[Eril-l] Reliable and comprehensive site for OA articles (even just links)?

[Electronic Resources in Libraries discussion list]

I would also love to hear solutions for this issue. Hybrid journals showing as open access and sending  users to non-open content is the bane of my existence.

Electronically yours,
Kris Ann Hudson (they/she)
Electronic Resources & Collections Assessment Librarian
Collections & Acquisitions Department
University Libraries
Miller Nichols Library, 308D
library.umkc.edu<http://library.umkc.edu/>
Phone: (816) 235-6470
[UMKC Logo]<http://www.umkc.edu/>

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Subject: [Eril-l] Reliable and comprehensive site for OA articles (even just links)?

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Hi,
We use EBSCO Discovery Service to manage our holdings as well as discovery. It includes the ability to "select" "packages" of OA journal titles so they show up for easy access alongside our paid holdings in the discovery result records.

We keep running into problems with hybrid journals in those packages causing our patrons to disappointingly hit paywalls for their particular article.

I am considering the option to provide a link on result records to do a search on some other OA-only database that they can use to check for an OA version.
EBSCO already offers us a link for using the Unpaywall API to check there, but it doesn't seem to know about most OA articles. We have DOAJ linked already, but that's also missing a lot.

Is there a free database out there that is doing a really comprehensive job of knowing what OA articles there are, and that I can make a persistent link logic from our citation to it (eg using DOI, openurl syntax, etc.) for patrons to use to check?
I am aware of OpenAlex and Dimensions, but not sure how complete they are.
Ideally, such a "target" would know about the OA articles within hybrid journals without sending users to the paywalled articles in those journals.

I am also aware of the Unpaywall browser plugin but we have had very poor uptake of solutions that require the patron to install something.

Any ideas, advice, suggestions, etc. that you can offer would be most welcome!


Melissa Belvadi
Collections Librarian
University of Prince Edward Island
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