From: kalev leetaru <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 5 May 2016 19:57:33 -0400

Fred, it is not that Google Scholar as it presently stands is the
ideal, it is the vision it prototypes of having a single search
interface that transparently penetrates all available sources and
where you can fulltext search all of those holdings and instantly
locate a copy of a given article. Google Scholar is certainly a far
cry from the true ideal, but it is orders of magnitude closer than
where the library systems I've used are today.  By itself it is not
the ideal, but I think it represents a strong vision for where we need
to head in terms of ease of use, intuitiveness, and ability to span
collections.

~K


On Thu, May 5, 2016 at 4:36 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> From: Fred Jenkins <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Wed, 4 May 2016 21:24:26 -0400
>
> I agree with you that finding the full-text in a library online
> journal collection can be a painful experience (I have a hierarchy
> when I go to our AtoZ: JSTOR, Muse, OhioLINK EJC, publisher site,
> aggregator dead last).  Of course I know what's where, because I did
> the licensing for most of it.  But I don't see Google or Google
> Scholar as an answer.  The searching capabilities are from the stone
> age.  And Google Scholar has made it harder to find and use the
> advanced search feature, which is not very advanced anyway.  I have
> been doing extensive bibliographical research in multiple languages
> and few options are more painful than Google.
>
> Google is great if you just want three articles in English, but not
> for anything comprehensive.
>
> Fred W. Jenkins, Ph.D.
> Associate Dean for Collections and Operations, University Libraries
> Professor, University Libraries and Department of Religious Studies
> University of Dayton
>
>
>
> On Wed, May 4, 2016 at 7:01 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> > From: kalev leetaru <[log in to unmask]>
> > Date: Wed, 4 May 2016 08:51:30 -0400
> >
> > In case it is of interest, here is my take on SciHub and the trend it represents in academic publishing:
> >
> > http://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2016/04/29/the-future-of-open-access-why-has-academia-not-embraced-the-internet-revolution/
> >
> > To second Ann's comments, one of the most striking things to me about that Science piece is just how heavily SciHub is apparently being used at Western academic institutions which likely have legal subscriptions to the journals in question. That to me stands testament to just how awful current academic library journal subscription search systems are. I  can personally attest from 15 years at various institutions public to private just how impossible it can be to just find the fulltext of a particular journal article even when you know your institution subscribes to the journal and issue in question. Or you search and find 10 different copies from 10 different services the institution subscribes to, but some are abstracts only, some are ASCII text only with no figures, and so on.  Or you want to see an entire issue of a journal and you find multiple subscriptions that purport to include the journal, but then when you browse through, after having clicked through screen after screen, you find that some subscriptions have time delays so don't include the most recent issue or end or start on a particular date or only have samples of the journal, etc.  Its a huge huge mess today. Its not librarys' exclusive faults, but I do think there is immense room for improvement - even I ended up in the habit of going to Google Scholar first to have it link me into my library's subscriptions, since it at least seemed to be able to track down whether my library had a copy and connect me directly to the best copy that had fulltext and images.
> >
> > Google Scholar is far from perfect, but as a researcher who does intense deep dives into the literature, it is the model that I think libraries simply have to adopt to stay relevant and serve their communities.  It simply can't be that I can spend half a hour to an hour (sometimes several hours) just trying to track down a journal article in the myriad mess of a typical academic library's esubscriptions system - I should be able to search for the article and jump right to the best available copy with a mouse click.
> >
> > While slightly tangent, the Science article also alludes to the possibility that SciHub downloaders are using it for text mining. That is another area where academic libraries need to play a much bigger role in helping academics. I myself have always found libraries to be highly adversarial when it comes to connecting researchers with publishers to explore possible collaborations and in fact libraries have always been the primary obstacle for me in my 15 years data mining in the academic world. Instead I've always had to reach out directly to publishers after my home institution library would push back saying it was not their job to help connect researchers or would otherwise not invest any effort of any kind in helping make those connections.
> >
> > I've found publishers to be extremely helpful and open in supporting large-scale data mining when approached - from 21 billion words of academic literature (http://dlib.org/dlib/september14/leetaru/09leetaru.html) to my dissertation (http://www.kalevleetaru.com/Publish/Leetaru_Dissertation_Can_We_Forecast_Conflict-Dissertation.pdf) to a myriad other initiatives I oversee (http://blog.gdeltproject.org/) - see more in my NFAIS opening keynote: (http://kalevleetaru.com/Publish/ISU2015-Leetaru-Mining-Libraries.pdf), but in every case I reached out directly to the publishers after my home institutional library failed to be of any help in forging connections and collaborations. Libraries have a lot they can offer there in helping to connect scholars with publishers and assisting in that process to ensure legal data mining that benefits all sides, but they need to recognize that if they put their foot down and say it is not their role, researchers will simply go right around them directly to the publishers, further reducing the library's role in academic life.
> >
> > To me SciHub appears to be less a service for poorer nations to access scholarship financially inaccessible to their institutions and more a reaction to the just plain horrific state of access to academic scholarship today, from extreme costs of subscriptions to the awful state of library access portals.
> >
> >
> > ~Kalev
> > http://kalevleetaru.com
> > http://blog.gdeltproject.org/