The large-scale digitization project carried out by Documentation et bibliothèques in collaboration with the Érudit platform will allow the journal to increase its global readership as well as to provide open access to all its previous issues.
Published since 1973 by the Association pour l’avancement des sciences et des techniques de la documentation (ASTED), known today as the Fédération des milieux documentaires (FMD), Documentation et bibliothèques is a renowned French-language scholarly journal in the field of information science and library studies. Publishing four issues a year, it offers substantive papers on topics that are of utmost importance to its readers: big data management, access to knowledge, the significance of archives, etc.
The journal’s recent issues are already disseminated on the Érudit platform, and in 2018, its team launched a major digitization project, with over 600 articles from the archives. In total, over 2 500 articles from Documentation et bibliothèques are now available in digital format. This project was made possible by support from Library and Archives Canada (LAC) and the Canadian government, specifically through the Documentary Heritage Communities Program (DHCP).
“Journals can benefit from digitizing and disseminating their previous issues by gaining broader outreach. Scholarly articles in the humanities and social sciences maintain long-term relevance”, explains Hocine Chehab, Head of Digital Publishing at Érudit. “These papers are digitized in XHTML format along with precise keywords, which enhances their internet indexing, specifically their referencing on Google”, he adds.
The Documentation et bibliothèques journal has seen a major surge in its readership ever since its dissemination on Érudit, with over 200 000 page views in 2018, an 82% increase compared to 2017.
“The dissemination of our archives on Érudit is all the more interesting because they are made available in open access. There is nothing preventing access to our content, which becomes accessible to the entire world”, emphasizes Lionel Villalonga, executive director of the FMD. “Our traffic statistics on Érudit show us that most of our readers are located abroad: only 20% of our page views come from Canada, the other visits originating from 45 other countries”, he states.
We are confident that this readership will grow further over the next several months, as the journal’s archives become available on Érudit!
Discover previous issues of Documentation et bibliothèques in digital format here: https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/documentation/