SFX Miscellaneous Free Ejournals Target: Usage Survey among the SFX Community

Abstract

The number of free or open access articles is increasing rapidly, and their retrieval with library indexes and OpenURL link resolvers has been a challenge. In June 2014, the SFX MISCELLANEOUS FREE EJOURNALS target contained more than 24,000 portfolios of all kinds. The SFX Knowledge Base Advisory Board (KBAB) carried out an international survey to get an overview of the usage of this target by the SFX community and to precisely identify what could be done to improve it. The target is widely used among the community. However, many respondents complained about three major problems: (a) incorrect links, (b) full texts actually not free, and (c) incorrect or missing thresholds (years and volumes information).