| By Gale Staff |
Traditionally, to access Gale products, users first need to log in or otherwise be recognized by a subscribing institution or library. This is known as authentication. Think of authentication as a front door. It’s the beginning of the experience, and you can’t see or know anything about the product without authenticating. That is, until now.
As part of Phase I, open web entry will be available on Gale Academic OneFile, Gale Academic OneFile Select, Gale OneFile: Health and Medicine, Gale OneFile: Informe Académico, and Gale Literature Resource Center, beginning June 25, 2021. This delayed authentication pushes that “door” further into the product experience. Users can see the product and its features (some may be disabled), perform searches, see search results, and article previews. It’s not until a user tries to retrieve full text or engage with certain features that authentication is required.
Digging Even Deeper into the Experience
Anyone who accesses the Gale products listed above through traditional methods, such as a link on their library website, through search results in their library discovery layer, etc., will encounter the usual full product experience. If users are coming from the open web by way of a Google search result or Google Scholar, and they are not recognized as coming from a particular location ID (through a mechanism like geo-authentication), then they will enter the resource through the delayed authentication experience.
How Does this Benefit Your Library?
Research shows that users increasingly begin their research on the open web. By allowing the open web discoverability of millions of articles, Gale is helping these users search, find, and preview content from library resources. Prompts on every page encourage users to easily search for their subscribing library or institution. After authentication, they can access full-text content and additional features.
How Will Usage be Reported?
In line with the COUNTER Code of Practice, there will be no official audit logging of usage until authentication. This means that it is possible that you could see a reduction in overall searches as compared to retrievals, because searches conducted while in the delayed authentication experience will not be logged, and only a session and a retrieval will be logged upon authentication to retrieve full text. Subsequent searches, after authentication, will then be logged according to COUNTER guidelines.
What’s Next for Discoverability?
While Gale is enabling this open experience primarily for the current set of products indexed by Google Scholar, we are committed to increasing open web discoverability of additional Gale resources in the coming months.