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Steps for the Practical Assessment of

Open Access / Educational Resources

Step by step initiatives of a pilot project (2015)

supplemented by a survey (2016) to assess

the overarching value of Open Educational

Resources (OER) and Open Access (OA)

resources for users of the University of Florida

Smathers Libraries.

To date, very little assessment has been

conducted on the amount of Open

Access/OER resources and a few key

questions have been raised about their value.

References

Leonard, M. & Carrico, S. (2016). “UF Libraries

Collections – Patron Perspectives: A Qualtrics

Survey in STEM & Health.” Available in UF’s IR

Carrico, S., Leonard, M., & Gallagher, E. (2016).

Implementing and Assessing Use-Driven

Acquisitions: A Practical Guide for Librarians.

New York: Rowman & Littlefield.

Survey results (cont.)

Q. How important are Open Access (OA) /

Open Educational Resources (OER) in your

work or field of study? n=33

Future Steps

Identify high usage/user cited OA / OER

resources; drop hybrid/predatory and

under-used e-journals.

Maintain all relevant library links to keep

OA/OER parameters up to date.

Update collection management policies to

incorporate OA/OER resources.

Conduct environmental scans to gauge

the sustainability of OA/OER resources.

Communicate the value of OA/OER

. resources to stakeholders. This

will require PR and marketing initiatives.

In 2016 a survey was distributed to faculty, students, and researchers at UF’s Marston Science

Library and the Health Science Center Libraries. The responses demonstrate the value of the open

resources in their research and curriculum .

During the course of the project a

comprehensive annotated bibliography

was created to serve as a benchmark.

Methodology

Step 1 Discovery

A three pronged approach formulated this

research assessment:

1) determine the number and type of Open

Educational Resources received, defined by

subject areas and library collections.

2) include a series of usage reports

generated for the Open Access resources,

and organized by subject areas and library

collections to provide quantitative analyses.

3) focus on qualitative measurements using a

user survey distributed to faculty, students,

and researchers requesting feedback on the

value of the open resources in their research

and curriculum.

Resource/Database Subject Areas SupportedNo. of Journal

TitlesUses

Avg. Use per

Title

BioMedCentral Open Access STEM; Med 332 19,696 59.33

Freely Accessible Journals* STEM; Med; Hum & Soc Sci 6,196 107,761 17.39

HighWire Press (Free Journals) STEM; Med 474 40,407 85.25

Hindawi Pub. Open Access STEM; Med 234 1,451 6.20

IngentaConnect Free/OA STEM; Med 217 3,605 16.61

J-Stage (Japanese Sci & Tech) STEM 536 5,405 10.08

Open Access Digital Library STEM; Med; Hum & Soc Sci 4,427 36,798 8.31

Open Hum., OJS, Open Source, PLOS STEM; Med; Hum & Soc Sci 454 12,079 26.61

PubMed Central STEM 1,857 108,532 58.44

REDALyC & SCIelo Latin America (all subjects) 1,258 8,229 6.54

Total 15,985 343,963 21.52

OA/OER e-journal and usage metrics at Smathers Libraries

Step 2 demonstrates two main objectives: 1) determine the number of OER e-journals in the

collection by subject area; 2) assess usage per title from a 2008-2015 report.

Step 2: Quantitative Analysis

Step 3: Qualitative Analysis – Survey results

Michelle Leonard

& Steven Carrico

Take-away: OA/OER resources are very

important but as a supplement to library

subscribed resources .

Q. How do you incorporate

OA/OER for instruction (select all

that apply) n=50

Q. How do you incorporate OA/OER for your

research/scholarly activities? (select all that

apply) n=63

Background

Take-away: OA/OER resources are

incorporated for course assignments &

readings but not as textbooks.

Take-away: the majority of responses show

that OA/OER resources are employed for

peer-review publishing and grant activities.