Evidence Summary

Green Deposit Rates in LIS Taylor & Francis Journals: Are Librarians “Practicing What They Preach?”

A Review of:

Emery, J. (2017). How green is our valley: Five year study of selected LIS journals from Taylor & Francis for green open access. Insights, 31(23). http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.406

Reviewed by:

Jessica A. Koos

Senior Assistant Librarian/Health Sciences Librarian

Stony Brook University

Stony Brook, New York, United States of America

Email: jessica.koos@stonybrook.edu

Received: 26 Feb. 2019 Accepted: 2 Apr. 2019

2019 Koos. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons‐Attribution‐Noncommercial‐Share Alike License 4.0 International (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly attributed, not used for commercial purposes, and, if transformed, the resulting work is redistributed under the same or similar license to this one.

DOI: 10.18438/eblip29560

Abstract

Objective – To investigate the green deposit rate for articles published in five Taylor & Francis LIS journals.

Design – Content analysis.

Setting – The author conducted an analysis of the following journals: Behavioral & Social Sciences Librarian, Collection Management, College & Undergraduate Libraries, Journal of Electronic Resources Librarianship and Journal of Library Administration.

Subjects – 87 articles/columns in Behavioral & Social Sciences Librarian, 78 in Collection Management, 134 in College & Undergraduate Libraries, 108 in Journal of Electronic Resources Librarianship, and 264 in Journal of Library Administration.

Methods – The author chose five Taylor & Francis LIS journals to analyze over a period of five years for the green open access article deposit rate. The author selected Taylor & Francis journals due to the publisher’s policy of not requiring an embargo period on LIS journals. The specific journal titles were selected based on the author’s perception of their relevance to a broad array of academic libraries. The author determined if green deposit had occurred by first using the “OA Button” on the article’s homepage to locate the full text. If nothing was found, the author then searched each author’s institutional repository using the DOI. If the full text was still not located using this method, then a Google Scholar search for the full text was performed.

Main Results – The author found that the full text was available for 22% of the 671 total articles included in the study, which was significantly below the author’s proposed success rate of 50%.

Conclusion – The results of this study indicate that a relatively low number of articles in the LIS field are available via open access, even though there were no restrictions from the publisher on green deposits. Some potential influencing factors for the low deposit rate include lack of encouragement from administration on utilizing repositories, imposter syndrome, and a lack of awareness of Taylor & Francis’s green deposit policies. The author recommends that librarians and their administrators support and encourage one another to make articles available via open access. The author also recommends that Taylor & Francis further publicize this policy to make more authors aware of it.

Commentary

The quality of this study was appraised using “The CAT: a generic critical appraisal tool” created by Perryman & Rathbun-Grubb (2014). Based on this analysis, the quality of the study was found to be moderate. The author is a librarian at a large public academic library, and holds the title, “Collection Development & Management Librarian, Associate Professor.” A brief literature review was included in the article, and the author clearly defined the research question.

For the most part, the author clearly explained the research methods. However, there was no in-depth discussion as to the limitations of the study. For example, there was a lack of clarity as to how exactly the journals to be analyzed were selected. A more thorough explanation of this process could possibly reduce concern about selection bias.

The author also seems to have arbitrarily chosen 50% as the success rate for green OA deposits, as there is not adequate justification as to why the author used this specific figure. A more scientifically based figure could potentially make the results of the study more reliable. Additionally, there was no measurement of the rate of deposit prior to the release of the embargo, so it is impossible to determine if the embargo had any effect on OA deposits. It is important to take these factors into account when determining the strength of evidence, as they have a direct impact on the conclusions being presented by the author.

Additionally, it is important to consider the fact that only Taylor & Francis journals were included in this study, and the relatively small sample size of 671 articles (compared to the total amount of existing LIS articles) published within a five-year time period greatly limits generalizability. A study including articles from a larger sample size and various publishers of LIS research could provide a more accurate picture of deposit rates.

Overall, the author’s research helps to raise awareness about green open access in the field of LIS, more specifically, the policy of Taylor & Francis which allows green deposits without imposing an embargo period. As the author mentioned, it was interesting that the group of professionals who should be the strongest supporters of OA were not “practicing what they preach.” Increased awareness and further research on the topic can help to change that. In addition, when selecting journals in which to publish their work, librarians should take into account publisher OA policies and select those that allow for the green deposit of their work. Choosing to publish in OA journals helps to uphold one of the core tenets of librarianship: to ensure equal access to information for all.

References

Perryman, C. & Rathbun-Grubb, S. (2014). The CAT: a generic critical appraisal tool. In Jotform – Formbuilder. Retrieved from http://www.jotform.us/cp1757/TheCat