Professor Marsteller gave me a lot to think about in the last lecture, particularly on the topic of open access.
I notices other classmates mentioned being able to link to published work from their scientist's CV; I was not so lucky. However, Dr. Santos does have some PDF files of her articles on her website. The most current citation is from 2003. She really needs to update as I know from database searches she has published work up to at least the end of 2008. It is this type of personal or academic archived work that I used to think of as open access. I was unaware that there were entire databases and even journals that published as OA.
What an "Ah-ha" moment when I explored PubMed. Why didn't I know about this before? This is an amazing resource and I will be spreading the word. I was on this site for hours. It has lots of links and I especially like the related articles function. To know that this is available to the general public is great. Many articles are even available full text. Someone without access to an academic library can still find information and if it is not freely available the patron can try to get it on Inter-library Loan.
Of course I did a search for my scientist and came up with many articles that I found on the academic databases but when I limited my results to full text articles I only got two hits. I did find that the limit to full text did not extend to the related articles feature. But it is fairly easy to pick them out due to the green Free article link under the citation.
Another good resource I explored is the PLoS, Public Library of Science. They publish seven fully open access peer-reviewed journals. They also "deposit" works in PubMed upon publication. They offer RSS feeds to help researchers stay up to date. One of their publications, PLoS Computational Biology, is an official journal of the International Society for Computational Biology and includes Dr. Santos on the editorial board.
Sherpa/RoMEO is a great way to find which publishers support open access. I found it a little difficult to navigate at first because I wasn't sure how this site might be used. I can see if someone wants to advance the open access agenda that they would want to find out which publications support open access. But it really didn't click until I read that some grants would require the author to also have their research available in an open access venue; such as an NIH's requirement that grant recipients submit their work to PubMed. I did look at Dr. Santo's CV to see if any of her grants may have had this sort of requirement but even after poking around for quite a while I couldn't determine this.
15 years ago
4 comments:
I try to bookmark all the open access sites I come across so I know where I can look when I can't find articles. The school I work at has EBSCO but beyond that not much else available in terms of database selection. Having other options helps sometimes.
Thank you for all the suggestions. I know PubMed is a big deal in the medical field, but forget it can be used cross-discipline as well. I am going to try PLoS and Sherpa/RoMEO for my own blog. Good work!
Although I have nearly run out of time with this assignment, I will definitely check out PLoS. A librarian needs as many tools as possible in her/his arsenal. Thanks.
You mentioned perhaps having open access articles as a requirement for grants. I'm not certain, but that sounds plausible. At both of my jobs there are always grant applications in the works and most of the time we need proof of the availability of the work we want funded. For example, in the archives we have to keep track of the number of patrons we assist and their research requests to prove that we do have people accessing the materials and in the art department there has to be documentation of the pieces that are displayed and attendance at museum events-- in a similar way I would think that a scientist must prove that their work will be beneficial to an audience and for the common good. Then again, each grant has its own requirements.
Post a Comment