UK: Access to Research Initiative That Provides Public Library Users Free Access to 10 Million Academic Articles Given Go-Ahead to Continue

From the UK’s Publishers Licensing Society:

The Access to Research initiative, which gives users in public libraries free access to over 10 million academic articles, has been given the green light by publishers and librarians to continue.
The service was originally launched as a pilot by the Universities and Science Minister in 2014, in order to support expanded access to publicly funded research in the UK. Two years on and over 80% of UK local authorities, representing more than 2,600 libraries, have signed up to the initiative from across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
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Almost every academic discipline is covered by the journals made available through Access to Research, via the Summon discovery service. Findings have shown that users are taking full advantage of this to explore a wide variety of topics. Over 230,000 searches (since Jan 2014) have investigated topics from dementia to biomedical engineering; modern religious philosophy to contemporary art; social work to polar records; and Roman Wales to Ebola; amongst many more.
Access to Research has been made possible by a consortium of academic publishers, who collectively publish some of the world’s most respected scientific journals. News of the publishing community’s decision to extend the service has been warmly welcomed by librarians and users.  Librarians participating in the initiative are encouraged to continue promoting the service, to further increase awareness of the wealth of information available from their library terminal.

Read the Complete Announcement
See Also: Browse a List of Titles Available from Access to Research
See Also: UK: Two-Year Pilot Project Begins That Will Provide Public Libraries & Their Users With Free Access to Scholarly Articles (February 3, 2014)
 
 

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