Get Full Text Research (GetFTR): can it be a good tool for researchers?

Abstract

Technological advances have been an integral part of discussions related to journal publishing in recent years. This article presents Get Full Text Research (GetFTR), a discovery solution launched by five major publishers: the American Chemical Society, Elsevier, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis Group, and Wiley. These founding publishers announced the development of this new solution in 2019, and its pilot service was launched just 4 months later. The GetFTR solutions streamlines access to not only open access resources but also to subscription-based resources. The publishers have assured that this solution will be beneficial for all relevant stakeholders involved in the journal publication process, including publishers, researchers, integrators, and libraries. They highlighted that researchers will have the ability to access published articles with minimal effort or steps, benefitting from existing (single sign-on) access technologies, ideally accessing the article PDF with a single click. While GetFTR is free for integrators and researchers, publishers are required to pay an annual subscription fee. To lower the barrier for participation, GetFTR supports smaller publishers by offering them a discount based on the number of digital object identifiers (DOIs), as recorded in Crossref data. While this project appears promising, some initial concerns were raised, particularly regarding user data control, which the project has responded to by more closely engaging the librarian community and by providing further information on how GetFTR supports user privacy.