Why can’t I just search Google or Google Scholar for articles? What does Peer Review or Refereed or Scholarly Article mean? Also: Open Access?

This video has a really good explanation of why ONLY searching Google or Google Scholar is not the best idea when you are looking for scholarly articles.

• Short reason: Copyright issues
• Slightly longer explanation: You will miss out on a lot of stuff that is either: not indexed by Google because the publisher said NO!, OR it is indexed by Google but the publisher wants $$ to let you read it.
• Longer explanation: Watch the video below.

If you just want to jump to the explanation of what exactly is a scholarly article (also called peer-reviewed or refereed) watch 0:23-1:00 of the video below.

Open Access 101, from SPARC from Karen Rustad on Vimeo.

After watching this video you might say: Wait! This video seems to be implying that the current way of publishing scholarly articles is not the best! Everything should be publicly indexed and available and I should be able to use Google Scholar or some other index to find and read articles! And I would agree with you, that is what it is arguing, but we are so far from that, so for now, use the library databases.

Sometimes you are just not sure how a journal is classified,and you want to double check what kind of journal it is (popular, trade, scholarly, etc) .

• Here are some ways to tell if an article is popular or scholarly from UTAustin.
• You can also use the Ulrichsweb database to find that information. Search for the journal by title and the results will tell you how that journal is classified (is it peer reviewed or not)

Web 10.0!!

..and I was just getting used to web 2.0!


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Thoughts:

1. One part that is interesting is where he is talking about how if you are not part of web 10.0/database web/semantic web, your information won't matter. It will not be enough to produce information, that information MUST be accessible and situated in a broader context. I think this is very interesting in relation to the current discussions in academia around scholarly communication and open access. What happens if your research is really good, but someone else's research is more readily accessible? Is academic research created to monetized or to be accessible? (Probably the answer is 'Both' but which consideration should be prioritized?)

2. Although he does not really address how DRM/intellectual property/ licenses will shape web 10.0. For example, when he talks about how the information in websites will become more transparent (it will have to be, to really be a part of the semantic web he is talking about) that assumes that the airlines (in his example) will allow it.

Right now, it seems like airlines are trying to make their information as opaque as possible. When prices for flights were more transparent, airlines had to keep their prices somewhat competitive with each other. Now, however, they seem to have embraced opaqueness in pricing as a business model- you may be able to see their official price on their website but not until you are far into he purchase do you know how much you have to pay- there are fees for each bag you check for blankets, for water, for everything.

(Tangent: opaqueness as an ethos seems to be embraced by business that are functionally monopolies, or business that are in trouble, like the airline or music industry. Monopolies don't have to worry about what people want, and business that are in trouble in a web 10.0 world (and by trouble I mean that they can't figure out how to effectively market to/get money from customers, not that customers don't want certain services))

This ties back to the issue of scholarly communication. It would certainly help users in their research if they could see (in the semantic web) how a study done in Britain in 1947 relates to a current study done in Japan in 2008, but if the content of those two studies is owned by different publishers, it will be up to the researcher to ferret out those connections, whereas in web 10.0, those connections would be made clear by the semantic web. (Right now, it does seem like a lot of users think Google or Google Scholar have created the idealized web 10.0/semantic web, in that they think something does not exist if they can't find it on Google. A point of view that Google may promote...)