The discovery audit revisited

This topic is for discussion for "The discovery audit revisited." To go back to this session in Cadmore, click here.

If Springer wants to see library discover lead to access to your content, then why is it that Nature and other publications make the first step to access a ‘purchase here’ option, instead of ‘Before you go further, are you affiliated with a library check here for access’ button?

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Has anyone in the librarian community bought or a built a good tool for tracking all the authentication methods used on a platform? I realized I wanted to report all the databases that use SSO, but had no way to do it. And then I wanted to report all the databases that use SSO via InCommon. Most discovery services and ERM seem limited to tracking “Proxy Y/N” but the real world is more complex.

Standardization of reporting from discovery vendors to content providers is needed. As a content provider, we receive very little information and we cannot tell if the discovery systems have all the content they should from us, how long the lag time is for new titles to appear, etc. We suspect libraries are selecting our Open Access collections vs. the collections they are paying for.

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When a person arrives on Nature.Com but their IP is not identified as belonging to a particular institution, they are treated as a member of the public and a few options are offered. One option is indeed the federated access option, which we have been pressing our clients to adopt. This is the option that you refer to about clicking to identify through your institution by selecting your institution from a drop down menu and then inputting your institutional credentials to get full text access to everything that a person affiliated with the institution is entitled to access. The design, size and location of the federated option button is actually regulated as part of the recommended practice agreed to by the implementers, to give users of various publisher sites a uniform and expected experience. The pay option is also there, and is always there with subscription content for unidentified users. But since we are world leaders in the progress of open access, the clock is ticking on that.

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