Scopus and Web of Science (Wos) are the two most used tools right now for doing biblometric/data analysis on publications. Mostly because there is not really any other alternatives out there. With Return On Investment (ROI) projects becoming a large and important task of academic and research institutions, there are a lot of problems with the only large-scale citation index being the two of them.
I took part in a recent Scopus training webinar about a month ago where it was casually mentioned that Scopus doesn’t index all of Elsevier’s journals. This sparked my interest: Why wouldn’t Scopus, who is owned by Elsevier and tightly tied in with other Elsevier products, index all of Elsevier’s journals? The necessary metadata is all right there. So why not?
Also, asking the question why not all Elsevier journals are in Scopus is kind of a ‘dammed if you dammed if you don’t’ trick question. A bit like asking “Does your mom know you’re an idiot?”. Elsevier prides itself on only indexing high quality publications in Scopus, and if doesn’t index all of the journals it publishes, isn’t that admitting that not all of the journals Elsevier publishes are not high quality? …So, it is a good question to ask. Continue reading
A few days ago Springer-Nature announced that they are extending their Nature Journals’ Article Sharing Trial to include all of Springer-Nature’s 2,700 journals. I think it’s got some interesting implications. I thought I’d share some things that have been kicking around in my head since I read their press release.
The original trial with Nature Journals allowed anyone with subscription access to any Nature Journal to share full text – but read-only – articles with people without a subscription. Subscribers were able to access a legitimate and shareable link which they could then copy and paste over to a colleague or paste on social media. Media outlets and blogs were also allowed to post these shareable links so that their readers could view the articles.
Here are the slides from my recent presentation for the Ontario Library Association’s Education Institute. A recording of the presentation can also be found here.
(Juicier stuff is closer to the end of the presentation)
I’ve long been fascinated with the implications of demand-driven eBook acquisition models (DDA) at academic libraries (Great primer on DDA here). Particularly with interesting things happening such as Evidence Based Acquisition or, in the public library sphere, Hoopla.
However, having worked for a small research library that processed a large amount of ILL article requests, I’ve also been extremely curious about demand-driven journal article acquisition. Journal article DDA hasn’t caught on as much as eBook DDA. The reasons for this (as I see them) are: Continue reading
Almost a year ago now Web of Science (WoS) launched their open access search filter and indicator. This is a pretty important addition and, as you can see below, it allows the searcher to access the full-text of an open access article directly. It also allows the searcher to limit their searchers to just open access material. 
Continue reading
The digital media content providing service, Hoopla has been TAKING OVER the public library world over the last year. Going from only 13,000 titles in their catalog and a few hundred libraries subscribed, to over 350,000 titles and over 850 Libraries subscribing. Currently they are signing up around 15-30 library systems every month.
So what has made Hoopla catch on fire like this? Why are so many libraries signing up and promoting the hell out of it in local media? Continue reading
