Page:Finch Group report.pdf/50

 4.45. Small firms are often regarded as driving innovation, although the evidence suggests they perform less innovation than large firms across a range of dimensions. Very few SMEs undertake R&D activities: around 2.7% of those engaged in manufacturing, and 0.6% of those engaged in services. In certain high technology sectors and in the creative industries, however, SMEs have been important drivers of innovation; and those SMEs that do innovate achieve a higher average return on investment and tend to have better commercial success. The combination of new technologies and increasing consumer demand for bespoke products has allowed SMEs to narrow the innovation gap with large firms. But size still matters, and the risks for SMEs, and the barriers they have to overcome, are more acute than for larger companies. Hence anything that can be done to lower the barriers will be especially helpful to them.

4.46. Recent reports suggest that people in the commercial sector find access to trade journals easier than to research journals. Moreover, while access to journals has improved significantly in recent years, those within the commercial sector who regard them as important sources of information for their work report that access on average is variable, with a significant minority saying that it is poor. And more than half report some recent difficulty in obtaining an article relevant to them. Like their colleagues in the HE sector, they PPV arrangements as costly and difficult, although many of them use PPV on a regular basis. ‘Walk-in’ access at a local university is inconvenient and time-consuming, and in any case many universities have found it difficult to implement in an effective way.

4.47. Voluntary sector. A range of organisations in the voluntary sector have interests in gaining access to research findings, but a recent report indicates that they tend to rely on reports from research organisations and Government departments more than the research reported in journals. They tend also to rely on intermediaries such as the National Council for Voluntary Organisations who unpack and synthesise research to make it more accessible and pertinent to their needs. Nevertheless, they do make use of journal articles, although it has not been possible to generate estimates of either their expenditure on licences, or the level of coverage.

4.48. Cost is a fundamental constraint on the sector’s ability to access research, but the multi-disciplinary interests of organisations in the sector also present a barrier, since it can be hard to decide which journals are the most relevant. Overall, limited access to research literature means that organisations can find it difficult to keep up to date, and that may affect the quality of the services they offer. Such difficulties