It’s easy to think open access research is simply available openly on the web and therefore, everyone has equal access to it - but do they? What does that mean exactly? And, is there enough quality, open access research published to discern the full picture of the concept at hand? How do consumers cross the bridge to the content they are entitled to via their schools & libraries of all flavours? These are questions we spend a lot of time thinking about at EBSCO. Going “open” is a fluid change that will shift over time and it’s important to us to ensure we continue to be the partner you’ve come to know and trust to curate the worlds quality research content for you - however it happens to be published this year. 
 
When we think about equitable access, we know there are so many more factors to consider beyond the cost of the publication and who pays for it. How easy it is to discover content & discern quality and/or reliability? Understand the compendium of information available? Gain access to quality full-text content without institutional affiliation? What if I am entitled to institutional access, how will I know? 
 
Surely, we’ve all been doing online research at some point and either consumed content that was not the quality we’d hoped for and/or discovered content we are sure we must have available to use via our affiliation with a given institution, but can’t figure out how to cross the provided paywall to get to it and simply hit a dead end. This is a completely natural outcome of complex vendor structures serving hybrid [some open access, some paid] content in traditional environments and experiences paired with fragmented Open experiences. 
 
EBSCO Essentials aims to take the guess work out of online research, providing an easy front door to curated & trusted open access content as well as rich indexes and help to find your institutional entitlements. It’s never been easier to search the entire compendium of open and traditionally-published research as well as understand how and where to get the access you’re entitled to as an individual. Keep coming back for more because this experience is designed to grow and evolve with you and our industry. 

Users can access EBSCO Essentials at https://essentials.ebsco.com and from the homepage of https://www.ebsco.com.