The Publishing Research Consortium (PRC) has released findings of a global study, according to which, researchers in all disciplines, across the world, rate journal articles as the most important type of information - and they can get access to them. But there is more to be done, says the report.
More than 3800 researchers responded to the survey. Of these, 93 percent found access to journal articles 'very easy' or 'fairly easy'. The main types of important information that they found difficult to get hold of were 'data sets, data models and algorithms'.
The study extends an earlier PRC study looking at the UK market only. This new study gives breakdowns by geographical area, subject discipline, type of institution, author characteristics etc. Information types looked at, as well as articles and data, included books/monographs, reference works, theses, clinical guidelines, patents, conference proceedings, archives, market research reports, trade publications, technical information. The study focussed on those researchers who had published at least one article in one or more of 18,000 peer-reviewed journals. The study is freely available from the PRC website at http://www.publishingresearch.net.
The PRC is a group representing publishers and associations supporting global research into scholarly communication in order to enable evidence-based discussion and objective analysis (http://www.publishingresearch.net). The Consortium seeks to support work that is scientific and pro-scholarship, in order to promote an understanding of the role of publishing and its impact on research and teaching.
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