Ten quick tips for making things findable.
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 33382681.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008469 and PMC identifier 7774837.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The distribution of scholarly content today happens in the context of an immense deluge of information found on the internet. As a result, researchers face serious challenges when archiving and finding information that relates to their work. Library science principles provide a framework for navigating information ecosystems in order to help researchers improve findability of their professional output. Here, we describe the information ecosystem which consists of users, context, and content, all 3 of which must be addressed to make information findable and usable. We provide a set of tips that can help researchers evaluate who their users are, how to archive their research outputs to encourage findability, and how to leverage structural elements of software to make it easier to find information within and beyond their publications. As scholars evaluate their research communication strategies, they can use these steps to improve how their research is discovered and reused.
Medical subject headings
- Guidelines as Topic
- Information Storage and Retrieval
- Publishing