Open Access Discovery project

About the project

OCLC Research partnered with two Dutch library consortia—Universiteitsbibliotheken en Nationale Bibliotheek (UKB) and Samenwerkingsverband Hogeschoolbibliotheken (SHB)—to investigate ways that libraries at universities and universities of applied sciences can improve the discoverability of scholarly, peer-reviewed open access (OA) publications for their communities.

Why it matters

Dutch academic libraries have been instrumental in the progress toward full open access to publications for all educational institutions and research domains in the Netherlands. Many are investing heavily in making scholarly, peer-reviewed literature freely accessible. Making those OA publications discoverable within users' workflows is equally important.

Libraries need better evidence to improve the discoverability of OA publications. This project investigated how staff at Dutch universities and universities of applied sciences are integrating scholarly, peer-reviewed OA publications into their users’ discovery workflows to provide valuable evidence for other libraries wanting to make their own practices more effective.

Outputs

Publications

Cover for Improving Open Access Discovery

Improving Open Access Discovery for Academic Library Users examines efforts made by academic library staff at seven institutions in the Netherlands to make scholarly, peer-reviewed open access publications more discoverable by users.

Read this report to learn more about bridging the gap between the availability and discovery of OA publications.

Read the report

Presentations in the Netherlands

We presented preliminary findings from the project at the UKB Network Day on 28 March 2024 in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

Please join us for a presentation of final findings and a workshop during the OCLC Contactdag 2024, on 8 October, in Amersfoort, the Netherlands.

Partners

For this project, OCLC Research partnered with:

Universiteitsbibliotheken & Nationale Bibliotheek (UKB): the consortium of the 13 Dutch university libraries and the national library of the Netherlands
Samenwerkingsverband Hogeschoolbibliotheken (SHB): the partnership of 34 libraries of Dutch universities of applied sciences

Project organization

Steering committee

Hubert Krekels (Wageningen University & Research; Chair UKB)
Gerdie Limonard (Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences; Board member SHB)
Bianca Pannekoek (Utrecht University of Applied Sciences; Board member SHB)
Lynn Silipigni Connaway (OCLC Research)

Working group

Ixchel M. Faniel (OCLC Research)
Henrietta J.W. Hazen (Maastricht University; Member of UKB-SHB WG on Information Literacy)
Jaroen Kuijper (Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences; Member of the SHB working group Research)
Bart van der Steen (Leiden University)
Titia van der Werf (OCLC Research)

2018 OCLC Global Council Survey on Open Content