1. Library- What Library? Information Services for Researchers Michael Jubb Research Information Network Sci Tech Conference Masterclass London, 30 April 2009
18. Key issues Skills Services Content Who provides what and how? Is that provision sustainable? What are researchers’ needs? How can they best be met?
This an elaboration of the AHRC’s definition of the research process, based around the defining of research questions, the specification of a research context (why are these qns important and how do they relate to what we already know or understand), the specifying of research methods, and the generation of research outputs So access to and dissemination of information are the lifeblood of the research process; and fundamental to the reasons why research is funded as a public good. And researchers are both producers and users of information; but they are on the whole little interested in exploiting IP in their own work; and worried about the consequences of others (from outside the research community) seeking to exploit their IP Aside 1 : there are tensions in public policy between the support of research as a public good, and many of the measures used by Govt of the success of the UK research base, which tend to focus on things such as patenting, licensing, spin-out companies etc. But some signs of increasing interest in knowledge transfer as distinct from exploitation Aside 2: there are issues about the definition (lack of) of research in copyright law, and the distinction in particular between commercial and non-commercial research. Not wholly in agreement with BA report here, since it seems to me that there is no real distinction in the doing of the research itself; rather, it is how the results of the research are exploited once the research has been done (focus on the post-hoc activity rather than the intention of the researcher in starting off the research)