The reasons for inequity in access to information are complex because when, where, and how people access, search, choose and use information depends on many different factors. The factors could be as varied as a user’s background, language, location, the device they use, level of expertise in a discipline, and the entry-points they use for conducting research. Therefore, an approach that considers the needs of all the users and the trustworthiness and diversity of content would remove barriers to equitable access to information.
In essence, the approach should focus on the trustworthiness and diversity of content indexed on platforms, the search technology and its ability to return meaningful results for any user, and the user experience, which must accommodate the many different use cases and user behaviors.
In practice, this approach to ensuring equitable information discovery starts with quality, trustworthy and diverse content. Therefore, the sources used by academic libraries and their relevance to users and the journals indexed within key subject-specific resources or citation indexes should be considered.
The next step would be to ensure the findability of the content by mapping subject labels from controlled vocabularies to their natural language equivalents. Also, the findability of the content should be ensured by supporting explicit relationships and inferences between topics within a semantic knowledge graph.
The third aspect pertains to the user experience and the many different use cases and behavior that comprise a user journey. Once these areas are addressed, a seamless user experience will be ensured while accessing and using research.
By taking a multi-pronged approach that looks at trustworthy content, findability, and the user experience, we can ensure equity in access to research and knowledge sharing.
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