From: Nancy Herther <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 6 Sep 2017 21:28:37 -0500

Joe -

Open Access is wonderful - although the standards of many OA journals are
somewhat lax today.  The real problem for researchers is that OA means
little if you can't find the articles that you need when you need them.
Google Scholar is as hopeless as Google. The shift to so many
preprint/repository/OA publications begs the need for a strong,
comprehensive indexing system - which is woefully lacking today.

I did a study
<http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09687599.2014.993061> in the
field of Disability Studies a few years ago and found that the majority of
DS journals are OA and freely available on the web - but only ONE was
comprehensively indexed cover-to-cover and that was in Web of Science.  If
you can't find the articles integrated into the traditional indexes of the
scholarly fields, we are only taking a major step backwards - not forward.

Is this a slam-dunk for the future of libraries or indexes?  No.  I'm
shocked at the number of libraries/librarians so openly talking about
canceling scholarly indexes in favor of (lord help us) Google Scholar.
Librarians and their institutions should be putting a whole lot more effort
into quality control and access; however, it doesn't seem to be happening.

Just my thoughts

Nancy Herther

On Wed, Sep 6, 2017 at 6:33 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Wed, 6 Sep 2017 13:23:28 -0400
>
> Perhaps this group can help me brainstorm about a question that I have
> been pondering for some time now.
>
> It's often said that in the future, all scholarly publications will be
> open access. Without taking sides in that debate, I have been
> wondering what functions an academic library in the First World would
> provide if there were no more toll access publications. What services
> will remain and what new ones will be added to a library's
> responsibilities? For purposes of this thought experiment, we can
> include gold, green, and platinum OA in our speculations. The only
> thing that would change is the complete absence of toll access
> publications.
>
> I appreciate any speculations you wish to share.
>
> Joe Esposito
>