To examine the open access availability of Library and Information Science (LIS) research, a study was conducted using Google Scholar to search for articles from 20 top LIS journals. The study examined whether Google Scholar was able to find any links to full text, if open access versions of the articles were available and where these articles were being hosted. The results showed that the archiving of articles is not a regular practice in the field; articles are not being deposited in institutional or subject repositories at a high rate; and, overall, the percentage of available open access articles in LIS was similar to the findings in previous studies. In addition, the study found that Google Scholar is an effective tool for finding known LIS articles.
Grand Valley State University Libraries implemented Serials Solutions' web-scale discovery tool, Summon, during the fall of 2009. This case study explores whether Summon had an impact on the use of the library's resources during its first semester of implementation. An examination of usage statistics showed a dramatic decrease in the use of traditional abstracting and indexing databases and an equally dramatic increase in the use of full text resources from full text database and online journal collections. The author concludes that the increase in full text use is linked to the implementation of a web-scale discovery tool. NOTICE: this is the author's version of a work that was accepted for publication in Serials Review. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version is published in
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.