Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2004 09:53:52 +0530 From: Subbiah Arunachalam <arun@mssrf.res.in> Friends: How can we best alert would be readers to research papers published in journals and are free to access? Please read what a concerned American librarian has to say. Arun [Subbiah Arunachalam] ---- When scholarly peer reviewed open access articles are imbedded in random issues or are random journal issues, there must be a means of systematically identifying them. If it is approaching 60% in some journals as Dr. Walker notes in his post, to the American Scientist Open Access Forum of yesterday, then the need for a standardized systems becomes critical. OPEN URL resolvers are a standard for navigation in many academic libraries-can we use them to send users to these articles-? Scientific World maintains a list of its open access articles. <http://www.thescientificworld.com/TSWPubs/Journal/openaccessarticles.asp> <<http://www.thescientificworld.com/TSWPubs/Journal/openaccessarticles.asp>> The free access 2004 issue of Nucleic Acids Research-annual database issue from OUP is noted on the journal's splash page at Highwire. The 2004 issues says free at each article, the 2003 issue which is also free, does not. The Entomological Society states "free pdf" on individual articles American Society of Limnology and Oceanography has an "unlocked" padlock icon. BMC has an icon on individual articles that says "free" . If author paid open access becomes standard, it can happen rapidly in fields that already have page charge and reprint traditions, then identification also must be standardized. OAI harvesters aren't currently sufficient. Some suggestions from talking with Dr. Herbert Van De Sompel of LANL: Publishers could expose these articles, with their data, to OAI harvesters which could feed the data to linking servers. He also suggested information could be included in a metadata tag, ie access=open (which could be used on an open URL) Other issues: Are these articles and issues also being deposited in OAI archives by publishers? Shouldn't they be? Is there some other unique identifying system that can be computed, reduced to a formula to be plugged into open url resolvers? I am not aware of a standard identifier for permanently free content in traditional journals? I assume individual publishers using unique marking systems internally-can those be used to configure resolvers? They will have something in their systems that says "free" How does that get guaranteed over time? What if publishers for a title change? Isn't that another reason to deposit these also in OAI systems? If users can't systematically identify which articles are free (my library bias) they will be underutilized, won't be identified as open access in standard sources (ISI or Compendex for instance) and could become orphaned. One of the 5 basic principles of librarianship from Ranganathan is: "Save the Time of the Reader." That is imperative. Free and easy and organized-predictable access all have to come together to guarantee that! Chuck Hamaker Associate University Librarian Collections and Technical Services Atkins Library University of North Carolina Charlotte Charlotte, NC 28223 phone 704 687-2825