Dealing with Free E-Journals: Are they worth the effort?

Beth R Bernhardt

Electronic Resources Librarian

UNC Greensboro

Free vs Open Access

All Open Access journals are free, but not all free journals are Open Access

Librarians make a distinction between the two categories, but library patrons do not

Myths about free ejournals

1. "Free ejournals aren’t indexed. And if they aren't indexed no one can find them." http://www.freemedicaljournals.com

More myths about free ejournals

2. "Free ejournals aren't the kind of thing that faculty will ever publish in." Molecular & Cellular Biology Lawrence, Steve. “Free online availability

substantially increases a paper's impact”, Nature, 521, May 2001.

3. "Free ejournals have no quality control; they aren’t refereed." http://www.doaj.org

More myths about free ejournals

4. "Its all science stuff. Where are all the humanities and social science journals?"" Compact memory - http://www.compactmemory.de/ Utah newspapers - http://digitalnewspapers.org/ Hearth -

http://hearth.library.cornell.edu/h/hearth/browse/journals.html

More myths about free ejournals

5. "Free e-journals (like so many other ejournals), almost never have substantial backfiles" Journal of General Physiology (1918-)

http://www.jgp.org American memory -

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpcoop/moahtml/snctitles.html

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (1665-1886)

Many free ejournals

…are indexed

…are high impact

…are refereed

…have good backfiles

Where are we today?

If libraries really support OA, then one would assume that we would be pretty aggressive about making free content readily available to our users through library systems and access points (e.g. ILS, knowledge base, web site). Is that what libraries are doing today?

Providing access – the current picture

The Methodology I searched for four OA titles from DOAJ

AAPPS Bulletin (Physics) Animal Biodiversity and Conservation (Zoology) Animus: a philosophical journal for our time (Phil.) Australian Prescriber (Medicine)

I searched 5 ARL libraries, 5 non-ARL academic libraries, and 5 special libraries

I looked in both the catalog and in independent A-Z listings or link resolvers (where available)

Providing access – the current pictureFive Special Libraries

No one had any of the 4 titles in their catalog One had 1 title in an A-Z, and one had all 4

Five Academic No one had any of the 4 titles in their catalog One had 3 titles in an A-Z

Five Academic ARL 4 had some in their catalog, and 2 had all 4 Three had all 4 and one had 3 in A-Z/resolver

Providing access – the current picture

I also looked for 4 non-DOAJ titles PNAS (1915- , 6 month embargo) American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (1999- , 1 year embargo) Economic Perspectives (1996- ) African-American Archaeology Newsletter (1994-2000)

While the 15 libraries had 37 access points for the 4 DOAJ titles, they had only 28 for the non-DOAJ titles

Why the reliance on DOAJ?

DOAJ has become “the” Open Access journal site for libraries because It is of a manageable sizeMany librarians may think it is comprehensive It is well organized and easy to harvest

Does it meet library users’ demands for free serial literature?

UNCG usage data

UNCG has over 11,000 free serials in Journal Finder (73% have been used at UNCG) with over 190,000 uses - from 2002 to present

UNCG Usage and DOAJ

Of the top 30 most heavily used free titles, only one was in DOAJ

Titles were not in DOAJ becauseLocal newspaper (e.g. Raleigh and G’boro)Not current (e.g. Scientific American)Embargoed (e.g. BMJ)

Paid vs. Free

Paid/free overlapOneFile – over 450EBSCO ASP – over 400PQ Research Library – about 250

Rank in accesses via Journal Finder2nd of 223 FT sources at UNCGTied for 1st of 44 FT sources at GTCC1st of 36 FT sources at CPCC

What are we doing now? - Conclusions Many libraries do not provide access points to

free serials, especially through their catalogs Those that do provide access rely primarily on

DOAJ DOAJ does not include all Open Access titles

and doesn’t include thousands of free titles Libraries should be doing more to make free

serials accessible. After all, Google lists them all.

Alternatives

Harvesting Highwire, http://www.highwire.org FreeMedicalJournals.com Scielo, http://www.scielo.org EMIS, http://www.emis.de/journals/short_index.html

Are free journals worth the time?

Number of free titles in Journal Finder –over 11,000

Number used at UNCG - 73% Total uses of free titles - over 190,000 Average time it takes to add a title to

Journal Finder - 1 minute

Thank you

Beth Bernhardt, brbernha@uncg.edu