I'm looking for information on the criteria that could be employed in the development of a social sciences (including economics) academic journal open access website. What visible (front-end) functions do academics prefer to use when looking up research content on an academic journal website?
For example:
- Listings by year, author, publication type.
- Search that allows you to modify the variables ("advanced search"), vs. search that lets you narrow down the results after a basic search ("faceted search").
- What criteria do you usually (or would like to) use to narrow down search results?
- Any examples of research content (academic journal) websites that work well?
- Any functions that you wish were available to make searching for research content easier?
Background: I'm a communications officer with a research institute that publishes its own research via its own website. The website was redeveloped two years ago, with the aim of making the content more relevant, but lost some functions more relevant to academics in the process. In an effort to redress this I would like to establish some criteria for evaluating functions that are needed in an academic journal website.