Opening Umbrellas: Icons in Academic Publishing. | The Orb
ab1630's bookmarks 2018-05-24
Summary:
"...Spending as much time as I do trawling the academic literature, one becomes immune to the plethora of icons that inhabit publisher, library, content aggregator, repository and other services that hook onto scholarly communications. At a glance these icons are supposed to tell us something useful. However, we now have so many different icons, I doubt they now serve any useful purpose.
YES The basic information these icons are supposed to convey is YES or NO; YES you can access this content, or NO you cannot. Access to these subscribed journals may be indicated by green ticks, green unlocked padlocks, green rectangles, green squares, a green circular button or a green “S” – there may be a standard colour but there is no standard icon. Moreover, even within the same website you can get different icons at article level or journal level, there is a lack of consistency across platforms and within them.
or NO The scholarly content libraries do not subscribe to are often variations of locked padlocks – a variety of colours. However, they are never red or crosses – that would definitely give the wrong impression! Some cut to the chase and just present you with a shopping trolley, get your purse ready! But, my favourite is just an existential empty white box – there’s nothing here to see…