Let's be Open

Scihub, it's a problem.  It contains access to 'nearly all scholarly literature' (Himmelstein, 2018). What does the persistent existence of Scihub and it's 'success' say about libraries, publishers and federated access management (FAM)? We acknowledge that the user journey, the properly sanctioned and paid for one, is quite a painful journey, but our solution seems to be making it more painful. Yes we now have discovery systems all wonderfully wayflessly linked together, but now what do I spy, is that a reCAPTCHA on half of the sodding articles i'm trying to access? I suppose it might do something to stop piracy but it's hardly encouraging our users to go through legitimate routes. It's certainly winding me up. What should we as librarian's think of piracy? SciHub, ResearchGate, all of it? Should we be against it on principle as a threat to our jobs and futures? It might genuinely be one. Those of us who have pitted our career on enabling digit

Sort of following on from my last post, I thought I might try and write a post on 'Access to Research'. Since it found out it existed 3/4 years ago I've thought it was a brilliant idea, but one that seems strangely invisible to many. My observations are that no one seems to have heard of it outside of the public library sector, and even those within the public library sector seem uncertain of it. Rocking up to my local public library in Hungerford to check it out about several years back I was told by the Library Assistant (not volunteer, at least I don't think so) that yes they had it and it could be accessed on the computers over there but please don't ask any questions as she didn't know anything about it. Working in selectively accessible government libraries I have had cause to direct many a retired person wanting access to academic literature to it, though many seem put off by the fact that you actually have to go to the library. And well, as my anecdotal

So in the last few months I have done something I never really expected to do; I applied for a PhD on Open Access. Now don't get over excited because I didn't get it, and in retrospect it might be a good thing. I wasn't particularly disappointed not to get it, and I suspect that project is better placed with someone not in full-time employment. But, it would have been great to do something that would actually have an impact on Open Access. Anyway, it did revitalise my interest in reading and writing about OA, or I think more accurately making information more accessible. That's probably the key here. Information can be as open as it likes but if it isn't accessible, if it is impenetrable to most people then it's 'real impact factor' is negligible. Having spent some time looking it OA literature (for the PhD proposal) it does seem as though impact factor is an academic obsession, which is understandable if completely uninteresting to a non-academic. Alt

Last month, just before I finally posted my second blog post (go me) I attended the Open Athens conference 2018. I wasn't bowling over with enthusiasm for the event because conferences are always that great blend of some very interesting and novel information plus lots of bumfy meh and sales pitches. However I went and actually had a good time and networked a bit so all in all a worthwhile and inexpensive event so thank you Open Athens for arranging. If you are interested in the content of the conference you can listen to the plenaries here . The last plenary was by Torsten Reimer from the British Library , on making 'everything available', e.g. trying to make British Library content more accessible to customers. That part was interesting, but I myself have been fixating on the words from the first 6 minutes of his plenary for the past 2 weeks. Start listing from about 3.40 in the YouTube recording to around 5.54, just over 2 minutes of you life, go on I think its worth i

Like many poor people who wish they could get more enjoyment out of the summer, I suffer from hay fever. As a child I was constantly sneezing and had tissues permanently stuffed up my cardigan sleeve. It was a rather miserable experience not helped by endless family mockery; friends I don't remember being a problem. Seriously my family are a questionable bunch.  At some point when the symptoms were particularly bad my mother and I visited Boots and looked for an potential (affordable) solution; my family didn't tend to have much money to spare. We also didn't know much about medicine, and so when we  found on the shelves a small fairly inexpensive bottle of pills for the treatment of hay fever we purchased them. This was before generic hay fever tablets could be bought 14 for a £1. The pills we bought were homeopathic; I think we thought that meant they were a herbal remedy. I took them for a while, I think more than one season, so I clearly thought they were working but

I had promised myself that I would start a blog in 2018 in order to start in some tiny way becoming more active in and around the topics I care about. I think other people care about them too and are probably already articulating them satisfactorily without my input, but like I said, this is about motivating me to become more engaged. Well we all have to start somewhere don't we? So what are the things that I would like to write about? Firstly, evidence based thinking and why we should all be doing it. Secondly Open Access literature and open culture, where we are and where we want to be. These are tangential connected, they're both about access to and exploitation of research evidence but they are different topics. I think the reason I care particularly about these topics is my job. As a government type Librarian my work is focused on encouraging not necessarily academically inclined professionals that Libraries are relevant to their work, promoting a 'what works' ac