A group of the largest scholarly publishers, namely American Chemical Society (ACS), Elsevier, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, and Wiley, have launched the service “Get Full Text Research” (GetFTR). Growing leakage has steadily eroded the ability of the publishers to monetize the value they create. Therefore, they have been working on improved discovery and access for several years. RA21’s SeamlessAccess.org service makes the authorization process smoother. And now GetFTR shows whether a user will have access to the full text before clicking on a link to the publisher’s website. If so, it links the user directly to it.
This requires that the user previously has disclosed his/her institutional affiliation through the SeamlessAccess.org “Where Are You From” service. The information is stored locally on the user’s browser. The user’s institutional affiliation and the article DOI are used to determine whether the individual should be entitled to access the article. This takes place seamlessly in the background. The user will see, in a list of search results, clear information such as a green or red button, on whether he/she will be able to access the full text of each article. If already logged in, a user who then clicks on the link will be taken directly to the article without any intermediate pages. If not, the user will be taken to his/her institutional login.
If GetFTR recognizes in the workflow described above that a user is not entitled to access the licensed version, it will provide an alternative. Each publisher will be able to determine these alternatives. This might, for example, be access to a preprint or a read-only version.
GetFTR is intended to be entirely invisible to the user. Only the colored buttons will be visible. Thus, the brand name is not intended to face towards users. It is expected that the first publishers will pilot GetFTR in the first quarter of 2020.
- GetFTR website
