The library subscribes to all of the big journal collections, except the Taylor & Francis journals: Elsevier's ScienceDirect, Springer, Wiley, Sage, and Oxford. These are big multidisciplinary journal packages. This is a good start, but it's expensive and inflexible. It uses up a large part of our collections funding. And it's challenging for newcomers and scholars from marginalized communities to publish in them
But much of the world's journal article publishing is open. Think Indonesia, for example. You just have to seek more, and not limit your searches to the first database or search engine, or search terms, or language, that you try.
We do not really "collect" Open Access materials, with some exceptions. But our search tools that we maintain and promote will lead you to open access content. APPsearch, Google Scholar, ProQuest, PubMed, OpenAlex, Dimensions, Lens, all are indexing more and more open access content. Even Scopus and Web of Science include about half Open Access articles for 2023, although this reflects in part the growing, lucrative engagement of the major commercial publishers in Open Access.
Google Scholar is very comprehensive, but it includes in its relevance ranking the citation "impact" of both journal and article. (It's not transparent how Google sorts results.) This is a mixed blessing, but you cannot count on Google Scholar to highlight under-represented voices. But still, Google Scholar is the search tool most likely to include a paper somewhere in its results, because it's still the most comprehensive.
With Google Scholar, use more search terms. For international coverage, consider using site: to focus search on specific country domains or changing languages, if you can. Example: site:.mx, for Mexican sources.
When there is not an international aspect to your research question, consider focusing the question to include perspectives (and participation) of marginalized populations.
Caruso, Moriah et al. 2022. “UW Libraries Task Force on DEI and Ant-Racism in Collections Report.” University of Washington. https://digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/bitstream/handle/1773/49181/DEI%20TF%20Final%20Report.pdf?sequence=1.
Collections Directorate Diversity, Inclusion, and Social Justice Task Force. 2017. “Creating a Social Justice Mindset: Diversity, Inclusion, and Social Justice in the Collections Directorate of the MIT Libraries.” MIT. https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/108771/MIT_DISJReport_20170209.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y.
Cochrane Reviews MECIR C4
Consider in advance whether issues of equity and relevance of evidence to specific populations are important to the review, and plan for appropriate methods to address them if they are. Attention should be paid to the relevance of the review question to populations such as low-socioeconomic groups, low- or middle-income regions, women, children and older people.
Where possible reviews should include explicit descriptions of the effect of the interventions not only upon the whole population, but also on the disadvantaged, and/or the ability of the interventions to reduce socioeconomic inequalities in health, and to promote use of the interventions to the community.
MECIR 25
Search appropriate national, regional and subject-specific bibliographic databases.
from
Chandler J, Lasserson T, Higgins JPT, Tovey D, Thomas J, Flemyng E, Churchill R. Standards for the planning, conduct and reporting of updates of Cochrane Intervention Reviews. In: Higgins JPT, Lasserson T, Chandler J, Tovey D, Thomas J, Flemyng E, Churchill R. Methodological Expectations of Cochrane Intervention Reviews. Cochrane: London, February
2022. https://community.cochrane.org/book_pdf/545
