Emergence of New Public Discovery Services: Connecting Open Web Searchers to Library Content

ABSTRACT A growing number of new public citation databases, available free of charge and accessible on the open web, are offering researchers a new place to start their searching, providing an alternative to Google Scholar and library resources. These new “public discovery services” index significant portions of scholarly literature, then differentiate themselves by applying technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning, to create results sets that are promoted as more meaningful, easier to navigate, and more engaging than other discovery options. Additionally, these new public discovery services are adopting new linking technologies that connect researchers from citation records to full text content licensed on their behalf by their affiliated libraries. With these new sites logging millions of sessions a month, they present unique opportunities for libraries to connect to researchers working outside the library and challenges in how the library can make itself obvious in the user workflow.