Discovery and Re-use of Open Access Research

William Gunn, Ph.D. Head of Academic Outreach

Mendeley

@mrgunn

How do people discover research?

If you’re a publisher, you may think this

• Browsing the journal • Google Scholar • TOC alerts • RSS feeds • Library catalog referrals

If you’re a librarian, you may think this

• Google Scholar • Library catalog • Actually going to the library • TOC email alerts • RSS feeds

J Med Libr Assoc. 2010 January; 98(1): 73–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.3163/1536-5050.98.1.019

If you’re a scientist, you ask your colleagues and they tell you

this

• Google Scholar • Via email from PI/colleague • Library catalog • from web forum • #icanhazpdf

There’s a lot of pent up demand

• Pubmed Central downloads are about 50% from non-institutional domains.

• Searches landing on Arxiv are often from non-institutional domains • Nurses • Small business • Interested public / lay scientists

The difference in the two types of discovery is that one is social

Not Social ∙ Search ∙ Email alerts ∙ RSS feeds ∙ Browsing

journal websites

∙ Visiting the library

Social ∙ Emails from

colleagues ∙ links shared on

social networks ∙ web forums ∙ shared servers

Obviously, open access research has an advantage here

http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Apr-13/AprMay13_Lin_Fenner.html

data from Mendeley readership

data from a sample of 500k papers from Pubmed published in 2012

altmetrics show broader impact a work

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An example of re-use

Without open data, this wouldn’t be possible!

www.mendeley.com