Staff in high-tech small businesses (small and medium-sized enterprises, or SMEs) in the UK - with 250 employees or fewer - place a high value on, and make considerable use of, research articles and other academic and professional information. Their access to such information is good, and improving, although it could be even better, according to a new study from the Publishing Research Consortium.
The main findings for small businesses, from a broader survey of over 1000 completed responses covering several other sectors, were as follows:
Across the board, 28% of respondents in small businesses said that their journal access was ‘good’ or ‘excellent’, 56% that it varied, and 17% that it was ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’.
However, of those who considered information to be an important success factor for their organisation, 71% found access to research articles ‘easy’ or ‘very easy’, while 29% felt it was ‘fairly difficult’ or ‘very difficult’. ...
Despite this, more than half had experienced some recent difficulty in obtaining one or more articles, representing 10-20% of articles read annually.
Although they use a wide range of access channels, they find current pay-per-view (PPV) arrangements costly and difficult, and ‘walk-in’ access at a local university inconvenient.
What can publishers do to improve access for these users? A number of suggestions are made:
Pay-per-view access could be made simpler, with more appropriate payment mechanisms for companies rather than individuals, and – above all – cheaper.
Licences for Higher Education Institutions could be extended to provide online, rather than just walk-in, access (with appropriate safeguards) for local businesses.
A comprehensive, centrally administered national licence could be negotiated. ...
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
