Page:Finch Group report.pdf/19

 2. Scope of our Work

2.1. Our terms of reference specified that we should focus our attention on the published findings of research, in the form of journal articles, conference proceedings and monographs. They also made clear that in considering questions of access we should not restrict ourselves to publications produced in the UK, but extend our view to those produced in the rest of the world.

2.2. Much of our attention focused on journal articles, since they constitute in volume and importance the major published outputs for researchers in the great majority of disciplines. There are some exceptions to this, for example in some fields of engineering, where conference proceedings enjoy high value. To the extent that we consider conference proceedings, we focus on those that are formally published after peer review; and in that case there is little difference between them and other kinds of journal articles.

2.3. Monographs and edited collections of essays are of course particularly important in the humanities and some areas of the social sciences; but they feature hardly at all as key outputs of research in the life sciences and physical sciences. Moves towards digital and open access publishing have been much slower here than with journal articles, and experimentation is at a much earlier stage. We consider briefly some of the issues relating to access to monographs in the following section.

2.4. We also note that researchers in the UK and across the world are increasingly engaged in the production of reports, papers, technical notes or other documents commissioned and published by governmental agencies and other bodies but not distributed or indexed by recognised publishers. Publication may take the form of a link on an institutional website, or the distribution of hard copies to interested parties. Such reports and papers are often referred to as grey literature, since they lack strict bibliographic control, and basic information such as author, publication date or publishing body may therefore not be easy to discern. Similarly, non-professional layouts and formats, and low print runs, mean that the organized collection of such publications by libraries can be challenging as compared to more established media such as journals and books. It is therefore difficult to assess the volume and scope of the research that is now reported in grey literature, since by its nature it is often difficult to identify and to trace. Such literature may also be highly variable in quality: while some is subject to peer review, much is not, and the status of many documents is unclear. Moreover, reports and papers of this kind can be difficult to trace, particularly if active steps are not taken to preserve them and make them readily-findable for the long term in digital format.