Re: Cataloguing open access

["Laura J. Smart" <ljsmart@csupomona.edu>]

I agree with Jan, that open access journals should be made available from
OPACS.  I can think of a few good reasons, however, why a library might
not "properly" catalog the BioMedCentral titles, even though they may be
wonderful additions to the scholarly literature.

1 - Collection development - the selectors in that subject area may not
choose those titles

2 - Fullness of the records - the comma delimited data provided on
http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/libraries/catalog is bare bones and it
would take significant effort to catalog it to MARC21, or it would cost
money to get a complete record from a bibliographic utility.

Cataloging BioMedCentral titles would be dependent upon local choices and
resources.

best,
Laura

At 07:28 PM 6/17/2003 -0400, jan velterop wrote:
>Dear Librarians,
>
>Although many of you do include them, it is sometimes a bit frustrating to
>notice that not in every library open access journals are properly
>catalogued . Surely, it can't be because they don't have to be paid for in
>order to get access?
>
>I would like to make the case that authors who publish in open access
>journals materially contribute to the improvement of scientific
>communication and therefore deserve their articles not to be excluded from
>library catalogues, even though it is in the nature of open access
>articles that they can be easily found using web search engines such as
>Google. Inclusion in library catalogues not only ensures that they can be
>browsed and found in local searches, but it also aids the general
>acceptability and visibility of open access journals as alternatives to
>the expensive and disseminationally (sorry!) restrictive traditional
>subscription-based ones.
>
>The cataloguing data for the almost 100 journals that BioMed Central
>publishes can be found here:
>http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/libraries/catalog
>
>Thank you for including them.
>
>Jan Velterop
>BioMed Central