Presenter

Ixchel Faniel, Senior Research Scientist, OCLC Research

Description

As open science policies and funding requirements drive the rapid expansion of scholarly peer-reviewed open access (OA) publications, academic libraries face a critical challenge: ensuring that freely available content is truly discoverable. While libraries have developed sophisticated infrastructure for subscription-based resources, findings from the OA Discovery project show that the discoverability of OA publications takes effort.

The project leveraged OCLC Research’s unique ability to convene and coordinate collaborative cross-institutional investigations. Participating libraries were generous with their time and shared their experiences openly. Using a mixed-methods approach, data from group interviews with staff at seven Dutch academic libraries was combined with results from a survey of their user communities. Key findings demonstrate that while OA publications were the most searched-for OA resource, they were not very easy for users to search for or access—partly due to fragmented discovery pathways, limited user knowledge about OA resources, and inconsistent metadata quality.

This presentation reveals both successful practices and persistent gaps in OA discovery that lead to actionable insights in four key areas.

• Selecting and adding OA publications to library collections
• Increasing OA awareness, knowledge, and engagement
• Improving metadata to support OA discovery
• Measuring the effects of library efforts to improve OA discovery

The project demonstrates OCLC Research’s distinctive capacity to design and execute research in a local context while also providing insights to the global library community. Attendees will learn practical approaches to incorporating OA publications into existing discovery systems and user workflows based on the opportunities and challenges library staff discussed. The presentation will also highlight users’ experiences with scholarly, peer-reviewed publications and open access.

This webinar will be of interest to collection development librarians, discovery services managers, metadata specialists, scholarly communication librarians, and library administrators involved in open access initiatives. It will also appeal to those interested in user experience research and evidence-based approaches to library service improvement.

All affiliates of OCLC Research Library Partnership organizations are invited to participate in live sessions. The recording is available to all.