Access by non-affiliates to licensed content

[Laval Hunsucker <amoinsde@yahoo.com>]

Hello, everyone,

You may remember that, some weeks ago, I posed a query to this 
list about the availability of research publications or other 
reports dealing with the extent to which there has been shown to 
be, among  a) the general public and/or  b) small enterprises and 
e.g. independent consultants, a demand for, or serious interest 
in gaining, structural remote access to digital 
scientific/scholarly content that is typically, because of 
license stipulations, only available to persons formally 
affiliated with institutions such as universities which (i.e., in 
many cases, whose libraries) have negotiated and paid for the 
licensed access.

In the period that followed, I received several indications of 
interest in this subject from list participants, with the request 
that I make available to the list any useful responses that I may 
have received. In fact, my query did not yield as much as I had 
hoped -- though there were a few useful suggestions. In the 
intervening period, I have, as time permitted, myself gone in 
search of relevant literature. Anyway, because of the 
above-mentioned request from others on the list, I herewith 
present a summary indication of what I have found to be 
available.

Alas -- it doesn't turn out to be all that much. (Sufficient 
justification, it would seem, for suggesting initiation of some 
research projects on this topic.)

The relevant studies that have been done, and the reports and 
publications that exist, tend to lie in the medical and health 
care or health services areas. I must confess that this was 
hardly a surprise.

Surely I have missed some things -- perhaps even important 
things. Further suggestions remain welcome.

Deserving of first mention are, perhaps, the reports :

Scientific publications : free for all? : Tenth report of Session 
2003-04 : Volume I: Report / House of Commons, Science and 
Technology Committee. - London : The Stationery Office Limited, 
20 July 2004. - 114 p. - Available at 
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/399.pdf 
or via 
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/39902.htm

[As a result of the release of this report, there appeared a 
short article :   Carl Clayton, "STM research literature and the 
general public", Library + information update 3.10 (October 
2004), p.15.]

and :

Overcoming barriers : access to research information content . - 
London : Research Information Network, December 2009. - 28 p. 
(This report "presents the findings of five studies commissioned 
by the Research Information Network (RIN) to assess the nature 
and scale of key restrictions on access to information resources 
of importance to researchers, the impact of these restrictions, 
and ways in which they might be alleviated or overcome." (the 
report, p.4). Links to all these six important documents, plus a 
briefing paper, can be found at : 
http://www.rin.ac.uk/our-work/using-and-accessing-information-resources/overcoming-barriers-access-research-information)

Certainly also important is :

Access by UK small and medium-sized enterprises to professional 
and academic information : research report / Publishing Research 
Consortium. - Bristol : Mark Ware Consulting Ltd., August 2009. - 
iii, 49 p. - Available at 
http://www.publishingresearch.net/documents/SMEAccessResearchReport.pdf

with its accompanying report :

Access to professional and academic information in the UK : A 
survey of SMEs, large companies, universities & 
colleges,hospitals & medical schools, governmental & research 
institutes : Companion report . - 51 p. - Available at 
http://www.publishingresearch.net/documents/SMEAccessCompanionReport.pdf

Also quite pertinent are two very recent articles by Ken Masters 
:

"Opening the non-open access medical journals: Internet-based 
sharing of journal articles on a medical web site", The Internet 
journal of medical informatics 5.1 (2009). - Available at 
http://tinyurl.com/kmoajournals and "Opening the closed-access 
medical journals: Internet-based sharing of institutions' access 
codes on a medical web-site", The Internet journal of medical 
informatics 5.2 (2010). - Available at 
http://tinyurl.com/kmaccesscodes

Other significant publications dealing with the question are :

Alesia Zuccala, "Open access and civic scientific information 
literacy", Information research 15.1 (2010). - Available at 
http://informationr.net/ir/15-1/paper426.html

Alesia  Zuccala, "Layperson and open access", in Annual review of 
information science and technology 43 (2009), p.359-396

Joseph Esposito, "A Library Card Under the Christmas Tree", blog 
contribution dated Dec. 1 2009, on "The scholarly kitchen" 
(Society for Scholarly Publishing), with twelve responses. - 
Available at 
http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2009/12/01/a-library-card-under-the-christmas-tree/

The access principle : the case for open access to research and 
scholarship / John Willinsky. - Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 
2006. - ISBN 0-262-23242-1. Especially chapter 8 ("Public"), 
p.111-126

and two of his earlier books :

If only we knew : increasing the public value of social-science 
research. - New York [etc.] : Routledge, 2000. - ISBN 
0-415-92651-3 ; 0-415-92652-1 pbk. and Technologies of knowing : 
a proposal for the human sciences. - Boston, Mass. : Beacon 
Press, 1999. - ISBN 0-8070-6106-9 ; 0-8070-6107-7 pbk

and his article :

"Why open access to research and scholarship?", Journal of 
neuroscience 26.36 (2006), p.9078-9079

as well as :

Ray English & Molly Raphael, "The next big library legislative 
issue", American libraries 37.8 (September 2006), p.30-32

Gregor Horstkemper, "Zugang zu geistes- und 
sozialwissenschaftlichen Fachinformationen leicht gemacht: 
Nationallizenzen und pay-per-use-Modelle - oeffentliche 
Bibliotheken als wichtige Anlaufstationen", BuB : Forum 
Bibliothek und Information 58.7/8 (Juli/August 2006), p.553-558

Mogens Damm, "Adgang for alle: en virkelighed med begraensninger" 
["Access for all: a reality with limitations"], 
Bibliotekspressen, 16. januar 2003, p.10-13

M. Frank, "Access to the scientific literature - a difficult 
balance", New England journal of medicine 354.15 (2006), 
p.1552-1555

Ellen Euler, "Licences for open access to scientific publications 
- a German perspective", INDICARE monitor 2.4 (2005). - Available 
at http://www.indicare.org/tiki-readarticle.php?articleId=117

Giovanni A. Fava & Jenny Guidi, "Information overload, the 
patient and the clinician", Psychotherapy and psychosomatics 76.1 
(2007), p.1-3

Sue M. Hollander, "Providing health information to the general 
public: a survey of current practices in academic health sciences 
libraries", Bulletin of the Medical Library Association 88.1 
(2000), p.62-69. - Available at 
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC35199/pdf/i0025-7338-088-01-0062.pdf

Also of potential interest :

A special issue of Arbor : ciencia, pensamiento y cultura -- 
volume 185 (2009), issue 737:  "Ciencia y cultura en la Red". - 
Available at 
http://arbor.revistas.csic.es/index.php/arbor/issue/view/22/showToc 
Especially the contributions of Martin, Cope & Kalantzis, 
Feltrero

Papers from BOBCATSSS 2010, Parma, Italy, 25-27 January 2010, 
under the theme "Bridging the digital divide: libraries providing 
access for all?" Especially the contributions of Sieverts et al. 
(http://dspace-unipr.cilea.it/bitstream/1889/1249/2/Panorama-Parma.pdf), 
Tveter & Sveum 
(http://dspace-unipr.cilea.it/bitstream/1889/1269/2/TveterSveum.pdf), 
Glimstedt 
(http://dspace-unipr.cilea.it/bitstream/1889/1213/1/Glimstedt.pdf), 
Ashcroft 
(http://dspace-unipr.cilea.it/bitstream/1889/1248/2/bobcatsss%202010%20Ashcroft.pdf), 
Cassella 
(http://dspace-unipr.cilea.it/bitstream/1889/1244/1/Maria%20Cassella.pdf)

Urszula Knop, "Zmiany w udostepnianiu zbiorow w bibliotekach 
naukowych" ["Changes in accessing collections at university 
libraries"], Bibliotekarz, 2008, nr.2, p.10-14

Frank Parry, "The access principle: The case for open access to 
research and scholarship", Online information review 30.5 (2006), 
p.600-601

Matthew J. Cockerill & Vitek Tracz, "Open access and the future 
of the scientific research article", Journal of neuroscience 
26.40 (2006), p.10079-10081

Michael J. Kurtz, "Restrictive access policies cut readership of 
electronic research journal articles by a factor of two", 
conference presentation for "National Policies on Open Access 
(OA) Provision for University Research Output: an International 
meeting", February 19 2004 at New College, Southampton 
University. - Available at 
http://opcit.eprints.org/feb19oa/kurtz.pdf

I. H. Witten, "Digital libraries: developing countries, universal 
access, and information for all", in Digital libraries: 
International collaboration and cross-fertilization. 7th 
International Conference on Asian Digital Libraries, ICADL 2004. 
Proceedings. Shanghai, China. 13-17 Dec. 2004 (Lecture notes in 
computer science ; 3334) (Berlin : Springer, 2004), p.35-44

T. Scott Plutchak, "Embracing open access", Journal of the 
Medical Library Association  92.1 (2004), p.1-3. - Available at 
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC314095/pdf/i0025-7338-092-01-0001.pdf

P.S. Tamber et al., "Open access to peer-reviewed research: 
Making it happen", The lancet 362.9395 (2003), p.1575-1577

Alex Byrne, "Digital libraries: barriers or gateways to scholarly 
information?", Electronic library 21.5 (2003), p.414-421

Esko Hakli, "Public libraries and the National Electronic 
Library", Scandinavian public library quarterly 32.1 (1999), 
p.7-8

(Some special characters have been omitted above, for technical 
discussion list software reasons.)

And finally, it is certainly appropriate to allude here (as did 
two persons who responded off-list to my request) to the online 
commercial service DeepDyve : "The largest online rental service 
for scientific, technical and medical research -- For as low as 
$0.99". DeepDyve (formerly Infovell) itself describes its service 
as follows :

"Search across our vast repository of 30 million articles and 
preview any article for free. If you would like to see the rest 
of the article, you can rent the article and read its full-text 
for up to 24 hours for as little as $0.99. Rented articles can 
only be viewed at DeepDyve and cannot be downloaded, printed or 
shared.

The DeepDyve Basic account doesn't cost anything to join and 
comes with 3 free rentals to help get you started. Once those 3 
free rentals have been used, additional rentals will cost as low 
as $0.99. DeepDyve also offers the Silver and Gold monthly plans. 
These plans provide even greater flexibility and more peace of 
mind by allowing more rentals per month, for longer periods of 
time."

Its site can be found under :  http://www.deepdyve.com/ . 
DeepDyve is still in beta. There's a publishers' list beginning 
at http://www.deepdyve.com/browse/publishers , and a journals 
list beginning at http://www.deepdyve.com/browse/journals .

You can find some (brief) evaluations of, or reports on, this 
service in for example :

Advanced technology libraries 38.12 (Dec. 2009), p.3

Against the grain 21.6 (Dec. 2009 / Jan. 2010), p.76-77

Online 34.1 (Jan./Febr. 2010), p.8

Information today 27.4 (Apr. 2010), p.38, 42

I'll just leave it at that, hoping that this posting will have 
been of some use to others here on the list.

And my thanks -- again also on-list -- to those who responded.

- Laval Hunsucker
Breukelen, Nederland