Benefits of Open Access to Scholarly Research for Voluntary and Charitable Sector Organisations

Use the link above to access the full text final report from JISC issued in March 2012. The Executive Summary provides the following Information: “Voluntary and charitable organisations use different types of research for a range of purposes and have developed a range of strategies for accessing research for which they cannot afford to pay. Research use is an ongoing and dynamic process and a single piece of research might be used for different purposes at different times and in different contexts. These uses include: building awareness of relevant current debates; developing knowledge and understanding to support policy aims, develop services or information or challenge others; changing attitudes and ideas through campaigning or critiquing policy; improving working and organisational practices and raising funds. Accountability to funders and the use of resources to support a stated purpose or objective is a further dimension of research use that is of particular importance in the VCS... Scholarly research is widely used but other types of research are used more often. The challenges of accessing scholarly research – primarily cost, but also the time required to search for and identify relevant research – tend to mean that it is used only when essential. This might be because no other research is available on a particular topic or because the context demands a robust evidence base. Nearly four out of five survey respondents (78%) use reports produced by government departments, and around three-quarters (72%) use raw data from government sources. A majority of survey respondents use scholarly research –journal articles, scholarly conference papers/proceedings or raw data sets produced in the course of scholarly research (51%). The most-often used research type is produced by nonacademic researchers or research organisations; 25% of survey respondents indicated that they used this type of research most often. VCOs use a range of strategies for accessing research. Large organisations are more likely to have a research team and library, in-house searchable databases and to subscribe to journals. Smaller organisations (