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Re: Managing free access journals Rick C. Mason 02 Aug 2007 13:14 UTC

I thought that this was a topic that could be of use to many people, so I have replied to SERIALST as well...

My guess is that you are referring to Open Access journals, and thought I would provide a few links that I have gathered from my blog ( http://blog.librarysupportstaff.org/ ) as a starting point to discover what journals are out there and some of the ways to search them.

* Google has created Google Scholar ( http://scholar.google.com/ ), which searches, among other resources, many open access journals.  Unfortunately, there is no way to limit to open access resources, so the usefulness is limited in this regard.

* One of the best resources on the web is the Directory of Open Access Journals ( http://www.doaj.org/ ).  They list nearly 3,000 open access journals, but fewer than 900 can be searched through their service.  This can be an excellent way to find journals by topic, however.

* Someone has set up a Google Custom Search Engine to search many more DOAJ journals (nearly 2,000 sites) at the article level ( http://tinyurl.com/33snor or the long url: http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=005943177783402775348%3A0jxffbisbzk ).  This is limited to the English language journals, and the creator states that it is a work in progress.  You may want to consider building your own, perhaps based on his work, to include specific topics or journals that are of the most use to your patrons.

* ResourceShelf ( http://www.resourceshelf.com ) did an overview of open access search resources.  You can find their entry on this at http://tinyurl.com/3y74nk or the long url: http://www.resourceshelf.com/2007/07/09/a-quick-look-of-a-few-free-science-search-tools-scirus-live-search-academic-google-scholar-scitopia-global-science-gateway-and-more/

* Another good resource to use is the Public Library of Science ( http://www.plos.org/ ), which has spawned the PLOSOne blog and search tool ( http://www.plosone.org/ ).

I hope that these help to provide a good starting point for including open access in your search tools.  Two blogs to keep an eye on in regards to open access resources and developments are ResourceShelf (see link above) and Open Access News ( http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html ).

Rick Mason

-----Original Message-----
From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum [mailto:SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU] On Behalf Of Nada Jensen, MALS
Sent: Wednesday, August 01, 2007 2:03 PM
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: [SERIALST] Managing free access journals

We would like to provide links to open source journals from our web page or catalog.  I would appreciate hearing how your library manages such free access journals.  Do you include them on your web page/catalog?  Is there a comprehensive list of free access journals available?  How do you keep track of them?  Any suggestions on how to start such a project would be really appreciate.  Please reply to njense@midwestern.edu