadi: And paywall harvests content directly from publishers and repositories and it also harvests metadata from open sources such as PubMed Central DOJ cross ref data site. If you're interested in seeing what what data sources. They're using they list all of them on their website.
Esta Tovstiadi: You can even download them if you're if you're that interested spreadsheets. Are your thing. Can you can definitely get that data.
Esta Tovstiadi: And for
Esta Tovstiadi: Anyone who likes a visual
Esta Tovstiadi: You can just kind of see they basically have this big database of all articles that have a dry so they say it's something like 95 million records. So they take all this and that's the sort of cylinder cylinder
Esta Tovstiadi: image on the left side of the slide.
Esta Tovstiadi: So they harvest all
Esta Tovstiadi: This metadata and content from publisher platforms or institutional repositories or other sources and they they try to match it up to those
Esta Tovstiadi: Do eyes in their big database and they say, in theory, taking all that data and content and mashing it together, they should, they should know about any open access versions that exists anywhere.
Esta Tovstiadi: At least that's what they say.
Okay.
Esta Tovstiadi: So just to summarize
Esta Tovstiadi: Some of the strategies we talked about today, activating on paywall that provides your access to
Esta Tovstiadi: A lot of open access content.
Esta Tovstiadi: You can activate recommended collections. Again, here's the link to our FAQ
Esta Tovstiadi: If you have some more specialized needs at your campus, you can review other open access collections, you can use the data from some of the reviews, we discussed and activate them if if they're beneficial to your users.
Esta Tovstiadi: And then again, and probably most importantly
Esta Tovstiadi: Go into your primo and get familiar with what your open access content looks like there because your users. You know they're they're never going to see PCI they're never going to see Alma, they don't know what's available all they're going to see is what you offer to them.
Esta Tovstiadi: When they search and primo and finally I just want to leave you with a few thoughts.
Esta Tovstiadi: A few questions to think about open access to sort of been looming large and academia for for several you know 15 almost 20 years and we all know that our university is still mired in ongoing negotiations with Elsevier.
Esta Tovstiadi: More paying lots of money to other publishers to get access to scholarly resources. So I encourage you, you know, to think about your role as someone who works in an academic library, what is your role in promoting and making open access discoverable and accessible to your users.
Esta Tovstiadi: Okay. And that is all I have today.
Esta Tovstiadi: So let's take some questions.
Esta Tovstiadi: And you can feel free to unmute yourself or put them into the chat.
Esta Tovstiadi: No questions.
Esta Tovstiadi: Here we go.
Esta Tovstiadi: So Susan asks, Does unpayable need to know our holdings, or does it work with activated collections only or anything.
Esta Tovstiadi: No unpayable doesn't need to know your holdings.
Esta Tovstiadi: It basically provides
Esta Tovstiadi: Access to
Esta Tovstiadi: Anything you have activated already and Alma or primo so if there
Esta Tovstiadi: Is, you know, if you have activated. Springer journals and Alma, and there are some open access versions of a Springer article then unpaid wall will show up in the full record.
Esta Tovstiadi: As a link to view online alongside those Springer links, if that makes sense.
Esta Tovstiadi: Yes, I agree that is Susan says that's why it's good for the hybrid collections, where some articles might be away, but not all.
Esta Tovstiadi: Definitely
Esta Tovstiadi: Mm hmm. Jennifer says, it works really well for faculty who like to use do it.
Esta Tovstiadi: Mm hmm. And I didn't include it on my slides. But if you go to on paywalls website, they actually have a tool where you can just look up a DIY to find open access versions.
Esta Tovstiadi: I haven't played around with it yet. But if that's your kind of thing. You can go and go and have a look.
Esta Tovstiadi: Has anyone received any user feedback about on paywall is anyone noticing it.
Esta Tovstiadi: Susan asks, do I recommend that the act or era and working group develop a similar chart as men pals and the other group for activation, so I don't
Esta Tovstiadi: But
Esta Tovstiadi: I don't know.
Esta Tovstiadi: I think
Esta Tovstiadi: What other thing.
Esta Tovstiadi: Not like we have nothing else to do. That's right, Susan.
Esta Tovstiadi: Um,
Esta Tovstiadi: I think the men pals is a good list. And if you want to dive deeper and other subjects you there's some data for that.
Esta Tovstiadi: Yeah, me too. Jennifer
Esta Tovstiadi: Jennifer says, I'm okay with trusting our colleagues on this one.
Esta Tovstiadi: Um, someone from Alfred says, I thought I had on paywalls set up correctly.
Esta Tovstiadi: But I do not see it when searching and primo um
Esta Tovstiadi: Yeah, I'm not sure.
Esta Tovstiadi: But that's a good suggestion. Jennifer to
Esta Tovstiadi: Try doing the search with expanded results.
Esta Tovstiadi: You have a known item like an article that you know is in your PCI and has a DIY, you could also try searching for that and seeing if unpayable comes up.
Esta Tovstiadi: Some people have reported that unpaid will won't show up as a link if there are no other full text sources, but I have not seen that. So I don't want to say that that that is the case, but there were some early reports of that.
Esta Tovstiadi: Just an aside, and I'm going to talk about it in a couple weeks when I do the primo analytics training. You can see if users filter by open access using primo analytics. I haven't looked
Esta Tovstiadi: In all my analytics yet to see if you can see whether or not users click on the unpayable link.
Esta Tovstiadi: I don't know if that's possible. But if any of you are wondering about usage.
Esta Tovstiadi: Okay, are there any more questions or discussion.
Esta Tovstiadi: Alright well
Esta Tovstiadi: Thanks everybody for joining me and
Esta Tovstiadi: I hope you all have a great Monday, and I'll see you soon. Take care. Bye.