Third Iron is committed to providing the best discoverability of and access to Open Access articles, including fully OA journals, hybrid journals, and individual OA articles within otherwise subscription-based titles. This article describes how Third Iron accomplishes this.
Open Access Awareness
LibKey is a core technology used across all Third Iron products. LibKey is an informed linking solution that evaluates Open Access status, article version, and library-subscribed holdings to understand what content is available to a user and to create the fastest, most reliable link to it.
LibKey Open Access linking is derived from both editorially observed Open Access and partially open access journals as well as automated review of individual articles for hybrid journals. Understanding Open Access status in this detailed way provides crucial linking advantages:
First, this enables us to ensure that LibKey is only linking to the version of record (VoR), then giving libraries the option of enabling linking to non-VoR articles, such as accepted, peer-reviewed manuscripts via an (optional) live call to the Unpaywall API. In contrast to standard Unpaywall integrations, which typically present links to an article irrespective of version as an additional link on top of a link resolver link, LibKey prioritizes directing users to the VoR whenever possible. From a user experience perspective, standard approaches can result in users being linked unknowingly to a non-VoR article, which may have been altered substantially after undergoing editorial and peer-review, as well as present multiple links to the same article (sometimes in totally different locations), leading to user confusion.
Second, the data sourced by Third Iron and linked to the VoR is not reliant on Unpaywall data and is unique to Third Iron. This means that Third Iron is responsible for the quality of these links and can maintain its customary direct-to-PDF linking whenever possible, as well as indications of editorial status such as Retraction and Expression of Concern.
Third, when LibKey produces an Open Access link it does not add a library authentication layer since this is not needed resulting in faster access to content with as few steps as possible.
Fourth, owning this data means that the Third Iron Support team can adjust links if errors are found or reported resulting in very fast data correction.
Library Holdings and Open Access Article Linking
The linking waterfall in BrowZine/LibKey is part of the AI Expert system that determines the best link available. It can be articulated clearly through the following diagram:
LibKey/BrowZine article-level linking priority order
First, the article is checked to see if there is a Version of Record (VoR) Open Access link to this article available. If there is, that linking destination is chosen regardless of library-supplied holdings data, by design, to ensure the fastest path to the VoR.
Importantly then for libraries: there is not a need to flesh out your link resolver knowledgebase with "open access packages" such as those from the DOAJ to enable these titles for linking. A common issue we see with some of these packages is that they may include "partially" open access titles where a number of individual articles are available but many are still only visible to subscribers. Adding these to your "holdings" can create havoc for researchers because some articles will work and some will not. To make these articles available in LibKey, it is recommended to NOT activate these packages and instead allow LibKey to identify these articles during the linking process.
However, there may be other good reasons to add these to your knowledge base, as it may be used to create the searchable set of records within your discovery system for example. Additionally, BrowZine will ONLY display titles that you have added to your collection for browsing. This is because we view BrowZine as a "curated" set of content appropriate for a particular library. For example, a medical library may not appreciate lots of open access engineering materials within their BrowZine library.
After open access article linking options are exhausted, LibKey checks the holdings for the library with a priority placed on any publisher sources due to the enhanced reliability of linking to publisher sources (more consistent DOI resolution, fewer redirects, and better support for Articles in Press) as well as inclusion of Articles in Press content, where available.
If no subscribed sources are available, LibKey will attempt to find a non-VoR open access article that has been accepted for publication ("Accepted Manuscript") via the Unpaywall API. This feature is available in most, but not all products and is optional (see below in "Configuration Options").
And finally, within certain contexts (BrowZine, LibKey Nomad, Link, .io) linking options to your link resolver, ILL or document delivery may be provided for a complete fulfillment solution.
About Published Version, Accepted Manuscripts and Submitted Manuscripts
These versions of Open Access material are derived from the DRIVER-Version Mapping scheme which takes a number of different "statuses" of articles in their life cycle and effectively breaks them into three groupings that can be interpreted like this:
Published Version: Is the Version of Record (VoR)
Accepted Version: Is peer-reviewed, but lacks publisher specific formatting
Submitted Version: Is *not* peer-reviewed
As such, LibKey ALWAYS includes the Published VoR in its Open Access linking calculations. By default, it optionally includes the Accepted Version (via the Unpaywall API) in a number of contexts (outlined below in the Configuration Options section), and it *never* includes the Submitted version of Open Access materials.
This is because LibKey is licensed and integrated into libraries who typically prefer their users to see the VoR or at least the accepted version of a paper that has undergone peer review but to not link users to a version of the paper which may have undergone significant changes from the point of submission to the point where it has been edited and updated post peer-review. Instead, these versions are skipped over in favor of providing a route for ILL/Document delivery fulfillment to the VoR.
Configuration Options
The BrowZine products utilize only the publishers’ version of record (VoR) of articles when linking to open access content. This behavior is fixed and cannot be extended to include other article versions. This ensures a consistent, curated browsing experience in BrowZine.
By contrast, LibKey technologies from Third Iron also have enabled by default the ability to view Accepted Manuscripts powered by Unpaywall API within the product. These include:
- LibKey Nomad
- LibKey Link
- LibKey.io
However, it may be desirable to NOT utilize non-VoR articles and instead have LibKey refer users to an ILL/Document Delivery system if no holdings are found. Linking to these non-VoR articles can be disabled by contacting Third Iron support (support@thirdiron.com) which will force the above LibKey technologies to ONLY link to OA content when the link provided is the VoR.
Additionally, the following LibKey Discovery integrations also offer this ability and are enabled by default:- LibKey Discovery: Primo VE/NDE
- LibKey Discovery: Summon
To disable the display of Accepted Manuscripts in one of these integrations, a library can simply edit the configuration scripts around these options as detailed in the Primo or Summon LibKey Discovery integration documentation. If you need further guidance, don't hesitate to contact us at support@thirdiron.com.
