United States Department of Transportation
i
Free to Read or Paywall Prisoner: Accessing Digital Transportation Journals
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2020-01-14
[PDF-709.97 KB]
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Abstract:There is a common myth among internet searchers that they “can find anything with a search engine,” and therefore don’t need a librarian’s help. However, these searchers may not understand the difference between “finding” an article citation online, and actually having “access” to the paper. Often times, access is blocked or limited by a journal paywall. Depending on the user’s organizational affiliation, or bank account, scaling these paywalls can be expensive or impossible, thereby limiting “access” to research. For researchers at institutions which pay substantial subscription fees for journal access, this research paywall is often invisible, as the fees are paid by the organization’s library. Library staff spend a great deal of time making content paywalls as invisible as possible for their users.
While there is a growing movement towards open access journals, a great deal of transportation research is still located behind a paywall. While transportation research indexes and search engines may allow searchers to locate the item, this does NOT mean searchers will have access.
This poster takes a survey of transportation and transportation-related journals, and compares the percentage of journals which are open access (freely available) to the percentage locked away behind a paywall. The poster also discusses the role librarians play in knocking down paywalls to make research accessible to researchers.
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