In an earlier post, I said that centralized, national repositories like PubMed Central perform the important service of making scholarship easier to find. I neglected to mention and recommend two resources that allow researchers to search sets of open access repositories. Both of these use the Google Custom Search Engine, which limits the scope of a Google search to specific websites.
Here they are, with deep-links to pages where you can search for articles:
You’ve not heard of them but know about PubMed Central? You’ve just made my point.
Visiting either of these, it will quickly become clear that these sites are mostly concerned with the nuts and bolts of the open access movement. Helping researchers find open access materials isn’t the first priority, and that is unfortunate. These directories, if they hope to recruit a wide following, should put more focus on serving up archived papers.
The same goes for you, Directory of Open Access Journals – although of these open access directories you’re the site with the cleanest design.
