1 of 16 Information Access The External Information Providers © FAO 2005 IMARK Investing in Information for Development Information Access The External Information Providers

2 of 16 Information Access The External Information Providers Learning Objectives At the end of this lesson you will: identify the main characteristics of the external providers from whom you may acquire information.

3 of 16 Information Access The External Information Providers 1. what kinds of information are available; 2. where they are; and 3. how much they cost. As you develop your Information Access Plan, you need to find out: The sources of information may be external or internal. Here, we will examine the external providers for digital information acquisition. Introduction

4 of 16 Information Access The External Information Providers The current market for external information Today, the most important means of acquiring information about new scientific developments are scientific journals. More and more libraries use the electronic versions of such journals, offered by most publishers. Therefore, the market has become extremely complex.

5 of 16 Information Access The External Information Providers The current market for external information This shift from paper to digital is modifying the roles of information providers, in two ways: 1. a change in the role of traditional players (such as publishers and authors); and 2. the emergence of new players (such as full- text aggregators).

6 of 16 Information Access The External Information Providers The current market for external information Commercial journal publishers Access to the electronic versions of their journals. The subscriber pays to view. Open access journal publishers Access to their e-journals. Free to subscribers, but authors pay. Open archives organizers Free access to online document repositories. Aggregators Broker between publishers and libraries. Secondary information providers Access to secondary content at the article level, through bibliographic databases and links to full-text. Platform providers Licensed products for cross-database searching and link management. Datasets providers Produce and exchange datasets. This table summarizes the roles of the main external information providers:

7 of 16 Information Access The External Information Providers Commercial Publishers Commercial publishers differ from one another. However, they usually: own the content; have a direct relationship with both authors and subscribers (or aggregators); offer electronic subscriptions that often include the costs of the print versions.

8 of 16 Information Access The External Information Providers Open access journal publishers Open access journals provide access to full- text articles for free. (They do not have subscription fees). These journals charge authors (who must pay to get their papers reviewed and published) rather than users.

9 of 16 Information Access The External Information Providers Open archives organizers Open archives are usually developed by research institutes and universities. Scientists can store in such archives electronic versions of their works. This material will then be available on the Internet for free.

10 of 16 Information Access The External Information Providers Aggregators Aggregators sell collections of electronic journals and articles from different publishers. They do not own content, and provide at least three services: facilitate ease of access (including negotiation of licenses); administer subscriptions (including renewals and payments); and offer uniform procedures (including rules regarding the use of copyright material).

11 of 16 Information Access The External Information Providers Aggregators The most popular specific services from aggregators usually fall into three categories: Administration. Content provision. Database searching.

12 of 16 Information Access The External Information Providers Secondary information providers Secondary information providers offer services to help users find information, such as abstracting and indexing databases. They often include keywords or abstracts of primary documents.

13 of 16 Information Access The External Information Providers Platform providers Platform providers offer products that perform two functions: SEARCHING These platforms allow users to search data collections from different secondary information providers (for example, CABI or BIOSIS), using the same software and user interface. LINKING Linking means to move to the full-text, after having searched various databases and found various references.

14 of 16 Information Access The External Information Providers Datasets providers Datasets are sets of data organized in tables or databases. They consist of records with several fields. Most datasets providers are actually the organizations that produce them. Some providers do sell their datasets as commercial products.

15 of 16 Information Access The External Information Providers Datasets providers New Information Technologies have affected the production of datasets in at least two ways: 1.Some data can now be recorded automatically (enormous datasets can be produced with little human intervention); 2.Some datasets can now be linked with comparable datasets from other organizations.

16 of 16 Information Access The External Information Providers Summary Today most journals are available in electronic versions and the market has become extremely complex. The main types of external information providers are: - Commercial publishers; - Open access journal publishers; - Open archive organizers; - Aggregators; - Secondary information providers; - Platform providers; and - Datasets providers.