Most readers have no idea of the long-term and collaborative efforts that are made by committed industry players to provide us access to literature, science publications, etc. from various sources and libraries. The good news is that access is increasing by the day. The Scholarly Kitchen brought this interesting news to us in their article, “Monographs, Transparency and Open Access.”
The most recent example is an announcement from JSTOR regarding its recently launched OA e-book initiative. It involves four university presses and ultimately hundreds of scholarly monographs that will be made available by the close of 2017.
Very real complexities have been introduced into the process of moving the reader from the point of discovery to actual access. Navigating various platforms with inconsistent requirements can lead to inconsistent results. That inconsistency can be due to discrepancies in how supplier systems handle metadata, the quality of the original metadata supplied, a mundane delay in updating systems or all of the above.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.
