SFX Miscellaneous Free Ejournals Target: Usage Survey among the SFX Community

TL;DR

This survey investigates the usage of the SFX Miscellaneous Free E-Journals target, revealing widespread use but also issues like incorrect links and access problems, aiming to improve its reliability for the SFX community.

Contribution

It provides an overview of current usage and identifies key problems to enhance the accuracy and effectiveness of the free e-journals target.

Findings

Widespread usage of the target among the community

Major issues include incorrect links and access restrictions

Recommendations for improving link accuracy and metadata quality

Abstract

The number of free or open access articles is increasing rapidly, and their retrieval with library indexes and OpenURL link resolvers has been a challenge. In June 2014, the SFX MISCELLANEOUS FREE EJOURNALS target contained more than 24,000 portfolios of all kinds. The SFX Knowledge Base Advisory Board (KBAB) carried out an international survey to get an overview of the usage of this target by the SFX community and to precisely identify what could be done to improve it. The target is widely used among the community. However, many respondents complained about three major problems: (a) incorrect links, (b) full texts actually not free, and (c) incorrect or missing thresholds (years and volumes information).