Open Access Content in CDI

Managing Open Access Collections on Alma/SFX

In Alma and SFXAdmin, collections have an Open Access indication in the full text rights field at the Collection level. This indication is descriptive and not functional because, as described above, the Open Access indication in CDI is handled at the record level. There is no functional relationship between the collection-level flag and the record-level flag. The purpose of the collection-level indication is to assist librarians in selecting collection activations and subscriptions. 

For each collection, we currently specify the following full text indications for Access Rights:

• Open Access – Indicates that most of the content is Open Access, but a small portion (less than 5%) may or may not be restricted. An example of an Open Access collection is the Unpaywall for CDI collection. For more information, see Integrating Unpaywall for Discovery.

• Partially Open Access – Indicates that CDI has mixed collections where some of the records are available as Open Access while other records are restricted or have no access to full text. As the collections are dynamic, the part of Open Access records within these collections may change, but in general, we give them a "Partially Open access" indication if more than 20% of the collection's records are Open Access.

• Subscription (Collection Level) – Requires a subscription to access full text.

• Subscription (Link Resolver) – Requires a subscription, and full text linking is provided by the link resolver.

Partially open access collections should be treated with caution because they can cause problems with linking, especially if they do not have portfolios in Alma and SFX and are using the link in record. Activating such a collection will lead to its entire content to be flagged as available in CDI. Unless flagged as open access, the link in record will take precedence over linkresolver links and may lead to incorrect linking.  Where possible we separate the open access and the paywalled content and create two different collections, one for open access and one for paywalled content to give you control over which content you want to expose to your users. Unfortunately, this is not always possible. We recommend activating partially open access collections only in exceptional cases in which the benefit of finding this content outweighs any possible linking issues for your users.

Hybrid Open Access Journals

Open access content can be part of an Open Access Journal where all the Journal's articles are open, or part of hybrid Open Access journal, where only specific articles or issues are open. To enable your users to find and link to both types of articles, we set up collections that index the entire open access content of a provider regardless of whether it is coming from open access or hybrid journals. For that purpose the open access indicator is maintained at the record level rather than the journal level.

These collections use the link in the record for full text linking instead of using the link resolver because the link resolver can identify availability only if the access rights are inherited at the journal issue level, but not if an individual article within a journal is open access. This even applies if the collections in Alma/SFX have portfolios. This method enables us to support individual open access articles as well as articles from full open access journals.

The following providers' collections support the Hybrid Open Access functionality:

Institutional Repositories

The responsibility for the metadata quality of institutional repositories is on the contributing institution and we will not make any record corrections, including OA indications, unless it is a major issue which affects the entire collection. You can read more here: Institutional Repositories in CDI.

Remove Proxy Prefix for Open Access Links 

Linking in CDI is supported either by the Alma/SFX Link Resolver or by the link within the records. The proxy configuration is managed accordingly in two different places. Both places allow to create exceptions for records that are flagged as open access.

• In Alma/SFX you can define the proxy settings for links that are generated by the LinkResolver (LinkResolver collections), see Managing Electronic Resources (Alma) and  SFX General Users Guide (SFX).

• In Primo/Primo VE, you can define proxy settings for link in records. For more details, see the configuration options for the EZproxy field (Primo) or the configuration options under the Use Proxy section (Primo VE).

The removal of the Proxy as configured above is based on whether the link returned from CDI is marked with the Open Access indication. If the link in the record does not come from a participant marked as open access, the Proxy is not removed. 

CDI provides this OA information per link in the PNX links section as follows:

If the $$H field contains the free_for_read indication, the collection is considered Open Access, and depending on the Proxy settings in Primo/Primo VE, the proxy is added to the URL.

Examples:

• Article last edited: 26-May-2023