GetFTR invites Aggregators to join

“We are calling on Aggregators to engage with us and provide streamlined pathways to aggregated content via Discovery Services and other third-party tools that use GetFTR.”

In our last Scholarly Kitchen post, Ralph Youngen and Todd Toler discussed how GetFTR has been responding to feedback from the community and from our advisory board. One question that was raised was when we would provide support for other content providers, such as aggregators.

Aggregators play an important role in the delivery of content to members of our community. Situations where content is hosted both on a publisher and an aggregator site have, however, presented challenges for GetFTR. By working directly with aggregators and other members of the scholarly communications community, we have been able to find a solution.

GetFTR can now provide entitlement checks with both publishers and aggregators simultaneously. Where a user’s institution hasn’t provided access to content on a Publisher platform, or a Publisher is not participating in GetFTR, the user may be provided with access to content on an Aggregator platform if the user is entitled and the Aggregator is participating in GetFTR. This approach helps ensure that GetFTR has as wide coverage as possible in terms of signaling the user’s pathway to content that they are entitled to.

Our advisory board has played a central role in looking at the expanded use cases that GetFTR can support (see also the CHORUS use case). Speaking further, advisory board member Lisa Hinchliffe said:

“The GetFTR advisory board is, amongst other things, involved in identifying additional ways the underlying infrastructure could benefit the scholarly community. We have seen a lot of development in consultation with the community over the past year and would encourage more aggregators to have conversations with GetFTR about how their resources can be made more visible to researchers through GetFTR integration. Aggregator integration enables researchers to take advantage of more streamlined access to content they are entitled to access through library subscriptions in particular.”

As we move forward in 2022, into a much changed world and research landscape in many senses, we continue to do so with feedback from our community and advisory groups. The feedback we receive and engagement with the community is essential to our development and digital strategy. We continue to remain flexible to ensure that as we develop the GetFTR service, we are first and foremost meeting the needs of the researcher and enabling a simplified workflow. Aggregators are a key part of that, and we look forward to having more conversations with the community to support this.

If you are looking for an easy way to share entitlements, or have an idea on how we could further enhance GetFTR, please get in touch with us at dianne@getfulltextresearch.com