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

[Electronic Resources in Libraries discussion list]

I believe that if EBSCO would implement GetFTR, then there would be GetFTR “smart” article-level links to OA content in hybrid journals.
____

Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe
Professor & Coordinator for Research Professional Development, University Library
Affiliate Faculty, School of Information Sciences, Center for Social & Behavioral Science, European Union Center, & Center for Global Studies
Library 434, University of Illinois, 1408 West Gregory Drive, Urbana, Illinois 61801
ljanicke at illinois.edu<mailto:ljanicke at illinois.edu>, 217-333-1323 (v), 217-244-4358 (f)



From: Eril-l <eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org<mailto:eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org>> On Behalf Of Electronic Resources in Libraries discussion list via Eril-l
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2025 7:39 AM
To: ERIL-L listserv <eril-l at lists.eril-l.org<mailto:eril-l at lists.eril-l.org>>
Subject: [Eril-l] Reliable and comprehensive site for OA articles (even just links)?

WARNING: This message has originated from an External Source. This may be a phishing expedition that can result in unauthorized access to our IT System. Please use proper judgment and caution when opening attachments, clicking links, or responding to this email.
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
mbelvadi at upei.ca<mailto:mbelvadi at upei.ca>  902-566-0581
ORCID iD: 0000-0002-4433-0189
my public calendar<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/outlook.office365.com/owa/calendar/0fbab27c909e4493be65313bd66d66b6@upei.ca/5fa60af92c6d451c9ddf90c0bb11e00f15552192987609852692/calendar.html__;!!DZ3fjg!7mrxQiQXFzdJmOXtWbkl1GGqfpjZhwB7dAiG4KawOcVlKquR9agv4LHiVZg1ZZGhzZtj2Qja1_XZk6kKBqm8Bew$>
Make an appointment<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/mbelvadi.youcanbook.me/__;!!DZ3fjg!7mrxQiQXFzdJmOXtWbkl1GGqfpjZhwB7dAiG4KawOcVlKquR9agv4LHiVZg1ZZGhzZtj2Qja1_XZk6kKUnUFccU$> via YouCanBookMe
My pronouns are ಅವರು/ಅವರನ್ನು
My emails are sent during the hours that I work and I understand that you will respond during the hours that you work.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.eril-l.org/pipermail/eril-l-eril-l.org/attachments/20250706/09a126bd/attachment.htm>