The UK’s Research Information Network (RIN) has released a new report titled ‘Overcoming barriers: Access to research information content’. The report says that the issue of researchers’ access to research information content must be addressed if the UK research community is to operate effectively and produce high-quality research.
Researchers are encountering difficulties in getting access to the content they need and this is having a significant impact on the quality and efficiency of their research, says the report. Based on five separate studies, it looks at the nature and scale of key restrictions on access to information resources of importance to researchers; the impact of these restrictions; and the ways in which they might be alleviated or overcome.
The report’s findings show that the impact of this lack of access on the efficiency - as well as the quality - of research across the higher education sector and beyond is very real. New technological developments, including moves towards open access publishing models and the availability of e-books, may help to solve some of these problems. However, there is little evidence from the report to show that they have had a positive impact to date.
The report’s key finding is that access is still a major concern for researchers although researchers report having no problems finding content in this age of electronic information. Gaining access is another matter due to the complexity of licensing arrangements, restrictions placed on researchers accessing content outside of their own institution and the laws protecting public and private sector information.
Many librarians fear that unless licensing and technical issues are resolved, moves towards a digital environment may impose new barriers. Researchers face restrictions on access to resources which would have formerly been accessible to them in print. With impending funding cuts in higher education institutions’ budgets next year, libraries are already facing increasingly difficult decisions about which subscriptions to keep as cancellations will only add to these problems for researchers. Other barriers include intellectual property and copyright restrictions (on public and private sector information and orphan works).
The report calls on higher education institutions, librarians, publishers, funders and governments to work together to reduce the barriers to accessing research information content. It also highlights a number of recommendations for measures that need to be taken to overcome the barriers to access currently being experienced by the research community.
The report is available at www.rin.ac.uk/our-work/using-and-accessing-information-resources/overcoming-barriers-access-research-information.
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