Why is there a need to post a list of OA articles?

[Eric Hellman <eric@openly.com>]

Libraries need to know what items are available to their users. 
Automated systems are playing an increasing role in matching 
readers to articles.

In an increasingly typical scenario, a reader discovers an 
article of interest in a search engine- Google Scholar, Pubmed, 
Scopus, etc. The search engine have an interaction with an 
institutional link server to display to the user whether or not 
full text for the item can be found in their library. Google 
Scholar does this by uploading holdings files from the library; 
Scopus does this dynamically using an "image-based linking" 
technique.

Today, link servers in libraries that do not subscribe to your 
journal will tell their users that the OA article is not 
available in their library, because there is no way to determine 
automatically that the article is in fact OA. Potential readers 
will miss the article despite the fact that the author has paid 
an OA fee.

It's something to work on- I would love to hear from publishers 
that would like to see this type of access metadata more easily 
available to libraries.

Eric

At 9:16 PM -0400 4/16/06, Martin Frank wrote:
> Why is there a need to post a list of OA articles in our
> journals?  All one has to do is go to the TOC for the journal and
> one sees an open tag (or "lock") on articles that are open and
> free for reading.  APS does that for articles for which the
> author has paid an OA fee.  Should we also do this for articles
> that become free after an embargo period?  Should we post a list
> of those articles somewhere other than in the journal's TOC?  I
> am proud of how we function as a publisher, providing access in a
> timely manner, facilitating the needs of patients to access
> content, and encouraging the development of the scientific
> enterprise in developing countries through collaboration with
> Hinari and Agora.
>
> marty
>
> Martin Frank, Ph.D.
> Executive Director
> American Physiological Society
> Email: mfrank@The-APS.org
> APS Home Page: http://www.The-APS.org/