How Open Access Scholarship Saves Lives | American Libraries Magazine

Gabriella Reznowski’s son, Xavier, was diagnosed with a rare genetic disorder in 2012, 14 long years after she first noticed the developmental delays and helped him ride out the seizures caused by the disorder. The most current information that describes it is only found in research journals, which often require subscriptions to access. That’s something Reznowski, humanities librarian at Washington State University Libraries in Pullman, would like to change. The name of Xavier’s disorder is virtually unpronounceable: megalencephaly, polymicrogyria, polydactyly, and hydrocephalus syndrome, or MPPH for short. First identified in 2004, the syndrome is little understood, with no known cause and only about a dozen cases worldwide. 'I think that the case for open access really hits home when you have a situation where you are trying to find out as much as you can about an issue for which there is very little published information,' Reznowski said ... According to Jason Priem, ImpactStory cofounder and doctoral student in information science at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, important parts of the scientific process, once hidden, are gradually being exposed online. As the workflows of scholars are moving online, the stuff of day-to-day science— conversations, arguments, recommendations, reads, bookmarks—leave traces on websites such as Mendeley, Twitter, blogs, and Faculty of 1000. Mining these traces, in addition to utilizing traditional metrics such as citation counts and journal impact factors, can give researchers and publishers faster, more diverse, and more accurate data of scholarly impact ..."