Putting Open Access into Interlibrary Loan

@mcarthur_joe / @oa_button openaccessbutton.org
Putting Open Access into
Interlibrary Loan
New tools & Imperial College London’s experience
By: Joe Mcarthur - @mcarthur_joe /
Joe@openaccessbutton.org
Lead, Open Access Button.
Assistant Director, Right to Research Coalition.

Get the slides & paper
openaccessbutton.org/ilds

About me & Open Access Button
Me:
●  Started as a student frustrated by paywalls.
●  Co-founder, Open Access Button. Assistant Director of
Right to Research Coalition. Organizer for OpenCon.
Open Access Button:
●  Builds a family of community-owned tools that catalyse
an open future. We help librarians increase their
campus’s access to research, without needing a
bigger budget.
●  Non-profit, Open Source, community-owned,
Supported by SPARC (a coalition of academic
libraries).

In this talk
●  What Open Access Button is
●  How we’re putting OA into ILL:
●  DeliverOA: openaccessbutton.org/deliveroa
●  EmbedOA: openaccessbutton.org/embedoa
●  OAsheet: openaccessbutton.org/oasheet
●  Work at Imperial

Some disclaimers
●  We think ILL is a wonderful, immensely powerful system
●  You all know much more about ILL than me
●  I’m here to listen & learn
●  I’m not a librarian (but I work for you, and co-develop with
you)

Thank you to...
The whole Imperial Library Services team, especially:
●  Karine Larose, Library Services
●  Simon Barron (now SOAS)
●  Andrew Preater (now University of West London)
●  Frances Boyle, Assistant Director
●  Chris Banks, Director

What is the
Open Access Button?

We make free, fast, legal tools and services that
take you from a paywall to a free alternative in
one click. If we can’t, we’ll try and make the
article open access for you.
Or, legal scihub for short.

6%
of articles behind paywalls can be
found for free, legally, instantly.
A higher % of recent articles are available.
Many can be made available on demand.

About the content we find
●  Also known as “green Open Access”, author uploaded manuscripts or self-
archived Open Access. Usually found in repositories.
●  Articles in repositories are often extremely similar to their journal equivalents.
●  We find “hybrid” articles (free articles in paid for journals)
●  These versions can be hard to find, we make it easy.
●  We find papers from 5000+ repositories around the world & “hybrid” articles.
●  We don’t use Researchgate & Academia.edu (aka scholarly social networks)

Tools for your desktop browser
With Open Access Button free access can
be just a click away

Installing the Open Access Button
Click here to install
the Open Access
Button in your
personal browser

Using the Open Access Button
Use this search box
to find articles
immediately
(no installation or
sign up)

Click here on any scholarly article.
We will either take you to an Open Access
version, or start a request to an author for
you in a single click.
Try it here:
openaccessbutton.org/plugin_v4
Using the (new) Open Access Button

Open Access Button:
(NEW version)
Article Available
●  Click on any article, or put a url, doi or title into
the homepage search box.
●  Available for all major browsers. Use from the
homepage or download the plugin in a click.
●  Doesn’t use Researchgate & Academia.edu
●  Useful for: Your Researchers, your Staff, you!
Get it: openaccessbutton.org

Open Access Button
(NEW version):
Article Not Available
●  If there is no Open Access copy available, you
can reach out to the author to ask them to
share a copy.
●  When an article is unavailable, you’re
automatically invited to request it from and
author.
●  All you do is say why you want the article, and
sign in to tell us who you are.
●  You’ll get email updates on the progress of
your request.
●  If the author shares it with you, everyone else
who needs it will also be able to access it.
●  Successful about 5% of the time, currently.

How the Open Access Button contacts authors
on your behalf
●  Checking your story and request (so
we don’t send spam)
●  Finding the author’s up to date email
address
●  Sending authors a friendly message
with your name and why you want the
article
●  Guiding the author on providing a legal
copy of their work
●  Putting the article in a repository
(Zenodo)
●  Sharing the article with a user, and
anyone else who needs it

How we are putting
OA in ILL

Why we are putting
OA in ILL

NEW: Add a search bar to your library webpages
Get it: openaccessbutton.org/embedoa
^ Put an easy to use search bar on any of your libraries pages!
Make it easy for your researchers to discover Open Access articles while they make Interlibrary loans or browse
your Libguide. No coding skills required.

Make it easy for your researchers to discover Open Access articles while they make Interlibrary loans or browse
your Libguide. No coding skills required. Get it: openaccessbutton.org/embedoa
NEW: Add a search bar to your library webpages

NEW: Finding OA when
processing Interlibrary
Loans (ILL)
●  Helps ILL staff check for Open
Access without changing their
workflows
●  Works on Alma, Clio & ILLiad with
more on the way
●  Similar to our website & plugin, but
honed for ILL staff
Get it: openaccessbutton.org/deliveroa

NEW: Finding OA
alternavites for lots of
articles at once!
●  Upload a spreadsheet with a list of articles,
and it does the rest.
●  We’ll send you a spreadsheet with a list of
article we could find Open Access
alternatives for.
Use it: openaccessbutton.org/oasheet
If you’re more technical: openaccessbutton.org/
api or oadoi.org are more powerful.

Experiences at
Imperial College London
Library

●  Imperial College London is a large London undergrad / grad institution with a heavily research
focus. Request about 8000 ILLs a year.
●  Imperial’s motivations:
○  Creating a better user experience for library services
○  Advocating for Open Access
○  Cost saving are a nice bonus
●  Process:
○  Initiative born from a discussion over drinks at a conference (please feel free to
replicate...). Refined with many in the library.
○  Several in-person meetings & many emails over the course of a year
○  Co-development and an agile / iterative approach
○  User testing & metrics used to guide the work
○  Many other ideas, and big vision, but stuck to working on first steps that could be
shipped to users.
At Imperial: Motivations & Process

At Imperial: Delivering paid access articles through
the Open Access Button
●  Did a quick integration with Ex-Libris
Primo. Provides yes / no answers on if
Imperial has access.
●  Useful now for off-campus use, where
users sometimes need a reminder
they need to log into the VPN.
●  The tool won’t be called “Open Access
Button” to avoid confusion.
(Note: this image is only for demonstration and exploration,
and doesn’t represent a finished product)

At Imperial: Using the Open Access Button to create
ILLs
●  Integrated with Alma to have
OAB create ILLs
●  If an article isn’t available
through paid or OA, an ILL
could be created in a click.
●  ILL staff got more & correct
article metadata. Immediately
told if article was oa, and
results of subscription check
●  Didn’t message the system as
“Interlibrary loan”.
(Note: these images are only for demonstration and exploration, and doesn’t
represent a finished product)

At Imperial: Using the Open Access Button with real
ILLs
●  Ran historical ILL data (~1 year)
against OAsheet and Imperial’s
catalog. This takes minutes.
●  Could reduce their delivery times by
6% using OA alone.
●  By delivering paid-for content
instantly, this could be reduced by
13%.
●  Employing both these mechanism
would reduce times by 16%

At Imperial: Requests to authors
●  Happy to have all ILLs start requests to authors to make the
work Open Access.
●  Happy to have Imperial name associated with requests.
●  Expected to see a success rate above our usual requests
due to the Imperial brand name.
●  Not managed to implement yet due to logistical difficulties.
However, these are slowly being overcome.

At Imperial: More information
●  In our paper: openaccessbutton.org/ilds
●  Emailed directly to you: openaccessbutton.org/libraries

Challenges
●  Explaining versions (e.g pre-print, post-print, author
accepted manuscript) to scholars
●  False positives (fixes on the way)
●  There isn’t enough green yet
●  Funding to sustain the tools and create better versions

Coming Soon
●  A new ILL form with only
one box that delivers
content instantly.
●  Instructions for integrating
Open Access articles into
your catalog and link
resolver

Stay in the know
openaccessbutton.org/libraries

Questions?
Contact me @mcarthur_joe or
Joe@openaccessbutton.org
or come and chat to me.
Materials: https://openaccessbutton.org/ilds

Putting Open Access into Interlibrary Loan

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

Viewers also liked

Viewers also liked (12)

Similar to Putting Open Access into Interlibrary Loan

Similar to Putting Open Access into Interlibrary Loan (20)

More from CTLes

More from CTLes (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Putting Open Access into Interlibrary Loan