Sunday
Sep182011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Opening up research findings
An announcement from the Department of Business Innovation and Skills
Science Minister David Willetts has today announced a new independent working group to look at how UK-funded research findings can be broadened for key audiences such as researchers, policy makers and the general public.
The group will be made up of representatives from the higher education sector, research investors, the research community, scholarly publishers and libraries. It will examine how access to research findings can be made more transparent and accessible.
Reader Comments (6)
There doesn't seem to be a problem with access to findings - they are trumpeted throughout the media by the likes of Bob Ward, if they are on message. The problem is getting hold of the data and methodology.
Research findings are either published or buried. One way of getting publicly funded research into the public domain is to insist on a report regardless of the findings of the research, refuse to allow publication in journals with fire walls and put the reports on line with access by registered people only.
Easy. Defund tax payer funded researchers, universities/departments, scientists etc who refuse.
Published papers should state where the research data is available
With the totally stupid research coming out of unis at the moment I would defund totally all of them. We need to focus on commercially useful research funded by commerces that need it.
Dump public funding !!
Sounds like they're asking people with a vested interest in the status quo. They should invite bloggers like our host.
Surely someone with practical experience of the difficulties of obtaining research findings, in particular, diifficulties in obtaining methodology, should be co-opted onto this group or is the Science Minister happy to see the group so deficient in this area of expertise?