Sector worked_text
consultant to the public sector and part time academic
Self employed in community services, health & education

Type of organisation in education_text
Consultant across school & tertary sectors
retired academic/consultant + pro bono NGO work

Type of government organisation_text
NZ Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC)

Type of NGO_text
Direct services to children and families
Mental health communkity support service
i am a free lancing community consultant
regional natural resource management group
Science and Technology in remote Indigneous communities

Main role: Other
strategic and corporate business planning
Investment and superannuation advisor and strategist

Subject area_text
Justice services - particulary prison based and juvenile justice interventions
community services, welfare, social policy
Librarianship, Records Management, Internet & Society
youth employment and civic participation
Health and training within the health industry
Community infrastructure and social planning
Environment, Planning, Infrastructure, Arts & Culture
health education and social disadvanatge
Early childhood education and care & family support services
disadvantaged children, young peoeple and families
Physical Activity, Active transport, built environment
Broad determinants of health, inequality
food marketing, marketing to children, public health, macromarketing
The "Third Sector" or Not-for-Profit sector
Carers; disability and the aged care sectors
public safety, environment, social policy
National surveys; large scale assessments; international development
Community Corrections, working with offenders in the community
Suicide Prevention and crisis support services
Regional development, Aboriginal affairs, environment, arts
Climate Change, HVACR policy and commercialisation
Cancer prevention, treatment and patient support
cultural competency, improving service access
children, families, child abuse, relationship services
Housing, Homelessness, Service Delivery, Indigenous
ageing, aged care, climate change, workforce planning and development, social inclusion, disability, Indigenous, labour force, workers compensation
mobile devices for indigenous remote teacher training
Social Policy, law, service delivery strategic intitiatives, public administration
Social policy broadly, social work more specifically and critical organisational analysis more specifically
Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Service provision
Health Policy, Aboriginal Health, Diversity
Public Policy, Environmental Sustainability, Social Analysis
Children's Services and Aged Care Services
Land and Propert information, knowledge management, change management
Regulation of therapeutic goods - medicines, medical devices
family relationships - counselling, dispute resolution, etc
Economic development of small and medium businesses,
flexible, creative and inclusive learning
Vulnerable children and young people across education, health and social services
education, employment and training; equity
social justice all sorts of areas - mental health, homelessness, Indigenous issues etc etc
Vocational education and training, competency based training, training and assessment
Health, Aged Care, employment iniatiaves
Health - ethical issues such as end-of-life & assisted reproductive treatment (donor conception & surrogacy)
Work Health and Safety. Mental Health and Wellbeing
Women's health - policy and preventative health
legislaton, case law, related social research
Children and youth's welfare, well being
health legislation, Child health, Multicultural health, Women's health, Child protection, domestic violence, international treaties
Education courses delivered, children services, and general interest
Horticulture, ESL, Sustainability, Arts & Design, Engineering, Business, Management & Administration
geoscience, particularly petroleum geology and geophysics
Vulnerable children across the areas of education, health and social services
Program evaluation typically of educational or related programs
Family relationships and sexual abuse/assault
Health information technologies, particularly broadband
Acquisitions processes, Collection description processes
Strategic policy, education and employment
Environment science and natural resource management
Environment, Natural Resources, Climate, Water, Science
aquatic ecosystem monitoring and assessment
Governance of statutory bodies established for natural resource management
Environmental issues / WH&S/ legislation & Australian Standards
early years and primary school education
Social policy inc - mental health, disability, older people, children & family, youth, women & gender
Responsible for collecting material from UK Central govenment, Westminster, Scottish Parliament, NI Assembly, United Nations, OECD
Health policy, HTA, Evidence-based Medicine
Health technology assessment and health policy
Indigenous, NDIS, childcare, remote service delivery
Health, medicine, injury prevention, rehabilitation after injury
Medical/nursing service delivery to hospital staff
Representing depts interests in water, vegetation and land
Indigenous Affairs - specifically economic development
agricultural practices to reduce pollution of fresh and marine waters
Economic, social, environmental and cultural aspects of Natural Resource Management
Law, ethics and communications technology
Social inclusion - housing, education, transport
Employment Policy, Diversity Practice, Workplace Discrimination,
Queensland public policy and administration
Perinatal, infant and children's mental health
Young people and mental health and wellbeing
Whole of Govt Coordination/collaboration; ABS Data
wide range of material across professional services
Criminal law with a focus on policing practices
Organ Donation: Opt-Out strategies with relation to Virtue Ethics and Utilitarianism
Australia Federal Politics - Voting and Collaboration
strategic planning and organisational planning
Higher Education - Personal Learning Architecture
Family and couple relationship counselling and children's services
community health and well-being e.g. family support, financial inclusion, household energy efficiency, ethical corporate practice
Public Value in the arts (Cultural Value)
post compulsory education & training (esp VET); employment; gender analysis
Teaching and Learning management and planning
artificial intelligence - simulation of cognitive dynamics
archaeology, history & heritage in general
social planning for new residential mixed use communities, social research for govt, infrastructure assessment
Refugees, gender, micro-finance, entrepreneurship, settlement, employmnet, women's empowerment, trauma recovery
early intervention through improved information sharing
Mental health, sexuality & disability, community development
Policy across Human services: Health, AOD, Education, Indigenous, etc
community services - indigenous, trauma, vulnerable communities, poverty, adullt education, culture
Public Health: Evidence and Knowledge Translation
Families, Children - vulnerable communities
disability and related areas, assistive technology, social inclusion, therapy
Impact of internet and associated new technologies
About issues related to border protection. The subject categories vary a lot. We are interested about organise crime issues, terrorism and security issues, public administration, cybercrime, cloud computing, people smuggling and coastal and maritime issues.
Health, Education, Children and Families, Youth
vulnerable children, young people and families
Lack of Housing options for young people
drugs and alcohol, community development
govt. policy esp. economics, climate change, infrastructure (PPPs)
environmental impact assessment - mainly coal mines
Curriculum, Assessment, Education Systems, Early Childhood, Primary, Post-primary
Australian literature, history & culture
Strategic planning, natural resource management
Vocational education and training, building and construction industry
Environmental Issues and Policy, Monitoring Biodiversity
Sexual and reproductive health; women's health
urban policy research, economic and social research, performance monitoring (indicators)
Environmental and land use planning, public land management
Bladder cancer, oncology, men's health, research, psych/social
Sustainability and Natural Resource Management
Older people's health and wellbeing; climate change; world peace; inequality and social develpment.
Support service information and referral
Agricultural policy in Australia and internationally
social and health policy, program design and evaluation
Evidence-informed decision-making in Public Health
German language, German immersion maths,
Property Law, Employment Law, Corporate Law and Litigation
research into whiolistic care for fourth agers in the aged care sector
Young people (across a range of topics education, digital, social enterprise)
Education - first year experience/retention
Volunteering within the asylum seeker sector
international education and change management
Workplace rights; employment law &industrial relations
Professional Standards,Teacher education and professional learning
social policy, women, older people, CALD, disability
Senior secondary literacy and numeracy improvement
Planning and Development, Most Appropriate Use of State Land, EIS assessment
Social policy, in particular employment services
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education
Library and information science, children's literature, art libraries
Evaluation of Council's programs, provision of socio-demographic data
Retail, consumer behaviour, economic development
sexual health and respectful relationships
Socioeconomic inequalities especially in health, welfare and education
Prevention of Violence Against Women, Food Security
Indigenous policy and program research and evaluation
Social housing - rent setting, policy development and implementation, whatever i can turn my hand to
Teacher Professional Learning in Literacy Education
Social Planning and Community Engagement
women, older people, carers, volunteers and young people at risk
Queer social and criminal justice issues
Change in rural industries and communities
planning for community health & wellbeing

Materials used: Other_text
Council plans and strategies, state and federal plans and strategies
Bibliographic databases (eg: Medline); Government media releases; Newsletters and alerts from over 100 organisations; Journal electronic tables of contents
email newsletters, organisations websites (egNRM bodies)
webpages from other projects or organisations
social networks, linkedin curation scoop it
direct contact with scientists, farmers, government officers, industry, consultants, NRM groups etc
Online resources - Social Media - Audio Visuals, reports, twitter feeds etc.
TOCs; government reports;policy papers; CCH
Press Releases (political and industry organisations)
government policy and procedure from both Australia and abroad
consultancy reports prepared for project assessments
practitioner generated material and websites
legislation, government departmental guidelines and directions
enews, community and organisation newsletters and other communications
Draft reports, draft articles, draft legislation, internal correspondence and reports
Legislation, Parliamentary proceedings, industrial relations instruments, Australian and international government strategic and operational policy
Policy releases from international organisations (either regarding climate change or migration or movement of people)
Government Policy papers, strategy directions, esp Local Government

Materials would use more often_text
Journal articles - it's hard to find articles that have free access
Peer reviewed articles cost a lot of money for people in the NGO sector- this is prohibitive for many non university academic researchers.
Many government papers etc are not released. Journal articles are expensive.
Government data that evaluates policies - so much of this is never released.
Peer reviewed journal articles reports conference papers
government publications i.e. policy directives, guidelines etc...especially from NSW Health website
Journal Articles: However I'm not an academic, and I have no way of knowing if research is current, peer reviewed or just academic advertising done by the university.
Internal reports / evaluations produced by other regulators.
Conference papers are a valuable source of emerging information and theory. While I appreciate that quite often conference paper will evolve into journal articles, the length of that process does mean the information does fall out of currency.
Commercial and Market research is becoming more useful as I move through university studies. Finding the latest and most relevant research to my topic can be time consuming at best, a nightmare at worst.
timely access to reports from CBO/NGOs and government
Conference papers are often not published online, or made freely available
Summaries/compendiums of the different formats in which information on a particular topic is available
Journal articles and conference papers (if they were free or low cost).
I would use journal articles more often. My work place has discontinued its library service so finding and accessing journals is now more difficult. I would also be interested in using more conference papers if they were easier to locate.
Cost of access to journal articles is a barrier to use
Conference papers Position papers Evaluations Reports Submissions
Videos, blogs and public opinion can be difficult to find just due to the quantity generated every day - finding a relevant video on YouTube, for example, can take hours! I usually find these from links provided in emails etc. News reports online are now becoming harder to find for FREE as the papers are now charging for online access.
Journal articles - if you don't have a paid subscription
Evaluations, research reviews, conference papers
Conference papers, state government reports
professional magazines: unless you are a member of an organisation or subscribe, it is harder to gain access. websites often don't include.
1990s and pre 1990s material can sometimes be hard to find - typically not digitised
Consultant reports, which may be private
Evaluations Evidenced based research and discussion papers
Probably doctoral and masters if they could be categorised so that you could look at them by topic/discipline
Access isn't so muhc a problem as the quality or focus of the material. If there were more robust evaluations and more malleable data sets, I'd use them more often.
access to academic journal articles. Online database subscriptions are too expensive for a sole practitioner
data sets international studies journals
data; better access to departmental information ie better organised so access easier for all
meta analysis of transdisciplinary perspectives on sepecific focus areas
News reports and articles in the media - provided through work but would be useful to be able to have easy and low-cost/free access through the Internet (i.e. media monitors type service)
Briefings,government and NGO reports,technical documents and working papers
Reports - there are thousands of them out there that are relevant to the work I do but they're hard to find. Google searches can only do so much.
journal and peer reviewed up-to-date case studies and research report
Journal articles. Academia needs to give though to how community agencies can access their e-databases and journals. We partner them in research (assisting with providing access to people) but as yet we have been unable to find a solution to the problem of community agencies having access to uni databases (unless a staff member has a current enrolment - which can't always be assumed/relied on).
Technical reports that are cited in education journalism - journalists often do not adequately reports or provide links to access information on which they report. It is often then difficult to track down the exact articles and reports cited in the media.
Journal articles that are in journals that can be accessed only by having a subscription for... not Open Access
I can only get access to a few peer-reviewed journals through our library - this is a major drawback to me in my work
Conference papers, evaluations, position papers, reports
Government data is not sufficiently available. I my field I find Government insufficiently transparent with regard to data they should / do collect and the rationale for policy decisions
Evaluations Conference papers Reports Discussion/position papers
Often a lot of journals are hard to access unless you have a university library log-in.
Journal articles, conference papers, Policy reviews
Would use peer reviewed journal articles more often if they were easier to access.
Conference papers, briefings and theses.
it is next to impossible to get hold of impact assessment reports prepared for the NSW Land and Environment Court and this puts many impact assessments prepared for the court out of reach. Often these IAs are the ones that the parties have really concentrated on so all the arguments are there but you have to have been a party to the case to have access. No one has been able to explain to me why this is (I have asked). Generally no commercial in confidence material is involved and each side is basically using published data. The lack of access inhibits professional development
If I could access briefings more easily I would certainly read more of them. Also if journal articles were more affordable for NGOs I would read more.
Program evaluations are often not released Books are easy to find but hard to access - if they aren't in ebook format Peer reviewed journal articles are often difficult to access (though easy to find)
Peer reviewed journal articles (we don't have a subscription to these - the cost is prohibitive)
Briefings, guides and research reviews are often found serendipitously, as are certain types of reports.
Briefings, etc and reports are often found serendipitously.
I would use reports and evaluations much more frequently as these are often more relevant to my work than, say, academic literature as I work in an applied research environment.
Evaluations, discussion and position papers, worker papers and preprints, reports
Blogs, conference papers and research data (government data is easier to find)
I would like to be able for my organisation to afford registrarion for all relevant journals and to have access to all conferences papers
Raw, de-identified criminal justice data that can be exported to SPSS. Also, internal evaluations of programs.
Government data outside of ABS collections, such as departmental level data on immigration
Data, Peer reviewed journals - they usually require a subscription
Definitely journal articles (peer reviewed) - can be quite difficult for the average government employee to access journal articles and books because of the pay per article policy of libraries
Journal articles - often can track them down but have to have a membership or pay to retrieve! :(
There is cost involved with accessing most information these days, even simple things as full text media articles etc. It is getting more and more difficult to access journal articles due to cost, but there is also issues around finding archival information for journals, reports etc.
consultant reports, government reports that have been removed from web or were never publicly available
Journal articles - I don't have access through a university
Research papers/reviews that relate to like enterprises.
Peer reviewed journal articles. Because my work covers a wide sweep of disciplines, I find need to refer to a large number of professional journals. Those available on line are most accessible but many require annual subscriptions and my organisation is not in a position to pay for a large number thereof.
transcripts of court proceedings are easy to find on AUSTLII but they need more funding for greater coverage. It is also a mystery how they decide which transcripts to make available.
Peer reviewed journal articles, evaluations, data sets, market research
Data gathered by NGOs to submit to funding bodies (reportables) e.g. state and federal government.
Peer reviewed journal articles are costly, esp annoying when they have been a result of public funding
No, we will go to any lengths to get information required for evidence based decision making. Finding is one thing - access,licence provisions, sharing and retention/storage is another.
Journal articles and documents that are not 'free' online Books only available in print
journal articles that are not openly available online
audio/visual!! conference papers to stay ahead of the curve and get snapshot of what is working and being tested
Conference papers if they were available in a timely fashion to people who didn't attend. Cost can be a limiting factor especially for market research. Readily Government data varies in quality and usefulness
Issues are that government data sets may not be accessible in the form I am after, or the right cuts. Evaluations are often not publicly available
evaluations and reviews of programs/interventions in relation to addressing social disadvantage etc
Commercial and market research as well as Government data sets or data sets in general.
journal articles not held by my university library reports evaluations discussion/position papers working papers
Submissions to government enquiries, especially those which include literature surveys. Program summaries that are provided to government as part of routine reports. Committee papers, particularly those which disappear from government websites after a change of government.
Better presentation of governmental data sets, especially ABS and other governmental agencies.
Free access to journals as no budget for many subscriptions these days
Informal reports/evaluations/papers from smaller organisations producing evidence (anecdotal and empirical) but you can't find them.
Archived Annual Reports of companies available online. Statistics if available online. Journal articles if free online.
A recent problem we are experiencing is that major newspapers are now restricting online content to subscribers only - which is reducing the volume of news that can be included in new digests and shared via our social media sites.
Good quality public opinion polls; reports from community health/social agencies; feedback from focus groups (I'm trying to get at what people really think about various issues, particularly in relation to "community readiness" for change)
no - ease of finding doesn't affect what I use
Because our library is now off-site, it is more difficult to get books and articles.
Project evaluations from agencies running targeted programs - a lot of these are undertaken (by consultants such as myself) but never publicly released and would make a great contribution to knowledge of effective interventions if they were.
Probably not. That said, for many projects we gain access to internal working documents from agencies (that are often important for the research design etc).
Evaluations - particularly of government projects/pilots.
Briefings to government, and government position papers, can be hard to obtain. Am also aware that it's difficult to know what we are missing in the grey sources: What aren't we finding that is important?
peer reviewed research. Main problem is its specificity, so that is why reserach reviews are so important that look at all the research and relate it to topical or emerging policy issues
Peer reviewed articles are very specific. Research reviews on topical and emerging issues are the key to these for me.
Spatial data is more useful in understanding why various decisions are made "where". This gives a synthesis of verious opposing options that may be suitable due to the nature of the location their aplicable to.
Examples of similar work - ghrough project reports, reviews, working papers.
Reports from other government departments
Computer source code (for various algorithms)
Technical reports and other materials in hard copy. These often constitute the only relevant information about an area prior to disturbance or development, which is essential to identifying the magnitude and causes of water quality change. These materials are also in grave danger of being lost, due to reorganisation and relocation of departments, invariably accompanied by reduction in space and technical experience.
unpublished government reports, guidelines, forms etc.
Peer reviewed articles - if we do not subscribe to that publication then they can be difficult to obtain.
Paywalled materials are difficult to access - organisation's subscriptions are very limited compared to access at universities
Internal reports, technical documents. Journal articles that are not open source are not easy to access.
Gov docs from departments buried in their website
data sets related to business expenditure on environmental management including those requirements identified in EIS and licences
Research reviews, Evaluations can be tucked away for no one to see.
scientific papers (currently a university student but once that is completed access is not available through work)
I would definitely use non-published research data if I could locate it more easily. I am extremely concerned about publication bias
Routinely collected health data that is not easily accessible. Health policy and procedures documents.
book chapters, non-English language publications Please notice: your alternative of answers are much to simple! The problem of finding information is strongly related to the research field! Not all books are difficult to find, not all journal articles are easy to find.
Full text of dissertations and conference proceedings
conference papers, preprints, doctoral or masters theses
Evaluation and reviews of government programs done by consultants. Older reports by government departments from previous governments.
conference papers or report findings/ recomendations. Unless I know of the research being done, I can't access findings without spending alot of time. Clearing houses are great
government reports - would like these all collated together
International journal articles and reserach papers
Internal evaluations of government programs of a like kind but in other government departments
Journal articles - which use institutional log-ins - would be used more if I knew what our log in was.
Peer reviewed journal articles and reports/research papers. Policy needs to be evidenced based. The integrity of the evidence on which a policy is based is essential. In addition, this information needs to be easily accessible and digestable.
Government funded project reports and research or best practise/research material developed as a result of funded project
Evaluations/evaluative reports of social services commissioned by local government but held internally by them and not published.
conference papers, theses, market research
Conference papers Reports Submissions Working papers
It was hard to know whether to mark "data sets" as very easy (ABS census data re very easy to access for example) or "not at all easy" (population projections generated by the SA state government agency are not easy to access, for example). I would use those projections in preference to the ABS set if I could.
Government Data, certain Theses and reports
all particularly with Australia content focus
I would use more peer reviewed journal articles if they weren't behind a paywall.
Evaluations of programs and services. Data sets
Journal articles (peer reviewed) for non- institutional users
Cost of journal articles is a real problem for our NFP. While finding the references is simple enough, our organisation doesn't have the resources to continually purchase access
Conference papers and working papers can be very useful when they are easy to access, but there are often access issues here as neither of these materials are published by someone reputable or are easy to find.
Internal departmental reports not published online
Issue re finding is coming up with an accurate word/s in the search. Particularly difficult when trying to find somethingh on government sites.
Government agency reports/discussion papers/working documents - sometmes these are easy to find and other times they are completely buried or not available at all. Vompetitor reports, cabinet papers and cabinet minutes of decisions.
Getting a broad cross section of information is always desirable, so I would use anything I could get my hands on.
archival material, journal articles if cheaper to access
Technical reference books, journal articles. Datasets are not easy to locate but I really have no choice.
Government papers and research documents.
Evaluations of crime prevention and other crime related programs are often not made publically available. This is a significant failure as this information would useful for practitioners who are looking to implement crime prevention programs.
Databases on disease incidence & prevalence
briefings, conference papers and working papers
research materials.As i do not have university access to research sites
Responses here are highly contextual, and would vary enormously, the medium also would depend on projects and availability. Outside an organisation most research data is locked up... and controlled by publishers. Now not located in an institution, formal materials such as most material described above is virtually impossible to access. Education and Research is currently a private practice, not universally accessible.
One thing I struggle to find is examples of excellent policy reviews for our students, either at the organisational or government level.
We really need access to a good online legal service like LexisNexis or Westlaw, but currently the (State Government owned) company will not pay for it.
Journal articles that our library does not have a subscription for.
Research papers using data produced by the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth
news digests/compilations across other agencies and consolidated into one bulletin
ABS data generally. It can take hours to find, say, the the lookup codes for languages or data aggregated at a suitable level.
conference papers the links seem broken a lot or the full report is has a copyright. Some journal articles are easy to find, but not all of them.
refereed journal articles evaluation reports scoping reports
journal articles - kept at libraries, or special access required if via internet
Some government data eg health stats or housing stats. Reports referred to in media articles.
Program evaluations and information regarding consumer perspectives and experiences
Practitioners' experiences in specific areas of work related to my own, especially short audio & video presentations. TED talks are excellent so a model like this.
Most up to date data and evaluations of pilot projects. Access is usually reliant upon personal/professional contact and for clear purpose with confidentiality often attached.
old departmental reports and publications when I have no access to a hard copy (and they haven't been scanned in anywhere)
theses and some reports are not very easy to locate
difficult to source material authored by people living with disability: they have been marginalised on many fronts not least by lack of research training / access to authorship opportunities
theses, books, evaluations, journal articules, professional / trade magazines
cross government/ multiple agency collaborative research
Books and eBooks, journal articles, data sets
Research and evaluations that are not funded directly by govt.
Sometimes it can be difficult to find a journal article which seems to have been cited everywhere, and yet you can access the original...
conference papers, evaluations, submissions, technical documents
Conference papers, government data on particular types of organisations
Federal government data on students is very difficult to access in the past three years, since access was highly restricted by the Govt.
I enjoy push ntifications from reputable organisatins about topics related to mey work for example NHS site and sites like this one. Where I can scroll through and follow what may be of interest to me in my work.
Some of the more complex technical documentation is difficult to access, particularly if privately produced.
We don't have subscriptions to journals so published aritcles are often inaccessible.
A regular (quarterly) summary of relevant published research.
Regional breakdown of statistics and other information
Information about current services in the local area are easy to access.
Statistical info ie local crime, health, and other demographic materials. It would be especially good to have them groups so as to allow cross data analysis. We are currently in the process of selectign a contractor to prepare this sort of statistical data for the Queanbeyan area.
Peer reviewed journal articles. Currently, the cost of these is prohibitive.
Journal articles, refereed articles that require log ins via university
reviews of the results of monitoring programs and baseline data collections for individual projects. They typically are never seen again, and never combined for issue or geographic comparision.
journal papers. often we do not have a subscription to see the full version and we can only do it if someone passes it on.
More open access journals would be very helpful
peer reviewed jounral articles - can currently access as studying - generally very important issue lack of free access to peer reviewed papers if not working with an institution.
Not all journals are readily available to all. Would use any material available online from a reliable source.
practitioner based evaluations and reports related to their practice that may generate knowledge via inclusion in primary research projects and/or contribute to the literature landscape and policy discussions
Other states' and territories' policies and procedures - to compare, or to base our development on. I would like to see more sharing between service delivery and education units of resources developed across jurisdictions.
Data is often easy to find but trying to find it for my catchment or issues of sample size, data quality are always an issue.
Statistical data sets, especially international. Commercial data (which are mostly confidential)
Project reports and Consultation outcome reports
Journal articles/research papers that are in subscription journals etc. The cost of accessing these is generally prohibative for a very small organisation with limited financial resources.
I think we would use peer reviewed articles more if we were able to access them without substantial subscription fees.
Journal articles are very difficult to access online without university library access. The cost of subscribing to a large number of online journals is prohibitive for a very small company
Evaluations - we need to know what works in supporting children and young people in out of home care
Journal articles - these are restricted to subscription holders, e.g. university libraries, and often impossible to get at for workers in NGOs who employers/NGOs do/will not pay for library/journal subscriptions and do not have access to university libraries
Government documents on research into my field - they are hard to find - buried deep in websites
Gender disagregated health data - not much exists
government data and internal reviews and important old reports (you are doing a great job on this)
Emerging ideas in theses and working papers are very useful if accessible
International materials Data sets external to my organisation Books
Journal articles - they're often hard to access
Access to undertaking literature searches through research tools/data journals to which universities subscribe and allow access to students and staff. Would be happy to pay.
ongoing problems locating reliable data that measures social issues over time that can be drilled down to lga level (often analysis stops at state or regional level)
Data analysis/management material Data development
I subscribe to many blogs & webpage updates via RSS Feeds which I find really helpful because it consolidates a lot of material I need for my work in one RSS Reader.
By definition if it was easier to access I would use it more. Applies to all.
All of the ones listed as not very easy and not easy at all.
Academic research held in institutional repositories
My interests now (I'm in my 80's) are catholic and I have leisure to read widely.
Archives and heritage are often not digitised and therefore not available online. Plenty of images are available online but copyright often prevents the use of them. Many forms of content are behind paywalls.
Data sets Evaluations Discussion/position papers
Academic journals are difficult because no longer working in the university sector I don't have access and the company won't pay.
Government data from other departments and embargoed or not-for-public-release evaluations
Internal departmental briefings, policy development documents, corporate briefings
Easier access and searching would increase use of most sources
Journal article, administrative data, reports, submissions and working papers. If one already has a project they may be made available if client knows about them but generally they are not easy to access.
research reports from my own colleagues or within my own workplace.
Conference appers that are managed by private companies who have 'ownership" and limited sharing to those who pay their exhorbident fees to attend.
Information about and evaluation of similar projects from other jurisdictions.
More readily available data sets would be useful for informing the submissions we make regarding health services.
Doctoral or masters theses, research reports
books; conference papers. Though a uni student, I am learning online and find this mode very difficult, especially regarding accessing books - unless I purchase them. This is expensive and time consuming since I have to wait for them to arrive from overseas.
Institutional/government websites and currency of material,government websites
Possibly commercial research - limiting factor is the cost
Old media reports. even using Factiva its hard to get some old news reports. ABC web site is notoriously bad for searching for media articles as well esp of radio news as they don't put everything on the web site and whats chosen to go up is chosen in a fairly ad hoc way and then the search tool is very limited.
Archive and heritage material if it were electronically searcheable
Journal articles if we had access to on-line article as I did when employed in a university
Not really. Theses wouold be useful but information is aften hard to glean from them - I usually refer to associated papers.
I would prefer current journal articals however it can be difficult to find due to the nature of the topic and even harder to have free access which with important for NGO due to limited funding
Government policy, guidelines, standards etc. from Australian State, Commonwealth and international governments
Any safety or disability statistics broken down into local areas. Research that would assist with liquor licence objections.
I would read more journal articles if my organisation had a subscription, or there was a generic logon for non-profits.
volume is not the issue. Quantity is too much. The problem is finding good, up-to-date summaries and key info (not wading thru' dross)
Peer reviewed journal articles - particularly literature reviews Government data
Briefings, guides and research reviews, Discussion/position papers, theses and university research
information about current research projects and first findings
any material regarding children of homeless families
Doctoral and masters theses Journal articles
conference papers, theses, journal articles
Data sets, it's really hard to guess what some of them are called and most search engines require exact wording
more government reports and reports commissioned by private agencies by government departments.
Australian research especially peer reviewed journal articles - especially rural and regional issues - only acessible through university library or through payment - restrictive.
I would use more audio/video if there were written transcripts available- it takes too long to listen to something - faster to read
Local government reports, such as policy documents or strategic frameworks. There are often drafts produced for public consultation but then it is difficult to track down the final report. Possibly via the local government website but they usually do not archive material online- and a hard copy is harder to access even when you ask for one.
Facebook, blogs, youtube and certain GLBTQ sites are blocked from government use
defintely market research and working papers
Commercial and market research, evaluations.
Journal aritcles and research papers, but we do not have access to electronic databases
government discussion papers, hansard, archived political and policy documents
Journal articles - we only have limited access to full text
Peer reviewed conference/journal articles, especially cross disciplinary appraoches to same/similar problems, e.g psychological vs biological perspectives on human learning, knowledge,etc.
Summary of conference papers if I was on a mailing list that sent out a summary of recent relevant conferences and papers
Knowing what journals are out there would be good and finding one that was appropriate.
Research on people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.
Academic journals or articles currently held under copyright or published through subscription based journals.
Research reviews, submissions, government background papers, policies, etc. Probably most of the above.
If more books were digitised I would use this resource more often.
Peer reviewed journals, research monographs
Journal articles. We don't have access to an on-line library of specialist journals

Important sources: Other_text
Census and other population and housing data, education department student data (government department but mostly sits with schools)
local history, photos, consultation submissions not published
Web sites not necesssarily scholarly but with useful leads or information
industry and union ,professional body research
Online alerts, eg. Australian Policy Online
Overseas government regulators in same field.
unpublished material plus material only accessible for a fee
research sponsored by Philanthropic Foundations
Conference papers are sometimes very difficult to follow up
Organisations specific to the women's health sector.
newspapers, presentations (ie slideshare), clearinghouses
IT industry or IT association voices (e.g. Australasian Telehealth Society)
land owners, community groups for their specific areas
A variety of general and specialised websites.
internal documents - existing files & client history provided by client or files
unpublished internal briefings & reports
Parliamentary reports, submissions. Not-for-profit welfare and for-profit agencies providing services for the government reports.
papers not indexed by the major companies
mental health and younth worker sector/profession
past co-workers, colleagues, ozarch & othert internet sources net
Online only publishers and strategic analysts
Localised information - specifically an Australian perspective
public opinion pieces are important to our work as we represent patients and try to combine anecdotal evidence with research
educational libraries - VOCED, ACER, NCVER
newspapers, international organisations eg. UNICEF etc
Field experience in natural uncontrived settings,

Sources of new info: Other_text
Search engines/collators (e.g. Google alerts)
LinkedIn discussion groups sharing reports.
community newsletters, community meetings or forums
Departmental collections of data and unbublished technical reports
Departmental library tailored alerts and daily news clips.
direct contact with practitioners, producers etc
material supplied directly to my organisation by stakeholders
Websites of recent or future conferences
e-forums - technical discussion groups online
I search for it rather than wait for it to come to me
A lot of my research involves collecting case study evidence directly from consumers
I am associated with the university, and so the information circulars from the ANU are important.
Social Media but area based specific is very important (i.e. LinkedIn)
National and state records and archives agencies

Top 3 services: 1_text
Australian Clearinghouse for Youth Studies
Journal Alerts eg WileyOnlineLibrary, HBR
Australian Institute of Suicide Research & Prevention
APH website (for inquiries and submission papers)
search engines of academic publishing houses
Australian Social Policy Online Weekly Briefing email
Journal o f Intellectual and developmental Disability
Webcollections of articles about different topics
The Age website - search all Fairfax by subject daily
Govt media releases (eg on new enquiries)
Qld Dept of Education, Training and Employment
national offshore petroleum titles administrator
Institutional websites eg. JCU, AIMS, BSES, GBRMPA
Research Insitiute Updates (WQRA, RWCoE)
Australian Institute of Criminology Alert
NHS Evidence databases package (NHS purchsed resources e.g Medline)
Australian Policy online weekly briefing
Personal networks - university copyright officers
Inform eweekly news from Homelessness Australia
SCOPUS / other unviversity subscription services
International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring
Australian Centre of Excellence for Local Government
Workplace information ie media summary, journal /researchsummary
listservers provided to my organisation (one of many in Australia)
Urban Affairs Bulletin published by Elton Consulting
Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics
inhouse onlinen journal and research announcements
Australian Library and Information Service
newsfeeds APO; Australian Curriculum Assocaition
emial newsletters - PCP, LLEN, city of greater geelong
Federal Government , policy docs, reports and websites
word of mouth from supervisers/ colleagues at university
Direct email/media alert from government or other
Australian Institute of Criminology email alert
Alerts for journals my uni has access to
Department of Environment and Primary Industries

Top 3 services: 2_text
Library within my organisation - regular email updates
Australian Healthcare & Hospitals Association emails &n links
newslettyers and website updates for complementary NGOs
NGO websites directly (depending on topic)
Media statements by government ministers
email (mailing lists & information sharing)
Office of Queensland Parliamentary Council Legislation database
Professional association weekly e newsletter
Word of mouth and occasionally news reports
A collection of subject-relevant blogs (too many to list individually)
American society for Educational Research
Archives & Manuscripts (professional journal)
Sector bulletin- Council to Homeless Persons
Googling via the internet, esp Google Scholar
Disability Advocacy Resource Unit weekly e-newsletter
FARE (Fopundation of Alcohol Research and Education)
Australian Clearinghouse for Youth Studies
National Centre for Vocational Education Research
Australian Women Againat Violence Alliance e-news
ABS & other Government Department reports
Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute
Journal databases accessed through university library
University of Tasmania library catalogue
Media clippings service provided by employer
Brotherhood Current Awareness Portal (BroCAP)
Australian Government - productivity commission, senate inquiries, abs etc
NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research
Government Statistician, Queensland Treasury and Trade
Facebook - link to orgs that connect to my research area
Victorian Office of the Community Sector
Government websites eg Closing the gap clearing house and AIHW

Top 3 services: 3_text
Search Engines and lots of hunting through links
Australian think tanks or sources such as AIFS, AIC, APO
Evidenced based research papers in journals
Australian College of Health Service Managers email newsletters & links
Access to Melb Uni library and all its resources
Health Innovation Organisations eg IHI, NHS UK, CIHI
Australian clearinghouse for youth studies
Institutional alumni email/social media listserves
Google search for key terms: 'Justice', 'Corrective Services', 'Community Corrections'
ABC website, inc news, opinion pieces, radio and tv shows, etc
Australian Clearinghouse for Youth Studies
western australia department mines & petroleum
Journal content alerts - such as Marine and Freshwater Research
websites of key organisations e.g. health foundation
Governmental reports from other countries
Mailing lists from government & academic contacts
PubMed and related services - PubMed Central etc
online trials registers eg clinicaltrials.gov
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
National pro. Bono resources centre (clearing house)
Peace& Conflict Development Network PCDN
Vista Management Digest/ Information Services & Solutions
ALIES network (Libraries in Emergency services)
Table of Contents Services (e.g., AMEDEO Pregnancy Disorders)
Daily/Weekly Mailouts like FP and Policy Online Weekly Briefing
St marys Area Community Development team - broadcast emails
first hand interviews and other staff consultations
Indigenous peoples issues & resources: updates
word of mouth from colleagues in the same field
Australian Domestic and Family Violence Clearinghouse
Department of Planning and Infrastructure
La Trobe University Library online journal database
Office of Queensland Parliamentary Council
NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research
Emails from colleagues, email lists, services
Direct communication with Government departments
Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute
AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT MEDIA RELEASE SERVICE
Centre For Expansion of Language and Thinking
Networks of other people in local government across the state
ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation

How often use: Other_text
Acma.gov.au (Regulator - government website with multiple reports)
OTHER LIBRARIES via IAMSLIC (Int. Assoc. Mar Sci Libs & Info Centers)
incoming emails taht I have subscribed to
Daily - research items mentioned by people I follow on Twitter
my institution's library through inter-library services
THis questionnaire is too long and boring
I wanted to say that sources are often located 'as needed' - not regularly as question requires
URLs from relevant publications; international eNewsletters; international blogs (LinkedIn groups; CCH
books, journals and article copies on local office bookshelves
emails - newsletters or just forwarding on relevant reports etc.
The Age;AFR; ABC RN/Ch 24;The Guardian;New Matilda and On Line Opinion; CPD/Menadue
twitter, subscriptions, email alters - daily
emailing colleagues - networking for leads/answers
Opinion, brainstorming, debate and discussion with colleagues

Issues accessing information_text
You always need to be mindful of the 'trustworthiness' / reliability of the information and also of the author's intent
current documentation usually fairly ok, historical documentation is like hen's teeth
I depend on grey literature because employer does not have access to journals and I only personally subscribe to a few key journals. However, searching for and accessing relevant grey literature can be time-consuming.
Time involved in finding and assessing worth
Time to search and sorting out the good from the rubbish.
Drilling down to find the precise aspect of the information I need and sometimes to find Australian research, data and opinion.
Finding government publications from other states is problematic. A lot of grey material does not seem to be archived or readily available on government agency websites.
not all in the one place so you try a google search
Accessing journals Not knowing what I don't know Very busy and noisy space-time consuming to separate the wood from the chaff.
Sites can be blocked by our network security. Extortionate costs for commercial reports.
A lot of info, sometimes only a small part is of relevance
Time to stay on top of what I need to read!
Getting free access to full text journal articles
search results dont show what the document actually is
Access to other regulator data hidden behind their firewalls and not available for public distribution.
Discoverability remains an issue with some literature.
No central storage of information known - have to rely on information being suggested by Google, newsletters or colleagues
Mostly, it's the time factor. And the crippling disappointment when you find what you want for a research paper, only to discover that it's title, snippet or brief abstract that attracted to you to it, as a potential source...proves misleading or inaccurate. All that time spent finding it...effectively wasted because there is no metadata to help identify in the first place if it is actually useful.
fruitless searching lack of hard data lots of soft material
Actually I realise I need to know more about accessing material in this format! (there are doubtless helpful channels I could/should be accessing..)
Sometimes difficult to find exact matches - or up-to-date ones - when searching through Google
Knowing where to look in the first place. Contact details for lesser known producers of reports.
Much of it isn't published online by the funder of the researcher, so even when i know research exists I waste a lot of time working out who 'holds' it.
Accessing older policy literature (understanding policy cycle can be useful context) Having to spend significant time searching and assessing quality Lack of publication information (e.g. dates, authors) on documents
Establishing validity of the literature. Searching on unknown systems
-Publisher websites require subscriptions and/or payment per document accessed. -University repositories are inaccessible online unless enrolled or an academic
Subscriptions have been cut as part of budget reductions
sometimes they require a paid subscription to access material.
Subjectivity, and wading through the sales speak to find the useful information
You don't know what you don't know You can't search effectively when a source or concept is new to you
I try not to save articles, but web links can change, pages are retired and therefore access can be lost. This can also happen when websites are redesigned, particularly government ones.
Often not available/published on websites.
State government work can be difficult to access
1) disappearance of materials 2)lack of availability of submissions for inquiries or consultations esp statutory authorities 3) continual changes of government departments 4) need to join organisations and then hard to get off their lists.
Finding free availability eg on web. Finding only brief details with payment for full access on web and full document not available on inter library loan / document delivery. Broad newspaper database wuth good software not available
Workplace provides access to bibliographic/ citation databases for the whole organisation. However they do not have databases relevant to my work, which is highly specialised. I have to put in a request each time I am interested in journal article which can take time. I have yet to come across a database for housing/ affordable housing topics.
Lack of warehousing capacity inhouse Poor search engines within government agencies intranets
Sifting through large quantity of materials to find what is relevant.
Monitoring the quality of the information, often not dated (but useful!)
I don't have many issues accessing grey literature as most grey literature I use comes through word of mouth, colleagues forwarding it through, or through alerts services.
access to some websites is blocked as associated with social media
Cost of subscribing to online academic journal databases
Too often the value of an evaluation report isn't recognised for its broader applicability or guidance, so it tends to be used for a specific purpose and then set aside.
finding appropriate information for referencing the source
There is probably a lot of information that I'm not aware of.
There is so much information now that it is easy to miss some, and not humanly possible to scan all of it.
sorting through what is most relevant to State policy environment
Private companies' inability to share market research data due to commercial confidence reasons. As above for government and ministerial decisions.
The accuracy and reliability of the information.
1. unavailability unless you are an institution or have a subscription 2. Lack of relevance for education and training, lack of pertinent research
Reports that are no longer available on websites - having to go through access requests for hard copies.
NGO Websites that don't include search engines for research; conference websites that don't provide copies of papers or presentations
establishing the validity; many topics in innovation arena not yet evidence based - interested in thought leadership to further inform area of enquiry - target further reading
Difficulty obtaining full journal articles (fee required) which significantly minimises my use of journal articles and catalogues
Accessing grey literature is not usually an issue, however assessing their credibility sometimes is.
Work doesn't have an effective library/information service or means of sharing information other than two alert services. Identifying relevant clearing houses etc on my own is rather ad hoc, time consuming and costly (esp for non-grey literature materials behind pay walls)
1. Our library often doesn't have the full text journal articles I need. 2. Grey literature is hard to find. the grey literature search engines that do exist are poorly designed and not time efficient. Google is the best of a bad bunch but it's hard to narrow the search 3. Different terms used in different sectors - each sector uses different terms to refer to the same thing (or the same term to refer to different things) - makes it difficult to narrow searches
Grey literature is not well categorised and stored. It is harder to search and find.
finding and accessing technical reports, especially if more than several years old. These reports often get lost when government departments get shuffled around or their websites change
Blokced access to sites and my ability to trove and the time to navigate. the Zite idea is great
Discovering it exists in the first place
COlleagues and contacts confirm that grey literature about a topic exists, but material of a sensitive or political nature is iften unaccessible to researchers outside of an institution. (e.g. how are data used to inform policy in institutions- this information is often classified).
If it's not published, have to relay on it being availablethrough a Google or other search engines
Knowing what's out there - it's usually not a problem to get hold of something once you know what it is - but finding out what people have done can be difficult.
Knowing where to ask for the information Reading through long summaries of recent releases of reports etc to find what is relevant to my field Cost of subscriptions to journals
Government departments sitting on reports, guidelines etc. that local government needs to fill its statutory responsibilities
Lack of Government reporting The key topic that we need information on is energy efficiency data and assessment
knowing what"s available in australia and across the world
Paywall problems and licensing restrictions.
I find that even is grey lit is available online, it is not easy to find due to poor information architecture of govt / institutional websites and lack of tagging that would help it be picked up by a search engine.
- Finding current information, sometimes there are long delays in consultancies and governments releasing reports. - Accessing journals and databases without going through library or university log-ins. - Sometimes it is difficult to find relevant info
being a non-profit, getting access to material that comes at a cost.
Safely downloading information from reliable websites. The time it takes to research grey literature.
A fierce internet filter/security system that blocks access to many legitimate sites
Issues around subscriptions to peer reviewed academic journals. They are too expensive for NGO's to maintain comprehensive subscriptions, and most researchers I know rely on their personal university enrolments to access them.
Broken links on APH or NGO website - items not always up to date. ACMA (regulator) website is particularly bad for this.
Impact assessment always raises new issues so keeping up with one topic area (say alcohol) is no help when the next impact assessment comes along. APO is useful in this regard when researching a new topic. Time constraints imposed by clients often mean that the quick fix is via Google
Finding the appropriate agencies who are publishing articles of interest. It's difficult to know what you don't know and whether you are missing key information.
Cost of published articles (but that's not grey literature) Knowing where to look for information relevant to the sector - I rely heavily on group emails alerting us to relevant information
The search tools on websites (particularly government)do not always deliver very good results.
Mainly time constraints ... if I can't access it from my desk, the chances are that I won't be able to use it.
Evaluations that aren't published or don't make it into wide circulation
Grey literature is easy to access. Academic articles can be harder.
Grey literature disappears. Libraries cannot create a reliable link, or, download it unless they are a Govt Library, and keep it "inhouse". Creative Commons Copyright does (Thank you Julia Gillard),but most state govts dont use Creative Commons Copyright. Being a Govt library we can keep a copy - but need to keep it "inhouse". Sadly our own website was re-vamped (by journalists) who initially limited our online publications to the past 2 years. They also needlessly changed all the URLs for them. I tried my very best (politely)to get them to leave our publications (100's of them) as available online I got very badly bruised- but we did have some small wins.
Access depends more on chance than design
Finding new organisations with info for new topics (my role involves new topic areas quartely) ie the initial contact to know they exist and the sort of literature they produce.
I often find important information sources accidentally in spite of subscribing to various alerts, RSS feeds, etc
It's very easy to miss important reports, etc, in spite of subscribing to most relevant alert services, etc.
Finding most relevant literature through web search; Identifying most credible, relevant sources to connect with/access; Sifting through enormous quantity of material; Accessing journal articles (no subscription through work, but have recently commenced post-grad study which had opened up massive resource through Uni Library)
- Copyright requirements are often unclear - Dead links due to government department name change etc - How to reference uncommon sources - Sometimes proceedings are very hard to find or if findable, I might not have access
Academic literature is particularly easy to source as it is grouped within databases, such as PsycInfo. Having to trawl through thousands of records on Google or be notified of specific pieces of grey literature makes it very difficult to try and find these sources. However a notable limitation of academic literature is the relative dearth of Australian research, which is why I continue to rely on reports and other 'grey' datasources. It would be highly useful for myself and other applied researchers to be able and access grey literature of relevance to our work, particularly in the context of evaluation projects that may have been carried out in the past.
Knowing where to look for emerging issues and policy trends; time spent tracking down multiple NGOs, think tanks and departments; tracking highly specialised policy expertise.
Grey literature tends to be easier to find and access using the internet. scholarly research info i.e. journals can be harder to access - limited by subscriptions.
my organisation has nolibrary and information service. I rely on my own knowledge and experience to access the best information fast. Personalised help would be good. Online journal costs are also problematic as are their registration processes.
None while I was working in ongoing employment at a university. However, like very many other university employees, I am now part of the 'precariat' (casual work treadmill) so it is increasingly difficult to get such access, even for university employment. I still have access to online alerts and searches but it becomes more costly when I have to rely on a mobile USB connection when I'm between employment (a reality for many).
the topic is abit obscure and language is not standardised - eg psychosis, serious mental illness
A lot of internal evaluations are not publicly available. In addition, the data behind reports, articles etc is not made publicly available.
Finding the relevant data as it ispread across many different areas. Disabiliy under employment , disadvantage , NGO's etc
Knowing when new material is available and where it is available from
Searching for grey literature is often project specific so for some projects, libraries and journals will have a good information. For other projects, access to government or consultant reports is the better source of information.
Information relevant to the State of Tasmania / Tasmanian Government data / cost of commercial research data and reports.
Grey literature is by far the most easy for me to access. Published works are much more difficult.
Storing and indexing links or pieces of information in a way that makes sense when trying to refer to it later.
Sometimes it is difficult to get conference papers or reports that are not available online or where the link no longer exists
accessing the information is not usually a problem - it's finding that the information exists in the first place that's difficult
Costs involved, firewalls and that we are not directly a research insitution so do not have free access to all services. There is also an issue of insitutional/organisational websites not being updated regularly and rely solely on the updated news alerts etc. There is also an issue with email limits and that alerts generally clog up your system by the time you get around to reading things.
Difficulty finding info on NGO websites; submissions to parliamentary inquires disappear; not knowing what has been produced
It is very difficult ot access, mostly being able to pull information together and see all the research
access is hit and miss; correct citing is often difficult
Historical context that surrounds particular reports and reviews, white papers and so on - particularly if historic is often lost in grey lit material.
locating it, and then getting accurate citation details.
my work covers a range of topics so it is sometimes hit and miss, I often snowball from one article to find others
Obtaining full access to material not just abstracts
Delays in making some journal articles and conference papers available online
News articles often refer to reports by incorrect names or without giving the title, which makes it difficult to find. many organisational websites are difficult to navigate to find publications.
Finding information through a search engine depends so much on how you enter key words, the order etc, and can affect the outcome of your search very significantly
access and subscription problems - not attached to major library that would allow access
good quality metadata provided to aid discovery
poor citations & lack of acknowledging source of material/information
Subscription requirements/cost issues. Format e.g. some government data not cleaned or organised comprehensively. Language -- interesting material catalogued but not translated.
Conference papers are increasingly only available to participants. We write to authors. TGA offers mediated research ie it is done by information retrieval experts in a specialist unit. Some platforms eg SSRN are not accessed to search but to retrieve an already identified article which happens to be stored there.
Information being removed from organisations' websites--I know it's been published but it's no longer available from the original source
Many sites are blocked by the organisation because of limitations to Internet access.
Only online access available. Rarely use library - it's not promoted
Lack of free access - it is soooo frustrating to follow a link to an article only to find it is subscriber-only or requires payment. As a not-for-profit organisation we can't afford to purchase large numbers of articles, so the information I can draw on to inform my work is limited.
Lack of time to sort through the mountain of information.
info is scattered. inconsistent use of key words so research not appearing on google alerts. lack of knowledge about all of the places to look.
Resource intensive - there is always a nagging suspicion that there is something else important 'out there' but you haven't found it yet.
Establlishing its authenticity and credibility.
Not knowing what is out there and the search terms to find it through Google. Google or give up.
web search results returning dross along with the good stuff.
Sheer volume of material can be overwhelming, and often recent material (2010-2013) is easily accessible and less recent gets lost online. Also, with changes of government, sometimes relevant departmental information gets taken off government sites so it is difficult to track older info.
information/studies not available electronically. Having to pay for journal extracts
Not many these days - the main difficulty now is sorting out authoritative sources from the flood of material available via the web.
Ability to access journal articles and other paywalled institutions.
Websites get changed and the links are not reconnected
Grey literature: often not well advertised; sometimes removed from websites when it's a few years old (many old reports can still be useful). Journal articles: I often get emailed tables of contents days/weeks before journal is available through my university library.
Work that is commmissioned by government then gets lost in a cabinet process and is never cleared for public. Do parliamentary libraries end up with this stuff?
Problems of how sources (journals etc) define their content
Generally find gery literature accessible
Cutting through the wealth of information to get to the relevant information
Data/information that are required for each different project regarding if a specific topic is very difficult to find. Internet searches can be hard if the key word is not correct or topic has a very broad title and no brief description
Knowing where to go to find related and meaningful information to work in remote Northern Territory
It is often on very specific, fairly small topics, there is often not a lot of research written
It used to ne more idiot webmasters shifting content around needlessly on their websites. This still happens, but now the main barriers to access are content management systems.
With regard to grey literature, it is very hard to know what exists and how to find it. For the most part, reports produced are generally held on individual websites and there is no way to search for particular subjects across separate websites other than search engines like google but they also pick up a lot of chaff as well making it frustrating. Unless you know it exists it is very hard to find new products.
Don't know some services are available or how to use them.
Too many sources to cover - difficult to monitor everything. Instability of links to grey literature - requires keeping of a hardcopy in case link breaks at a future time.
The disappearance of old policy documents from easy online access
Sometimes unavailability of recent historical govt or organisation documents (both here and O/S), eg when an agency updates website, or changes name/scope of work, etc
No real issues as i work in a university library and what i can't get immeiately i can get at no cost via document delivery. Some GL is locked away or has disappeared and this is frustrating.
The grey literature is so vast. It is difficult to find literature that is relevant as the search can be time consuming and/or the search terms used are too restrictive or broad.
Grey literature rarely seems to have a publication date on it, and can be quite informal that you can't ascertain even the author information. Web links for grey literature change so quickly and become broken - or it is removed completely off the internet (even an entire website). This has implications not only for our catalogue or finding it again, but for historical purposes into the future - what was the research saying in the early 2000's? It may have completely disappeared. The increase in grey literature is creating more work cataloguing electronic publications - which are popping up everywhere at a great rate of knots and it's difficult to keep up with. Because they are on webpages, and not in some sort of catalogue, you end up finding more grey literature from those pages that are relevant and need to be catalogued. The issue of copyright is always there too, how to make this accessible without infringing copyright. We get numerous e-newsletters/RSS feeds/e-alerts etc that the inbox is constantly full and you spend a lot of time combing through to find items that are relevant and evaluating whether it is good quality/lack of bias/peer reviewed work.
Access is sometimes restricted to subscribers
Not always being sure of the best place to look
The Grey literature is often very important and it is ballooning and access is readily enabled by the Internet. It is therefore pressure in trying to keep up with this literature i.e. knowing what's out there and knowing what it says.
need to apply more discretion in assessing factual claims and quality of research
Conference proceedings can be expensive to purchase. Changes in government dept responsibility for administration of datasets causes problems with monitoring and access. Great variation in quality of govt database interfaces - some difficult to search
A lot of it not published online - held by individual organisations
Knowing what are the key documents, authors etc.
Finding the needle in the haystack! Often I am looking for something quite specific and can't find info/stats on that exact thing OR I am looking for a good basic reading to help others (staff who report to me) understand a topic and there is either 1) so much out there that it's hard to pick one item or 2) it's written in complicated/academic language and I just want something that breaks the topic down
It is in so many separate places...it can take hours to trawl through all the different websites, gateways, repositories etc. - sometimes for no benefit.
Finding "Grey" literature as its usually in a temporary environment and you dont often know or hear about it immediately
Very large number of potential sources to track; language used in my research area is very broad and ambiguous. So using search engines doesn't retrieve all relevant material.
Finding new research in a timely manner. Often written material (conference papers etc) is out-dated. Or there is insufficient information available on the subjects of interest.
Accessibility Knowing where to look/search Terminology
Hard to find Irrelevant Better search options
not published enough on websites and in journals
The lack of key search words or obscure keywords, inability to access the actual material due to pricing etc,
Not always finding what I expect when searching.
Government does not have online subscriptions to a wide range of academic journals
Changed website locations or removed from websites
Difficult to locate technical reports and books if we don't have it in the departments library. Also we dont have access to full text for many journals.
If from my institution, finding where it is located (over many offices scattered over a wide geographical area) and having it delivered. If from an external source, I tend to use journal articles free on line. My institution's library has diminishing funds for subscriptions or loans, so only ask for papers to be purchased if they are absolutely essential.
natural resource data collected by cwlth funded NRM groups is often not freely available to govt which should be a criminal offence
Some things are only accessible if you are a member of the relevant organisation or the actual item of information can be downloaded or accessed through a library.
very difficult to get hold of information if it costs (e.g paying for articles or use of university libraries). Workplace library does not have very good access to relevant databases for topic areas I regularly research.
blocked access to sites (generic blocking)
Obtaining copies of the documents once it is identified. My own research is often lost by Agencies who years later request the same again. Now often ignored as large effort for no reward.
If not peer-reivewed, then there are issues with confidence in the work i.e. reliability.
Documents hosted on web pages not properly set up to be indexed by google; no central index page anywhere for technical documents (e.g. soil, water, groundwater survey guidelines). Documents often not in intuitive locations eg ANZECC WQ guidelines on Fed Ministerial Council website mincos.gov.au
Accessing reports not published online i.e. State government project reports
many references to conference papers and government reports are found but the actual article is difficule to find, particulary from the social sciences
don't know what specifically to search for
Grey literature is near impossible to source. Sometimes I find the citation, but rarely can I source the full text. Books are also difficult to get hold of, unless they are eBooks. Also, government access to literature is dismal compared with university access.
knowing what's available and where to find it
These are retained on local servers and require local knowledge to know where they are
Specific information for youth justice work
Actually obtaining a hard or downloadable copy.
No body knows where it is. For example, all documents are removed from web every time government changes. EIS documents are not available after approval
Determining credibility and relevance Following links that no longer exist
Expired web pages or links that go nowhere as well as old information.
Organisational IT network blocks access to social media, video etc, and has an out of date browser so very few websites (especially surgery or radiology journal homepages) work correctly making it time-consuming and difficult to access grey literature
No problem finding a citation but having difficulty accessing a full copy
Grey literature is often next to impossible to obtain, as it is generally undertaken by commercial organisations
Search capability limited, citation databases do not provide access to the full text of documents retrieved. Searching multiple websites of organisations who may have published some relevant material is hit-and-miss and time consuming. Known relevant grey literature produced nationally is generally accessible and free but international reports are not always accessible.
tracking down conference papers and open access dissertations (more informative, structured abstracts indicating for example study design, methods,participants,outcomes ) would be useful to establish how relevant these are likely to be in the first place. Often impossible to download multiple records from websites such as openGREY,
incorrect URLs for grey literature on the web and in bibliographic databases
Archives not all digtized and not all available online, information spread across different websites and deep web inaccessibe.
Difficult to find, not available in hard copy
I generally use agency websites, newsletters from relevant organization, and Google (with such terms a evaluation, report, pdf, etc.)
Public expectation - there is the assumption that everything is available on line. Material has been removed from government websites without adequate archiving. Raising awareness of the need to archive electronically produced material for long term access. Decreasing expertise in the field of grey literature amongst information professionals.
Finding the correct title and date of publication
It it incredibly time-consuming and difficult to know when to stop searching (mainly limited by the time available).
Not catalogued on Library system - firewalls on electronic system.
I often find abstracts but not articles.
sifting out the genuinely grey literature from publications - there's an increasing availability of grey lit on the web, but isolating using eg format (pdf, doc) no longer helps very much to isolate grey lit
I need to enrol in a course (and pay) to get access to the university database.
Housijng - overwhelming level of info- hard to trawl through Social wellbeing - issues are often hidden in other literature - hard to tease out
Unsure if I have found everything- no 'checks' for grey lit.
Need to understand how organisations mount information on Internet - use of search aggregator
Time - there are so many places to search, it all takes time.
I work in Health and Aged Care Recruitment - mapping companies and candidates is important. Sourcing company information is also essential
There is no central repository for reports etc. regarding mental health from GOVT and NGO organisations, so I have to check the websites of particular organisations individually.
Finding grey literature is a challenge -bit hit and miss to find it through Google etc
Loss of access due to website upgrades. None or poor archiving of government reports and websites. Overseas countries without English options.
finding relevant info quickly without trolling alot of info to find what i want
Poor internet band width occasionally creates delays
Refining search to exclude irrelevant material
Filtering out what is important and has integrity.
Conference abstracts have been hard to get hold of sometimes. Some websites are designed very badly so instead of searching them directly, I've had to use Google site: search.
Difficulty contacting lead researchers for unpublished data, impossiblity of obtaining full trial data from pharmaceutical companies (they do not even have an email address)
Time allowed to find the material is often limited and so you get to a point where you give up the search due to conflicting priorities
can be very biased, difficult to find evidence based assertions
Small business communications with government
More of this content used to be indexed by APAIS, but APA Full text doesn't do as much of this anymore. Government Reports are not catalogued by many libraries anymore because hard copy is not received.
Can be difficlut to find data about the publication e.g. date written, author, etc.
Institutional respositories are very restrictive typically not providing free access or holding the document in question./University researchers who do not publish commissioned reports but hold this information back in favour of a peer-reviewed article at a later date/local officials who fail to recognise the importance of open publishing of evaluative reports they have commissioned and keep them loacked away in internal systems/often metadata is not properly described -authors , dates etc/
Trying to find the latest reports related to public health.
Prevented by IT policy from accessing online audio, video, blogs, webinars, etc. Very frustrating!!
Whether it is available via the web Cost of subscriptions Knowing who has done what
Website planners (AEC, VEC etc) and libraries seem to think that one election supercedes the previous one and a redistribution makes past maps, reports etc irrelevant, so institutional collections are unreliable. They are wrong, of course, but in repsonse I have had to build up a large personal collection.
Sometimes difficult to find the things i am looking for.
There are limitations in accessing information/research due to costs of resources/ subcriptions and licencing fees
Grey literatures generated interally is even hard to access within the organisation. I know of reports or evaluations done by other sections of my department that I'd like to use, but they are often impossible to access because people are paranoid about the results leaking, risk aversion prevents sign-off for use for *years* or the same research is done every 2-3 years but a lack of sharing culture and staff turn over means that nobody knows about the past work and just ends up reinventing the wheel.
Putting a limit on the amount of materials to source for a particular project. Information overload means being strategic about information source, type and relevance That is, limiting the scope of a particular project so that the best information is being utilised
Finding out about new reports/articles without actively seeking something out.
Grey literature is not always accessible, or when it is, it may not be offered by a reputable source.
Finding it again (may have been taken down), can't direct others to it if web presence is unreliable
Sometimes the hardest thing is knowing where to look. Often it is difficult to even know that a useful report exists - especially if it is not in an easily 'search engine discovereable' place
Timeliness. Often by the time word of mouth or internet searches come up with documents they are not as useful/important/influential in our work as they would have been when they were first released.
Knowing that a document is there in the first place so as to look for it.
Knowing what is out there..... easy enough to find (generally) once you know it is out there.
knowing what is available; having it properly catalogued so it can be found easily
Privacy, unwillingness to share information
The absence of a dedicated central repository of current Government reports and data that is accessible online.
Accuracy can be affected if various websites, though accessibility is rarely an issue.
lack of meta data to identify useful resources.
Simply locating it! Many organisations (including govt depts) change their websites or change names and documents "disappear" from their websites.
Getting access to the information, as opposed to locating it, which is pretty easy. Institutions and workplaces are increasingly reluctant to pay for subscriptions and I have to rely mostly on free web downloads. Or wait ages while a formal request is processed through the library.
Not being able to locate a copy of a report, paper or journal article. Not being able to access the information for free.
Sorting relevent material from rubbish, particularly in electronic form or in the media
It is difficult to find documents more than a couple of years old.
Current information and projects underway in the government sector are typically not published to the Web - one year old minimum
Availability of access limited to group membership, lack of response or interest from relevant researcher
slow internet speeds, and IT problems with firewalls and servers
Not being able to find the actual item - ie. I can find something referring to the item but can't actually trace the original, especially if the customer is insisting on an electronic full text version especially if the organisation that produce the item is no longer in existence. Often if it is not available immediately in electronic format the customer is not interested. We relied on government reports being available online and got rid of print copes. The government have redone their website and 'archived' the old pages and documents with the National Archives but to find them in the National Archives is difficult and it's not clear how long they will remain archived and not be deleted.
Time consuming, difficult to track down, links fail when returning to them, they sometimes lack important basic bibliographic detail.
Costs - e.g. purchasing a paper, or subscription fees. Time spent in searching and finding information. Assessing the quality of the evidence.
Lack of affordable access to online databases as i have no University affiliation, and knowledge how to search them, but also cost of purchasing downloads
Again... this assumes access. Once you are outside of an institution you know longer have access. Even though the private purse substantially pays for the generation of research, this is given to publishers for nothing, and only available within institutional situations to access, unless you are very wealthy... So whilst I might access material regularly it is not possible one outside the institutional context.
I find using Google has been very useful for tracking down either the literature or relevant organisations' websites. The journal databases we use are also very helpful. Conference presentations are not so easy to locate, and am not sure they are actually fully listed, for instance the Psychotherapy Symposium is a great source of content, but hard to find it indexed.
Finding the resources through search engines. I find that I need to be provided with the link to these papers otherwise I can not find them.
As lawyers we need access to reliable and authoritative, up to date legal resources - cases, journal articles and compilations such as Halsbury's. Our workplace does not currently provide any such access.
Not always relevant or misleading summaries can waste time
Determining relevance and latest version
I am always looking for grey literature to inform my work and to keep up to date, but it is often difficult to find, particularly from government web sites.
I need to know that information is correct, accurate and from a trustworthy source.
if its not published for free online I pretty much don't access it.
Grey lit is my major source, now I have very limited access to academic library, do mostly pro bono work & many articles et al come with a cost. Also web searches tend to have more up to date info. I also use ILO, UN sites (numerous): OECD et al websites.
Reliability and credibility Journal paywalls
need to find them via appropriate keyword search
Lack of access to subscription-based resources
my concern to live long enough to secure my own grey material!
It can take a lot of time searching, downloading and sifting through
DOn't know what is held in the organisation. Reports aren't made public so findings are confined to thsoe who know about it.
Lack of stability ie if only location is website, how stable is it? how long will info be accessible? etd
Info on some specialist areas (especially sexuality, a sensitive subject impacted by pornography) are more challenging to access
It is difficult to find information published by the university as we aren't always referred to consistently or correctly,
Website info and catalogue from UNi website
KNowing what and when it has been published. This advice is often gained through e-mail mailing lists like the Policy Online Weekly Briefing and Foreign Policy daily/ weekly summaries and from formal organisational blogs.
Specific individual user login requirements at each site where some are some are single use. Process needs easier access to speed up retrieval of information.
Knowing that something exists in the first place (not necessarily having it available online, but even knowing that it has been created).
You usually rely on the organisations to provide updates via newsletters as it is difficult to source information
Accuracy, retrieving old information which hasn't been removed.
Thinking about it, I'm in the process of researching Government statements and policies over the last twenty years. Everything is glossy and pdf'ed these days, although when there is a change of govt often these statements are removed from the web (and they are not that old at all!). From then on it can get very difficult to track them down. Often the NLA seems to be the only resource - and this can be for policy statements that are only 2-3 years old.
Not much material available as rather specialised area. Information is often meant for legal profession and not easily understood by lay person. Most of my information comes from other copyright officers in educational institutions.
Reliant upon historical knowledge of jurisdiction (what has been done by who in past) and local network and relationships to provide access to same.
Grey literature is important as it provides the latest/up to date information on current issues. Sometimes it does not seem that all materials are made easily available.
The non-persistant access to conference papers The absence of referencing "conference proceedings" as such in repositories
lack of proper management loss of grey literature without any traceability
the several days wait it takes to locate and send articles, and, the cost of getting in four references in order to actually secure the information required
It is difficult to know what I might be missing and sometimes I find things too long after they have been published.
I ask our librarians who are usually able to assist
journal articles - embargoes on current articles or epud ahead of print articles theses/reports - some are just difficult to locate or have access to full text
knowing who is authoring (ie what research lens is applied) and knowing the credentials of the work eg reports by equipment suppliers need more credentials!
Being in local government I find it very hard to access books and journal articles, it is much easier in state government and at universities, when there are good library facilities and online journal subscriptions
In-house organisation of files; hard to know what to look for if don't know it exists
DEpending on the format of the report etc it can take a long time for my net speed to download a document.
Finding material relevant to a subject matter if I dont know it exists (ie, I havent received notificarion on it in an update but im researching an area), there is so much info through search engines that finding useful grey literature can take a lot of time.
difficult to search for them, no central repository, quality can not be identfied, many times access not available
pay per view for material which comes out of my own pocket for work purposes
Sources can be unreliable, and tracking down original material is difficult.
Commercial in confidence nature of some evaluative data; poorly maintained and expensive fee for service arrangements related to some government data sets (eg ASIC's company data)
Blocking of site information and then if I find relevant info it is often 'pay to view' so I have to request it through the library which is a long process. I often wnat to see it right away to decide whether it is relevant.
search tools for most organisations aren't good
sifting through masses of hits on google
Obtaining articles from other libraries where the subscription restricts access to direct clients only.
Currency Ability to undertand peer review status Payment for access (rare for grey literature, much more often the case for white lit)
* Timeliness of information * Ability to capture hard to record groups that are not well represented in official statistics - ie drug and alcohol problems for men in small rural towns. * Too much info - needing to quickly sort through what is or isn't relevant. * Finding out about relevant info - related to above issue of too much info and so hard to find really important pieces of grey literature. * ability to plan local projects so they feed into relevant research, especially the grey research. * Time it takes to read all the material * Sometimes important research is on a pay for use system which we don't have access to at work.
DIFFICULT TO ASSESS THESIS AND CONFERENCE PAPERS
Still limited empirical data; given discourse between those coaches with a psychology background and others - access can be restricted in part.
Search terms can be problematic. Also, often full copies of journal articles that appear through searches are not accessible online unless logged into a university library account or similar.
Easy access to university repository and understanding Trove and using it, when it is quicker to use other search engines (often).
sometimes not able to obtain the publication
Most of what I need is discoverable on the internet using advanced searching techniques
Hit and miss when using google to fund these sorts of materials but I am not familiar with many suitable search mechanisms
Much is only hard copy, not circulated and not processed. For example in some areas of QLD the main source of information about local flora fauna water quality etc is in series of old EIS studies or monitoring program results that are not released for public and in few copies with Gov.
services for newcomers e-services immigration demography
discoverability - rely on advanced web search techniques to discover it exists
none with grey literature, but lack of susbscriptions to scientific peer reviewed journals
Actually it is not so much accessing as lodging grey literature. In the Qld government,due to time constraints and ever expanding workloads, very little data gets written up for peer review and so it remains as grey literature. However this is extremely risky as has been demonstrated recently in the case of the DPI library. The new Queensland Government targetted library and webservices in their recent public service cuts, closing down department libraries to save money. At one stage it looked like a large portion of the hard copies (books and reports) would be disposed of (luckily some media coverage reversed that decision) and e-copies of most of the technical reports my (now disbanded) group had produced over 15 years have never been uploaded, presumably also due to lack of resources. As a result there is currently no e-access to about 80 reports produced by my (now all made redundant) group over a period of 15 years which constitute an incredibly important body of work. A single hard copy of each report was retained but is, I believe in storage. Copies should also have been submitted to the State library but I cannot find them in my search of the catalogue. These are technical reports on fishways that should be easily available to any interested party. Instead they only exist electronically on my hard drive! Another issue is that these reports still have QG copyright and therefore cannot easily be reproduced elsewhere.
Often takes much searching to weed out - Google becoming not as useful
The UK NHS reorganisation has meant the severe loss of a mass of grey literature. You would have thought archiving this prior to reorganisation would be key but no one seems to have thought about this.
We do not have access to all documents i.e. journal articles, but can nearly always have a copy sent for free. Increasingly information and data is available online so easy to access. More rural/regionally specific information is easier to access via relevant industry/org/local gov.
Not a specific disability clearinghouse of research evaluation etc
Access to journal databases that you have to pay for. Can't access these
That it's not available basically - and some of the grey literature would be valuable to my research. If I don't have contacts that can help me I might not ever get access to certain reports
No issues; I generally find that if I supply a useful search string then I can generate the information and research I seek.
Not quite familiar with the best repositories for this.
Authenticity, copyright and whether or not the information is technically correct.
Lack of access, and cost of access. Would use a number of the above mentioned sources/methods if had access - physical and financial.
Information sharing is not always as common as you would like, some people and organisations make it difficult to access information.
Lack of evaluative data about social programs
Key reports of a public-policy nature are often/mostly in the form of governmental reports (reports commissioned by government agencies) and are not publicly available. (There are exceptions to this.)
Not all documents are publicly available.
Paying for access to information - given the process involved in purchasing material, it often isn't worth the effort to obtain.
It is often possible to find the citation without the full report/source
search terms on the web are usually unsuccessful.
the lack of available archived document for information/reports from government and other organisations over time
Knowing what is in the grey literature and where it is available is always a challenge
filtering the information awareness of all sources of information
Some ask for annual subscription where most content not relevant.
knowing its out there, then working out how to get it
not knowing reliable or useful locations to search for relevant data/information
Identifying quality and relevance. Intentionally finding information rather than accidentally stumbling across it which is the more usual method particularly with Google searches.
I don't have access to a library (ours is off site) Google is too general I find it difficult to find accurate data I would like greater access to international material There is no specific repository for my policy area and topic
Finding electronic copies of materials which are more than 10 years old
probably just sheer quantity- im signed up to maybe 30-40 newsletters and they accumulate quickly- have to be able to scan, get main info from title and decide quickly whether its relevant.
difficulty knowing how to access information and where is the best place to look
My community organisation does not have access to bibliographic databases for articles. we have to find circuitous means to get full text articles (tho state librayr can sometimes be very helpful)
Would like all websites to have RSS Feed option as this is most efficent for me, - probably am missing info from websites which don't have this set up. I'm concerned that RSS might be less available in the future.
First Home Owners Grant Homelessness Age Care
Accuracy of indexing services to describe material adequately
I very much value APO's and Inside Story's unique function in introducing me to new and important Australian sources.
most journal articles require payment which causes problems
Knowing the accuracy and context of the info; ie the context of a report being commissioned by an organisation/department
Older material is not digitised and only available at an archive thousands of kilometres away. Govt departments seem to take things off their website pretty quickly and frequently reorganise their web sites so it is hard to find something you have previously bookmarked (the Wayback Machine often saves me). A lot of material lives behind paywalls, often "members-only"
Occassionally some information online is only accessible by members
our institution often limits our access to these websites
organisation cannot or will not pay foy access or organisational internet policy blocks access to (most) sites nominated in eg PCAL newsletter
There is simply too much. I rely on Australian Policy Online to summarise it and then I can pick and choose what to explore in more detail.
It often has to be sourced from many different repositories, which is time consuming. Often you don't even realise that there may be information available - that knowledge is either intentionally or unintentionally kept 'in house' of the organisation. We have established a regional catalogue to address this issue, but that is addressing it at only one scale of the problem
relevant information is readily available
I work at a university and have privileged access rights to information of all kinds
Identifying the existence of documents, then obtaining access to documents. Knowing they exist can be very hard; FOI requests can help, but are time consuming and costly, can be impossible to know if anything is missing, and redaction can reduce value.
A lot of relevant information is held privately Access to government & NGO reports not always allowed or maintained Library databases exclude or include too much - hard to get the right search terms
Much of value, from government, is not released on websites in a timely way, or individuals in organisations sit on reports. Few organisations have policies requiring public access of research and evaluation conducted to support policy and decision making.
No gateway for community safety for local government or Crime Prevention Through Urban Design as subject
Actual access to website because of internal IT controls
Being a freelance/precarious contractor rather than an established employee of an institution with a title like 'Research Officer' etc - takes me just that bit longer to establish credibility/obtain passwords etc
A lot of the reports that we're looking for are under copyright of the commissioning institution and are only provided to us when we win a contract. A lot of good practice goes unseen to the broader audience because of this.
Keeping track of relevant websites and clearinghouses. Too many repositories, clearinghouses, web-based databases to sift through. Google scholar is more efficient.
I prefer reading large documents in paper form, and for some documents it is hard to print and bind a paper version which is satisfactory.
My organisation has library and information function so many staff spend lots of time independently finding the same information.
Often we have to ask colleagues in government to access articles for us, as we cannot afford to subscribe to journals or databases
I don't go looking for information, I use what I come across, which means if information or research is not well publicised I will be unlikely to access it.
tends to be opportunistic - once I find a good resource I can refine my search based on that
Being independent means no institutional resources
access and in particular - research -where to go for what
Inadequacy of spread of Queensland Health's journal electronic subscription offering
Information published by lobby groups can be difficult to access as it's restricted to members. Conference papers are restricted to participants and you can't purchase the information separately without attending (though I often ask for this!)
Knowing what is available and relevant since I am usually pushed for time and can get lost online very easily!
We don't have any budget in our organisation to make these services available
Knowing where the information may be available and the cost to purchase research findings/reports - often can get a summary, but must purchase pdf
I had issues when I lived in a remote area due to limit connectivity to internet but could still access most things if more slowly than the rest of Australia. Now (mid coast NSW) my access via internet is pretty good.
Getting a clear picture of the issue I am trying to understand without getting drowned in information.
Hard to locate but variable quality unreliable
our trouble is more with accessing journals as we are not a big institution-we have hired a student to give us access once a week
Department closed its library. Few journal subscriptions to access.
None really - but I don;t know what I am missing out on.
sorting through volume of information, limited free access to peer reviewed material
The work that we do is a specialised field and there is not much research in Australia about current practice and evaluations of current practice
Not an issue where I am-in fact its the opposite-its sifting the important from the torrent of information
It is difficult not having access to a university repository. Fees for access to some databases are prohibitive for a very small business
The specific data I'm after may not be available.
Tends to be 'who you know' or what you've signed up for, that leads you to these things.
answered earlier....volume is too high, quality and relevance is variable. It takes ages to read thru/search and then find nothing of use to me.
- knowing that it exists in the first place - no exec summary- I do not have a lot of time and an exec summary is essential
limited access to journals due to subscription costs
websites blocked by workplace eg researching sexual health of young poeple
Can usually find some information that's relevant to the question I'm interested in. The big challenge is knowing if I've missed other things that might be relevant.
Time to search is OK but lask time to evaluate and then collate info into reports
Trying to make an assessment on quality. There is so much information available, but the quality varies.
As previously advised specifc conference papers are soemtimes not available unless I haveve attended them
Nothing specific as need for information varies on an object by object basis i.e., the item determines the knowledge need
Not being able to source documents for a reasonable fee in a reasonable time in a regional area.
Internal net nanny sometimes blocks things.
referencing information found in grey literature in scholarly work in a manner that is acceptable by peers. (i.e unable to use blogger's opinions)
Lack of communiation about what is published
The time it takes to find what you are looking for on different websites - eg some government departmental websites are very hard to negotiate - you end up stumbling across what you are looking for rather than being able to go straight to it.
No issues Fast network Plenty of storage White list/black list esay access
Try to find it via the organization website
Access to journal articles is very constrained. If I wasn't studying at a university as well as working, I would have very little access
time to review all the resources separately
broken links or known documents unavailable. unresponsive government departments.
Accessibility of Information Finding relevant information quickly Making sure the source is reliable
Multiple subscriptions and memberships are required Sometimes the information is not peer reviewed or the extent of scrutiny/peer review is not evident. Conflicts of interest and funding sources are not always evident
Finding what's out there - you have to look at a lot of different sources to be confident that you are picking up most of the relevant material
If commercial market research firms require payment for reports, then generally I don't access these.
locating items in institutional repositories often takes a lot of time so you end up weighing the time factor against the 'need to know' one.
Accessing grey literature in a collection often depends on the quality of the catalogue record which describes it.
being sure that material remains on an organisation's website
Grey literature may not be reliable and can misrepresent personal or sectoral advice and opinion for corporate advice and opinion.
Gaining access to an article/book without having to buy the entire publication just to reference an idea/concept ...
If its not online I rarely am able to access
Research might be too grand a word for my work. My inquiries are often fact finding and comparisons with other libraries.
Grey literature is always harder to track down, depending on the subject matter
credibility, filtering through the dross
Inconsistent terminology. Not enough links between resources. Sometimes hard to judge if a resource is reliable.
quantity, quality and relevance to work area Paying for info is a big barrier
time! as well as generally keeping abreast of new research i'm often looking for ideas closely related to specific projects we are developing
Our organisation does not have access to any social media which is limiting
facebook, youtube, blogs and sites related to sex are blocked
Subscription fee for published works are expensive Not many books are available online currently
Knowing what is available (very difficult) and then trying to access it.
Being blocked bt having to have sunscriptions to a plethora of websites.... really I could end up spending thousands and thousands on subscriptions
In the first instance it is identifying that these reports and working papers exsist
There is loads of information around - difficulties relate to relevance (ie key words, dates) and veracity (assessing methodologies used, sample size, etc.)
Have not been taught - just an inquiring mind
It's not so much an issue with accessing - but rather, an issue with the the scope of / numerous sources we need to access. So many!!
Finding who the copyright owner/author can be difficult if works are not properly labelled.
incomplete referencing and/or broken links to content
Limitations of internal client management systems reporting, ability to create own data reports
Reports are removed from websites after a period of time.
Grey literature is not always well catalogued, therefore elusive to find. Also often not well referenced when cited (eg not dated, no clear source for publisher)
Affordability of accessing journals. Lack of knowledge of what grey literature is out there.
Defining correctly what I'm looking for.
Locating the full text article; I can often find a reference but it is unpublished. We don't have access to social media here so I need to use my own Ipad to access services such as Linkedin to contact authors.
Journal articles may be hard to access unless you have subscription or student access already
The fact that there are so many sites and no central clearinghouse for our primary area of interest
1. Quality and adequacy of peer review processes used by different educational journals. 2.Lack of an official organisation for checking the validity and possible corruption of research results which are used to determing policy. e.g Brendan Nelson's Reading Review .
Managing resources for retrieval and timely use and communications
Large volume of information on the website. Can waste time googling. It helps to be guided by subscriptions that announce news on new publicaitons etc
Knowing the best phrases or terms to search for. Eg elderly, aged, ,senior,
It's hard to keep up and find new material
Publically released or not, bound by subscription/membership to organisation.
Trying to discover what exists or has been written on a particular era; often, knowing that something exists and has been available online, but is no longer available.
Lack of time to establish more pro-active networks. Working in an area which lacks clear and specific key words for use in search engines and notification services.
Digitisation services and access lagging behind collection holdings, e.g. Items discovered in institutions or agencies in locations not readily accessible because of distance but not accessible online because agency unable or unwilling to digitise.
Only barrier is if it is not on line. Grey literature is much easier to access via google than peer reviewed journals since I finished study and lost access to a university library data base.

Importance: Other-text
That it can be accessed in a file format in which it is feasible to do a word search (eg. PDF)
Quality (logic, writing, research method, layout)
if not refereed, or from a clear source, then clarity of report's overview, methodology and relevance, report of funding, ethics approach, accuracy and clear expression. clarity re funding or commissioning group and terms of reference.
Depends on level of risk applied to building evidence base for enquiry - is the search to be comprehensive or limited in some way?
Quality of work and accessibility of writing.
We have a flowchart to guide what resources to collect for our Clearinghouse.
Where the item is situated against alternative views.
Don't care where information is from as long as it is useful.
I am a systematic reviewers so I want everything (published or unpublished) on a specific topic regardless of source - only limit trial design (usually RCT)
United Nations or other international backing
Language Access to the full text - not just the abstract
search terms abstract, bibliography, keywords
interesting ideas, interpretations, clarity, good descriptions and references
Methodology and rationale underpinning the information
Ease of access (eg readability, length, etc)
Relevance to population of focus eg: cross cultural/regional/etc
available in a timeframe of hours rather than days
Level of re-tweets by particular influencers and organisations
Trust in a source builds over time and use. It is hard won and easily lost!
- layout of the publication- havaing an exec summary / abstract - clear use of english
- has an abstract or executive summary that clearly outlines the argument and points made. - is clear about what it is - i.e. does not make inappropriate claims that it is empirical research if it is an opinion piece.

Comment_text
As always with an NGO, funding is an issue. I think if we had access to an online database that had free full text articles I probably wouldn't rely so heavily on grey literature
The reason why the long term storage on line is important is because when I cite it in a paper I'm writing, and give the url link, i need it to remain active so it can be retrieved by others who read my work and want to look up the citation.
It is important for us to have long term access to literature. Particularly with regards medical ethics
The questions immediately above confused me - I wasn't aware I couldn't copy or store such info???
dead links are frustrating and the time i spend looking for them depends on how relevant that data is for what I am doing. Some minor links are never followed up. We have similar issues with firewall access to some sites.
The length of time spend chasing a document after a dead link discovered is highly dependent on -Why I was looking for the document; -If I know I was looking for something that exists OR just generally searching a subject; and - the necessity to justify the associated work with evidence-based material.
When I come across a broken link I will try alternative sites over a 30 minute period, however I will not try again at a later date.
access to online material that is no longer accessible is a BIG problem in the area of Indigenous mental health where there is generally only short term funding and things like intellectual property are generally low on the agenda
Because I don't trust long-term access, I have a LOT of documents stored on my hard drive.
navigation time, scanning for usefulneess and an ongoing account to store on line would be fanatastic. This possible exists which means I am not cluey enough or have time enough to source this. So point of entry or markers to do this is an issue where you are not involved in ongoing study or where policy and reserach is not your 'everyday' work.
Being unable to store electronic documents and then have them disappear from the web is a major issue
If grey literature is academic, or about a public issue - yes, libraries/information services should be able to archive and store literature. However, this topic has broader implications beyond research to individual privacy issues. Should libraries/institutions have mandates to store information about individual persons, and what types of information? How do you select they grey literature to be stored? I think that a lot of discussion and clear delineation about what types of grey literature are archived, and how this information can be accessed, are important discussions that should be explored in-depth and clearly explained. In the current global climate regarding freedom of information and individual right to privacy, institutions have an important role in providing free, accessible information to the public and democratising knowledge, while at the same time safe-guarding individuals' privacy, and preventing abuses of access to information that should not be in the public domain. I do not think that either imperative is being appropriately addressed today by governments, organisations or the media.
When some material I need is copyright, I write to the author and ask permission to use it for my training and teaching purposes
In my field recent trends are more important that information that is many years old. It is the current data and reporting that really matters.
I generally need up to date material, so if the content is old it's less relevant anyway. But sometimes lunks are dead when the article is recent, e.g. if the organisation's website has been reorganised without all links being checked.
I work across multiple computers with limited storage capacity (hello, NGO!)- it's important for me to be able to download a report when I need it, rather than save it for next time. I might only use a report every 6 months, I'd prefer to find it online rather than keep a copy. It means I'll always get the most up-to-date version but I risk a broken link. This seems to be a common issue when organisations update their website.
Copyright no so much the problem it is the licence agreements
Fortunately I can usually contact my fellow librarians in the institution that has "lost" its publications. This is becoming less reliable as libraries in govt depts amalgamate or worse, disappear. Amalgamated libraries lack the specialist knowledge that is needed to "find" and supply the doc. in question.
electronic storage of grey literature available for free download online should be the same as storage on your bookshelf of freely distributed printed material.
I think it's a major problem, the storage and copyright issues related to grey literature. It seems a case of we do what we can or a free for all. I am not aware of there being any guidelines in place on how to and where to store etc.
I am extremely fortunate as I am affiliated with institutions that allow me library access. Without this access, I couldn't imagine how difficult it would be to access content for use in my work.
Hard copies of publications are an invaluable resource when conducting detailed research. Browsing shelves and publications expands ones way of considering an issue and may lead to new lines of unexpected but highly beneficial inquiry. There is strong evidence as I understand it that online research operates to the contrary and is narrowing.
I am always unsure about storage as I wory that if I want the reference agina, it may be gone
I tend to refer to peer reviewed journals and government reports primarily as the copyright situation regarding their use is easier to clarify.
My work strongly involves having access to historical material of a policy nature e.g., submissions, reports, etc - ie. from 20 years ago to more recent < 5yrs and ofen these become unavailable quite quickly.
I didn't know (or don't think I know) about online archives so this may be an access point to material I've not been able to access. As more and more information becomes available online though being able to effectively filter searches to reduce hits will potentially lead to an increase need for 'referral' type services (like the APO, ACER, NCVER newsletters) for materials.
Governments in particular often remove content from websites; although (I believe) there is a requirement for state or departmental libraries to have copies of printed reports, I am not sure whether this applies to online reports and there does not seem to be a simple way to access these reports. Often consultant reports for government departments are not available publicly, even though they are taxpayer funded.
I use Delicious to bookmark pages I want to use later. When the link doesn't work I'll try Google (restrict search using site: ), then the site's own search function, then for some sites, the Wayback Machine or Pandora
Trove and the Internet archive are invaluable but don't contain everything. Trove should receive more funding. Organisations should be more aware of the need to archive material.
Clarification on above questions: when encountering a dead link I search for the item until I am able to locate and access it, even if only avail in hardcopy or until I am sure it is no longer available. Much of my research involves searching for grey literature and it requires the development of industry specific knowledge of organisations, relevant clearinghouses, relevant government bodies and activities as well as the ability to trawl.
Most material I use is Creative Commons licensed. Other material I use I consider comes under the fair use provision and will use with proper attribution.
Libraries are the obvious places to store and provide access to these items. the issues are that libraries are not well funded and they do not have the generic capacity to currently do so. The obvious solution would be to have the National Library complete their Pandora project and store these other items as well. Or provide links to them in the National Archives
The distinction proposed in current digital copyright legislation where digital storage and sharing is "communication", not "reproduction" is tenuous and inapplicable within the framework of the government's digital transition policy. Government is losing publications at a great rate because: 1. only snapshots are taken of dynamic or updating documents. It takes an FOI request to find out what a document looked like on a particular day when you saw it last. You have to download everything in case it disappears 2. Departments and agencies are very lax about retaining final copies of web documents in any internal publications or document management system, even though these qualify as government records.
Re dead links: I will often advise the relevant web manager of the problem, but I would not usually keep going back to a page to see if it has been fixed. I would try another search to see if it pops up elsewhere and then try to make do without it. even accessing items through state libraries seems to require membership and my agency/role excludes me from joining.
I manage a library and information service which stores copies of print and digital material for long term access and use
The idea of online repositories with the object attached is a good one and I hope you have luck in developing!
Biggest source of lost online content is removal of state or federal government documents with change of government - eg: Victorian women's health policy, or Victorian gender lens removed - despite many organisations having programs, services and training that utilise or refer to these documents. Canada has a great system whereby all of the former government docuemnts are kept on the website - with a watermark to indicate that they are not necessarily current.
I am unclear as to what is meant by 'loss of online content' - do you mean permanent loss of content previously available content?
The disappearance of reports etc that form grey literature from online is like an earsure of history. There has to be a mechanism of maintaining continuity of major corporate documents even if they do no longer have status within an organisation. Libraries are important for this but they are becoming reduced in capacity and capabuility within government agencies. Research times can be very short and there is great presuure to undertake research especially of grey literature to inform policy advice.
Copyright is a huge issue for me as a librarian. E.g difficulty of contacting authors to seek permission to receive a copy of their thesis from a university library, and associated permissions for loading to company intranet or library server
Loss of online content not so common in my current research because it's mainly technical stuff produced in the past couple of years. But I have experienced the 'dead link' problem in other work extending back 10+ years.
It would be of huge benefit to my field "water quality research and assessment" if grey literature in the form of data and old technical reports could be preserved, archived and made available online, with appropriate acknowledgements, citation information, and waiving of liability in terms of content that can no longer be independently verified.
once I was no longer a staff member or a student at a university it became almost impossible to access articels of interest. Paying for individual items and waiting for their provision means many references are not persued
have an issue when data is only available upon payment of a fee. being a public servant makes it difficult to access material that needs to be purchased, especially if it's urgent
It would be good to know about all of the exisiting clearing houses, as well as portals with relevant information for prominent topics, i.e. primary health care, preventative heatlh etc.
Long term access is not a very important issue for my actual research work because I need the information now and not necessarily again in the future. But of course, it is an important issue for research in general and for my own publications.
I produce a gray literature website here. Please take a look at: http://law-library.rutgers.edu/cj/gray/index.php
As a copyright library we are legally entitled to store a copy of a digitally produced item for long term access but only within the library building.
Without access to a university database I would not be able to do my work or do it to my satisfaction, but I don't need to store copyright material once I can cite it.
Problems can arise when material is taken down from a web site because it is "out of date" but in fact it is still relevant to the work of the people I serve in my library. This can be very annoying. Sometimes a grey copy is availalbe. Other times not.
Historical decisions are important for future research particularly for court cases.
Frustrating when a link doesn't work, if it's something i really want to veiw i can waste alot of time liiking for it. although not critical to my work per say, i try to stay abreast with changes/ policies and guidelines within my industry
It would be good to be able to develop some sort of creative commons process or easy access to this for authors of this type of material
To often grey literature is seen as not important and disposable particularly when libraries are"rationalising" storage space.
Loss of online content is less of a problem in the field of medicine than it was. Publishers are more aware of the importance of making archival material available long term
It is not the libraries responsibility to archive works by other organizations. The problem here is propriety and relevancy of content. If an Org. deems the content out-of-date or not to be cited, this has to be able to be translated in any archived system. Unless a library can keep up with this I do not see it as possible.
In the event that I cannot discover an item online I usually contact the author or originating organisation for a copy.
Copyright prevents storage of items electronically, but only rarely does it interfere with methods of distribution.
How long I spend looking for item with a dead link and whether it is problem varies with how important I think the material is.
My work for MPs is exempt from the Copyright Act.
The federal government change to open access policy was helpful, not having to pay for data or publications that were government funded.
i work in an organisation that is partially exempt from copyright laws in certain circumstances, so my responses may not be applicable in most settings
If there was a choice between using publicly available information versus protected information, i would go with the publically available information so that our users/readers can check a reference without having to go through clearance protocols
A bigger issue than links being dead in my organisation is sites that are blocked by our firewall, particularly secure web sites, most of which are blocked by default.
If it is available on line there should be a presumption that material is available for use. "Not for citation" does not make sense.
For purposes of education and training being able to access information (with appropriate acknowledgement of copyright) makes passing on information so much easier and less time consuming.
Libraries and information services are not the appropriate locations to maintain lasting copies - the authoritative source providers need to do better
If online sources are downloaded and coded well enough in endnote, there should be no problem, even if the link no longer works or the author/publisher no longer supports the digital copy. As long as you retain a digital copy then it is ok.
When I find a deadlink - the reason for the search ie. an immediate research need, or an ongoing project will dictate if I keep checking. If its longer term I am more likely to check say in a couple of months or annually but in 99% of cases its for immediate access so I may look for a while that day but do not tend to go back and re-check later unless specifically requested to by the customer. There does need to be a policy/guaranteed way that grey literature - especially for government literatue documents are stored and made continuously available in future to the public when new versions are released or the orgnaisation's strucutre changes or closes down. Old versions of documents may still need to be refereed to so they can't be left to fall into a black hole and disappear, especially if they are electronic.
We pay for both a corporate and educational copyright licences which greatly assists with access and distribution of copyrighted material
Generally the loss of content (previously available) has been replaced or updated in my area of work/study.
copyright should be lifted (at least partially) for research work
if its not online and readily accessible it doesn't exist.
Having a library service that stores digital material over the term would be really useful
Much of the information most valuable is related to short term innovative projects in my field Copyright is often signed over to the funding department and at times: I am aware this has limited the ability for the publication and circulation of findings, etc
I had not thought about copyright implications of my storage until I read this question.
Grey literature is being increasingly used. I am always uclaer abour referencing it and how 'valid' it is seen to be by my peers
Access to historic government content is a significant problem to me. Change of policies and departmental restructuring sees loss of valuable content.
I am mostly looking for very up to date information
It would be great if there is a flexibility when using the information in government departments as the government agencies are working for public. The copyright excemptions are important for government departments to improve efficiencies. Otherwise same organisation will be spending enourmous times to find the same material over and over again. That is not efficient these days when there are lot of budget cuts and has less staff in organisations to do work.
Usage rights is reasonably straightforwad, rules around storage is considerably less so
I am from Canada and do use Australian resources> Thank you for the opportunity to provide feedback.
see previous comments. The area that I work in relies very heavily on grey literature for the reasons previously mentioned. This survey is spookily relevant to the issues that I am currently dealing with in Queensland where the government has been the protector of grey literature and has suddenly undergone such enormous cuts and restructuring with whole subject areas being made redundant and the grey literature potentially disappearing with them. I think that the luxury of getting data written up and published belongs to universities and CSIRO but it seems to me that this is the only way that the data can be preserved in the long term.
Mainly my issues are related to government literature which is often valuable but removed during departmental changes. Dead websites with no indication of most closely relevant site are frustrating, however a brief search resolves this in most cases. This is area specific (occurred much more regularly when working in the NT, for example, than current role in QLD).
If I am unable to locate a source because of a 'dead link' then I usually revert to the university institution database to search for the source.
While aknowledgement of a source is important actually getting permission is sometimes difficult in a short time frame.
Provided the proper referencing protocols are observed.
Main problem I have accessing information is not having access to online data bases like universities have. This limits what I am able to find and use. I can do this through the state library but their databases are also limited.
A big issue is the format and getting it into a format to re-use data as well.
just re dead link, more of a prblem is our organsiation filtering system which sometimes doesn't permiss access to sites which even though i know they are legitimite i usually could not be bothered going through process of contacting IT department to get the link unblocked.
More creative-commons licensing please. especially if the creator is not trying to make money from the content.
storage and retrival of material online is and will continue to become an access issue; just because material is "deleted" by well meaning comms team
I get very annoyed when web sites do not work properly with living links, etc. To me it is a mark of incompetence of the site owner.
Paywalls, links to intranet resources, and other barriers can frustrate access, but vague references to internal or consultation documents can make it difficult to find the sources for clarification or critique. Obsfucation for 'security reasons' prevents adequate evaluation of evidence and impedes independent confirmation.
Libraries tend to invest in powerful search engines so make outstanding respositories for online material
I believe the publisher of the material should be responsible for storing it, not the researcher.
My issue will be when I am no longer a PhD student at Monash Uni with access to library databases. I will be working as a consultant/researcher from mid coast NSW and won't be able to afford access to library journals/databases......
I am rnolled as a student doing a PhD whihc overlaps with my work and also provides me access to the University Library. As a result I can access gey and peer reviewed information more easily. We also have a lbrary at our work which provides a valuable source of info for my research and work.
I always acknowledge the source of grey literature I use. Other than doing that, I am not really closely aware of copyright issues.
Many of us make our own copies of source material, and keep offline..illegal but behind a password firewall prevents widespread access. YouTube in particular, daily news publications which change! During the day (newspeak)
I want to be respectful of copyright but sometimes, if material cannot be downloaded and used in my research, I may consider copying/pirating it, though if I ever did decide to do this, I would definitely still attribute appropriately.
Sometimes I get concerned about how knowledge changes over time, especially positions on various things published on websites - if you reference a website at a partiuclar time and it changes, there may be no evidence of what you read previously.
I actually came across a dead link today and after some more searching, emailed a colleague to find put if the organisation had a new URL or had foregone thier website for some reason (I know a key person in the organisation had a severe car accident, he may have been responsible for the website, as he is no longer working this may be an explanation for the website completely falling off.
Often I want to share restricted papers etc with colleagues but with paysites and copyright I am unable to I have to precis and share which takes time
As mentioned previously... it becomes cost prohibitive to have subscription after subscription
One of my responsibilities is to share material I have with my team (which often requires copying it) - the alternative is simply to keep the link, but then losing the information becomes of concern.
I appreciate that there is a significant volume of socially valuable research, scholarship, communications and educational practice that relies on so-called grey literature. It is essential that this phenomenon be brought to light and the conditions around securing ongoing access and conserving such resources be publicly addressed; negotiated and supported by appropriate resourcing.
This is particularly of issue when attempting to publish active bibliographies around resaerch or policy development work and provide readers a selection of background reading documents to help inform the discussion/debate
A separate problem, not linked to grey literature, is limited access to journals, particulary if you do not have a university affiliation. Journals should be open source.
In the education sector copyright is somewhat more flexible for us under the Act, however when I do consulting work for non-education organisations - NFPs mostly, I am acutely aware of the difficulties in sharing information under Copyright. Government, NGOs and commercial groups all too often cite and abuse Copyright legislation as a quick fix barrier, often not in line with the Copyright legislation, rather than thinking creatively about how their information can be best shared and managed.

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Compiling an evidence base is important in my work so use of grey literature is vital. I also share much of my work with other organisations so the need to reproduce and publish this work is also important.
We strongly rely on government documents which provide policy information.
No access to reports commissioned by organisations other than academic institutions.
Having access to information is extremely important-reinventing the wheel costs a lot of money.
Many of the search requests that i do are specifically looking for information that isn't usually published in peer-reviewed journals
Emerging industry does not yet have a great deal of useful formal material. Industry is changing quickly - formal literature takes too long to be produced and is therefore (usually) outdated by the time it's published.
grey lit is generally current. It also is more likely to have a specifically Australian context/data
my field is changing so rapidly that it is essential that there is access to material put out by organisations because while the peer reviewed literature is important, it is always about 4 years out of date by the time it is published and it is better for ideas rather than for what is happening now.
This is really my only source of information as my organisation does not provide access to any databases.
this would impact on our grant/submission application/writing processes and substantiation of claims made
I need to be able to use research on a daily basis.
Much of my work is focused on responding to government produced grey literature - impossible to achieve if information not accessible.
It would severely impact my ability to supply colleagues with research papers, reports etc that help them formulate policy
Discussion papers and similar types of documents, particularly from Think Tanks and other organisations are critical to be able to "desktop benchmark". Grey literature is often more relevant from a timing perspective as there isn't as much of a delay as with edited and formally published articles, and they are often be written in more accessible, less jargonistic language.
Some applied information is never published in peer reviewed literature or it takes some time to get there.
Part of my work is researching and commenting on government policy and its lived effects - often the effects can only be accessed through formal research or by grey literature
Depends on topic. Sometimes severe impact
It is of necessity to be able to access relevant and comparative grey literature produced inhouse within government and across jurisdictions. We often have commonality of issues. Evaluations of public policies and programs is not necessarily published but used inhouse to inform and adjust government policy.
It would just be much less efficient and likely lead to msny more inventions of the same wheel.
rely on speedy research - many govt reports are outdated by time of publication in the work i am doing
Grey literature provides a rich source of diverse and current information from a range of organisations/perspectives. This literature is often highly relevant applicable to current policy and research work so constrained access to this literature would significantly hamper my work.
Grey literature is important to the work I do because it typically addresses issues relating to policy and practice - a key aspect of the work that I do. It also often has a 'big picture' focus. It is absolutely critical to the quality of the work I produce.
much of the information I use is not available in hard copy anywhere
I need to develop policies/procedures based on best practice, and be consistent with what other agencies are doing.
Depends on the project on which I work; usually no impact, for systematic reviews that include materials other than traditional journals and books it would have severe impact
Most of the research and work I do comes from information obtained via 'grey literature' such as government policies, consultation and evaluation reports, organisation reports etc. We should be working to increase access to grey literature - definitely not decreasing it.
Our organisation does not have university library access.
I rely on this information, especially submissions or reports by other advocacy organisations. E.g. Commercial organisations often refer to data in their public submissions that is too expensive for NGOs to access/pay for an entire commercial report. Limiting access to grey literature would prevent information sharing between NGOs.
I am completely reliant on grey literature because academic research in most impact assessment fields is sparse or has been done overseas and I have to access some grey literature (local data etc) in order to apply it to a local situation
Not a noticeable impact but the quality would be reduced
In the community sector we rely on this type of information.
Working in policy related fields and using research that requires application to policy or practice, published material is very limited in its relevance and is written for an academic audience, not a policy audience
much grey literature is produced tofacilitate debate in social policy - so articles and research papers are vital
We rely on a variety of information sources for our work - 'grey literature' from NGOs and other organisations is key
My work is mainly applied research, e.g. program evaluation. Being able to access reports and evaluations is thus very important for my work.
I rely on varied sources of information and data to explore current and emerging policy and practice. I need rapid access to reliable data and to a wide range of perspectives in order to formulate policy advice.
Organisations - such as CRC's or NGOS' or research groups - more likely to be looking at topics and producing research geared towards practical applications, policy issues and relevant topics to my work in government. Less likely to be badly written in excessively academic jargon and requiring me to review MORE material in order to decipher their contents.
I rely on information and research produced by large and small human service focused agencies in order to remain up to date with research provided at all levels of social policy practice.
We rely on the newest and best information to be able to develop policy papers and develop program content. Our area of expertise is often overshadowed by medical and clinical infomration
Often these organisations produce evaluations.
grey literature is particularly important for policy related research because of the need to assess different stakeholder positions; to stay abreast of changes in policy and implementation etc.
Grey literature tends to be more immediate and addresses a current and experience issue/gap in evidence. Sometimes it's the only game in town!
Grey literature is important to support our policy research work
Would probably stop using this information.
I rely on this type of information to do my work
often information and research produced by organisations is not available in other channels,or may address specific issues that other research does not.
Being able to learn from the research of others is critical to the creation of 'knew' knowledge.
I work in fast-moving areas of social policy where it is vital to stay up to date and to have access to grey literature, especially literature produced by NGOs.
my ability to complete my work would be severely compromised if I was unable to undertake online research
Particularly important to have access to grey literature in times of economic constraint. Much of it is free and if it costs money it is often cheaper than commercial publishers.
A large part of my work is reporting on work that others have done and pulling that information together for others to act on.
As a charitable organisation we are unable to pay for subscription based services,and we rely heavily on grey literature and open source information.
Many NGOs don't have the finances to formally publish their work but will share it with the sector. Advocacy work is created to be shared and to influence policy. Much useful work is done that is not intended for formal publication (or written to academic standards) but provides valuable information and insight.
can be more timely than peer reviewed materials
It is critical to hav eaccess in my line of work.
We rely heavily on it and its free availability contributes enormously to the growth of knowledge and shared solutions to policy problems.
Grey literature is crucial for my work (including government reports, health industry documents)
lose credibility, limited industry knowledge, unable to maintain currency
A lot of organisations set their websites up very poorly, wasting a lot of my time
Important to access grey material for a richer context that covers all perspectives and locates specific issues/points/tensions. Without access to grey material an homogenised skewed perspective may be generated. Also "reinventing the wheel" syndrome, with future research not building upon an existing (evidence based) body of work.
Much of the evidence we draw on is anecdotal from grey literature becuase the empirical research hasn't caught up yet.
A lot of women's health policy and preventative health literature is produced by small advocacy organisations and is not indexed routinely in Australian or overseas bibliographic databases.
I find it staggering that academics refer to information that isn't in a fomal peer-reviewd journal as 'grey literature'. It seem belittling that very important documents from organisations such as the UN, Government organisations, Special Commissions (e.g Royal Commissions) and consulting companies (PwC etc)are referred to as 'grey'. They have much more impact on society than a research paper.
I always need balance in my arguments so I need a variety of sources
The topics covered by the grey literature are quite different to those formally published. They are commissioned differently and they seek different things. In fact there is quite interesting differences in the types of topics covered and their degree of currency.
As a peak body, being able to utilise reports from organisations is central to our policy advocacy.
I work for a not for profit organisation - we have no money to commission research or do lengthy searches - we are also working to help improve our community - I wouldn't understand why anyone would not allow us access to info - I would consider it selfish and obstructionist!
Most of my work is in reserach not it is not often that a lot is written about it in journals or other literrature formats.
I asume that this means grey literature other than that produced by my own organisation.
70-80% of my work relies on data and technical investigations collected or carried out over many decades.
work would continue but innovation would be hampered
alll of the documents/material I need to assist with my work is available online, and if not printed out regularly, will seriously slow down my work outputs if not available.
Ways of working with youth in the junville justice system should be based on relevant studies, access to this information ensures better service provision
It is nice to know what has already been done, and the way in which it can impact on future work.
Mostly, organisations that publish work want it to be used and cited. They publish to influence outcomes and are pleased to do so.
It is an important part of information. But it is not the most important part and I would be able to continue research and teaching without it - not as well and with the same quality, though.
Publication bias is a significant concern in the medical literature, often leading to 'meaningless' systematic reviews. Negative results not often published
It would severely limit our ability to carry out policy analysis and economic evaluations
grey literature often contains vaulable methodological data not included in peer reviewed papers emanating from the grey lit'
It could bias the evidence I gather, as only evidence that was able to be published in a journal would be available and this may be skewed.
This information is often of more practical relevance, and can be more current
Low and medium income countries have serious problems to access for information
epidemiological data on particular conditions can be difficult to discover, especially where there is uneven recording and publication, or publication routes
Government uses consultants because they do not have the research capability in house and they don't spend money on acquiring that knowledge.
Being part of an organisation, my peers respect the views and research of other organisations. Lack of access/use of other organisation's work would limit the perceived validity of my findings.
Grey literature needs to be carefully appraised since it hasn't undergone peer review, but it can sometimes be exactly what a library user needs, and the fact that ti wasn't published may jsut be the fact that it wasn't "right" for current media trends and exactly for this reason can be very valuable. It's not a huge impact on my work becuse most of what I'm dealing with is mainstream, but a good "grey" document can be exactly what we need so is important.
Sometimes we need access to historical Terms of Reference, EIS reports
The grey literature reports and data is the basis for most of the research I do.
feel by not keeping up to date or informed does my clients a dis-service
Policy development, advisory work and program design within government requires a good grasp of domain expertise and this is greatly helped by grey literature
Systeamtic reviews and health technology assessments are high level medical evidence and without access to these would be detrimental
my organisation - 5 other organisations - 3
Much of the material used in NRM is informal or produced off the academic/commercial grid
Grey literature is often the only information/data available.
The majority of information and research utilised by our clinicians is published
This material is sometimes the only way of finding out what is happening in practice, what works or what people think.
It would reduce quality of overall information used to inform clients' discussions, creation, positions, decisions. Sometimes grey literature offers precisely the perspective needed to shift thinking.
In Animal Health a large amount of research material is in the grey literature, particularly conference proceedings.
This is a vague question. If I can't use it why not? If it is out of date, I may not want to use it. Some "grey literature", especially statistical reports, costs hundreds of dollars and I do not use that because of the cost.
Grey lit provides another part of the complete information picture and without it I wouldn't want to rely on only peer reviewd material. Some of the most inivative and thought provoking material is grey lit and important in a changing world
I rely heavily on research reports produced by not for profit organisations.
A great deal of grey literature provides up-to-date informaiton on recent progresses, cevelopments and findings that can impact on advice provided etc. and what to keep an eye out for inrelaiton to new developments.
I am always reasearching for the best practice in the market place and obtain tehnical information on a daily basis.
We rely on this information to resource the sector.
Grey literature can still be constituted as "evidence" and help to build the evidence base. Without access to such material, we would be on an ongoing "loop" of demonstrating the same evidence over and over, without room for innovative practice or new understandings of emerging trends
If I can't find a grey literature resource, I don't have time to spend ages chasing it up. After looking in a few different places for it, I'd be most likely to move on and try to find a source that I can access.
The political and stakeholder landscape in my area of work changes quickly. If we can't keep up with what others are saying in this area our ability to produce effective policy advice will be significantly impacted.
Formal publishing houses tend to focus on academic theorectical material. This would be suicide for my workplace.
It is often not as scholarly, even though you can find raw stories and information that is useful in grey literature, it does not contain the overall information that is of premium value.
So much is not written up in peer-reviewed journal articles that this would be a major gap.
I believe all research data should be open access. Anything generated from educational sector. Commonwealth of Learning.
This info is often the most pertinent and up to date
Crucial to have up to date and easily accessed information including the ability to read comments and access links.
Most of our sources and outputs are grey
My work relies on the ability to build emerging trends into the school and assess the impacts of those in different contexts. Traditional sources do not do that in a timely or direct manner
Most of my work is dependent on grey literature & current social issues are central to it.
I would be unable to provide accurate and up to date information in relation to my briefing reports regarding Country and Institute information
The information can be used as a framework for the policies and procedures I am currently writing and can also identify areas which I may have overlooked.
this would exclude what is 'real' and leave me with peer reviewed, pure research
it's the main source of information for me because i don't have good library access through my workplace
I often consult clinical guidelines and best practice, particularly in nursing issues.
Up to date material and opinion pieces are very important to my work. Most of this is contained in grey literature.
Much of the grey literature is the most recent research - although necessary to verify the material, the ability to see directions in research and analysis as it happens is absolutely essential to me.
A lot of the information we use is grey as we are particulatly interested in perspective
I need access to grey literature to do my work because peer-reviewed publications are hard to find.
There may be a big impact but not visible.
Truth is, I am still not sure what grey literature is. Other than a journal article? Peer reviewed?
My work relies heavily on producing and referencing grey research. One of the problems we face, is that it is hard to access info just because it is not stored on a large database and you have to remember where it is stored to access it unless you saved it in your own files.
Grey literature is only a small component of the information we need here
sometimes it is the only local relevant information
Relevant data is generated through monitoring, often paid for by developers and supplied in the form of a project report. This is rarely published and can be suppressed or made virtually inaccessible.
as a service delivery unit we have no capacity to research and rely on other organisations to produce such publications that we can reliable base our policies and publications on
Grey literature is important because you can often find information in it not covered in more formal publications.
Some information on recent policy changes and impacts are only available through grey literature.
May impact on overall quality of comprehensive background, preparation and outcome for client
Material formally published, although the gold standard, is hard to access without access to free online databases. Unpublished material is easier to access,, although it loses its relevance faster with age. Very frustrating when full text of published articles is only available for a cost. when doing social research for government you do not have a budget to pay for research relating to policy you may be developing. The impact is on the quality of the background research.
In education a lot of the data is in departmental reports or commissioned work etc
access to reliable and reputable information sources is vital to assist in evidence based assessments and recommendations
I simply couldn't do my job or I would be constantly reinventing the wheel, writing papers that had already been written somewhere else
Im Gen Y- I live on the computer at work, i cannot think of many examples where i HAVEN'T used grey literature.
Some impact depending of if it was accessible elsewhere
Such publication bias may skew conclusions drawn
Researching marginalised organisations who cannot afford or prefer not to use mainstream publishing outlets means that I rely heavily on material produced outside formal publishing houses.
comparative analysis and lessons learned in like programs are critical
I would need to rely on someone else in the organisation to access it and distribute it
Our targets, planning and activities are based upon knowledge derived from information and research produced by organisations, including our own.
Impossible to examine development of policies, examine evidence, and identify interests and interested parties (especially where marketing and PR efforts diverge from internal interests). Also difficult to identify opportunities to engage meaningfully in policy development beyond public channels.
most of my work relates to contemporaneous decision making needs so information needs to be context specific and relevant to the issues at hand, while also reflecting good practice.
There are many smaller organisations or community projects that have excellent community safety outcomes that I would like to hear about.
In my particular field, no worthwhile research could be conducted without ready access to grey literature, with significantly poorer outcomes in public policy as a result.
We need to back up our anecdotal evidence with credentialed knowledge that is produced by organisations
Govt and other reports (eg from the Remote Area Planning and Development Board, Desert Knowledge Australia) are crucial for my PhD on wild rivers (and how people in remote areas can or can't influence government policy)
All information is useful, even if one has to decide how credible it is.
This material is unreliable quality and poorly used by both government enquires and organisations , it runs parallel to the peer reviewed literature which is where the real quality research and commentary is generally found
My work depends on solid information for policy decision making.
My work needs to be informed by the context in which it takes place, without knowing what other orgs are doing that would be very difficult.
Would not be able to do my job - I use very little that comes from formal publishing houses.
For grey literature, organizations are the corporate authors i.e. the producers and publishers
would not be able to do my phd without it
I rely on access to a lot of LOCAL literature including local government.
Often use this material for ideas. It would have some impact but not be catastrophic.
It would limit the opportunity of discovering cutting edge research that could be applicable to my role.
make it difficult to aggregate info and forward relevant research to our members
Proper publications are great, but the publishing cycle can be very long when dealing with urgent health issues, whereas a clinical practice recommendation can be a good standby.
I use examples and benchmarks from other agencies all the time
It would be a severe deficit to my work.
It allows me to draw from the experiences and outcomes of other research agencies. It also indicates the research landscape and needs. It informs the research methodologies I propose. It contributes to my broad knowledge around content and methodologies.
My research interests rely heavily on clinical guidelines, policies and protocols available in grey literature
With a very limited budget / library, I would not be able to do my job without grey literature
It would limit the range of data options I have for researching issues and concerns of teachers and students
I would use more research/evidence if it was easier to access free online
The culture at Local government is not research based and we are practice orientated. Grey literature is our main source of information
Hard to imagine a plausible scenario here, or the extent of loss of access you're referring to. Therefore hard to answer this question.
Missing out on government data would be a big problem.
Without a univerity on-line data base I rely almost entirely on grey literature

Money spent accessing grey lit: org:
many thousands of $ - don't know the figure

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Idon't understand what these questions are asking
Work for government agency where real commitment to research almost equals zero. I think grey literature is priceless, my agency thinks grey literature is "without price" ie worthless.
Since my need to access Grey Literature is in my work capacity, I would not be prepared to pay anything individually for access to it.
because of small level of funding received fro project, unlikely any money would be given. Preference is to use relationships with others to access articles and literature we need.
I don't think any one organisation could provide me with the information I require.
I could not do my job properly if I could not access grey literature, so the minimum I could accept would be an approximation of my salary, as I would lose my job.
I have no idea what the market value of this could possibly be. I'm not prepared to pay for something taxes have already paid for or are as a result of some other process. I don't want to pay to find out something is irrelevant or poor quality.
Department budget is limited, would have to find alternate information or sources
I wouldn't be willing to receive money to give up grey literature. It is important in my work but also in terms of study.
I assume grey literature to be free and available. I recently compiled a report for a human services NGO about fathers' parenting programs that was heavily informed by grey literature. I would have paid for access had it not been available.
I only supply free information to my clients, as they have no budget to pay for access.
Very hard to quantify, but $5000 represents the additional time, cost and inconvenience of sourcing traditional literature. $500 per year equates to half my training allocation, which I would be prepared to give up to have access to Grey Literature at work.
These are not very useful questions as I have no idea what the monitory value is of grey literature. I do for published books and journal articles but not here.
Haven't thought about until now; interesting to consider but no additional comments at this point
I think research should be freely available
I am not in a position to answer the above questions
I personally don't pay for anything. don't know what the organisation would be willing to pay
The first question is really hard for me to quantify; it would kill my research for the year, so taking into account not just the dollar figure of my scholarship but also delaying my return to the paying workforce by another year, the loss of future superannuation growth etc, I think that's a fair figure. I know my university can't afford to fund much at the moment, and on a scholarship I too am ham-strung, so the figure of $200 isn't representative of the value of the research; however it is reflective of my capacity to pay.
Above responses are not applicable to local government where no money is spent to access any data
No amount of money would compensate for losing access to grey literature
I believe research is to be shared and putting a price on some of this feels "odd"...grey literature is often more accessible (availability but also type of language used) and if we charge for it in a similar way as peer-reviewed articles, I think it will only keep the "educated" (ie. able to pay to access journals and understand academic language) separated from others - this doesn't help to build capacity and understanding across a broad society. I hold my access to grey literature quite dear and it would make my work difficult if I didn't have access to it - the figure to the first question here is meant to reflect that
First question - minimum would be my salary because it would be difficult and frustrating to do my job!
money is not the issue. most of the info i use i get from networks and referrals and monitoring public outlets. i would have to change my research projects if i could not access grey literature.
Not so important personally. Would need to be a pretty good database because much can be hunted down on the web eventually. Maybe more dollars if very good.
Look at it like a subscription to an alumni database at a University
given that i have no knowledge of university costs for present access (institutional costs for grey/other literature), impossible to guesstimate.
Unable to qunatify value of losing access to these sources of information.
I could not work without access to grey literature
I am sorry - but I really cannot imagine paying for this - it's something the Uni would cover if needed for work.
Not having access to grey literature wouldn't be the end of things as I know them. It would just mean the people I work with, along with me, would be be in the dark rather than in the shadows.
the loss of access is hard to put a value on because it's so important and the amount I would pay is not a lot because I don't earn a lot as a student/PT worker. If I earned more I would pay more
My employer is not research based and has little discretionary finance so would not be able to pay as much as the grey literature access is worth.
It depends on what is available. I am not absolutely clear on the implications of 'grey literature' in my field.
I lecture but do not do research other than to prepare for teaching classes, and to complete my graduate studies in higher education
I can't guess the first question above, doesn't compute, but as to the second question, grey literature is very valuable to me, but i don't have a huge income so have equated it with the cost of one of my professional associations
Grey literature should be publicly available and easily accessible..... if a cost is to be incurred for provision it should be "at cost" and not include a profit to some body.
didn't really understand first q. I don't want to be paid to forego access to any information under any circumstances.
I think grey literature should be free to accress
To not have access to freely available grey literature, I would need to receive enough money to adequately cover the costs of signing up to the various journals/repositories that I would then need to use. A lower cost for a single user license is reasonable given that each organisation would be paying for multiple users to access research.
I don't have a good sense of either the value of the purchases I've made so far, or the value of the frustration I currently experience when I can't access something, so these are probably not good estimations. Putting a $ value on frustration experienced frequently but not necessarily severely is a challenge.
Sorry, I don't understand the first question
Weird questions. Logically the same if the information is of value and that changes depending on the need for and/or scarity of the type of information for which I am looking, as well as the value of the project/budget I am managing.
It's hard to put a figure on organisational expenditure - it all comes back to budgets !!
Information should be freely accessible, or I should not have to pay for access to online services. At every step in the information access process- you are charged- for a computer, for internet access, then for access to information, etc. People will continue to find ways to access information and goods for free in an online environment instead of being charged every step of the way.
Most of my policy development work depends on having access to grey literature. Without communicating with other agencies as to what they do, and basing my work on best practice, my policies are not 100%. The first answer is based on my salary.
I expect my employer to pay for these not me
I would only accept giving up my access if I could pay someone else to do it for me.
It would be difficult to work without access to grey literature. But it would have to be affordable.
I don't feel I can estimate these amounts with any validity
I have assumed that this is Australian literature only. I would pay more if this included overseas access.
The questions are a little vague and I didn't really know how to answer the first one.
I can't imagine any situation in which the answers to these questions would be useful.
As someone working for an NGO, I don't think it's feasible to ask for payment for reports that are currently provided for free by the publishing organisations. The primary issue I have in accessing grey literature is dead links - I can always contact an organisation directly for a (free) copy of the report if need be. I would not pay for an APO style site at this point in time, it's not practical. I also think it doesn't fit with the idea of grey literature - the authors issue it for free to reach the widest audience possible, to share knowledge. This shouldn't be restricted.
I don't think this method is helpful to this issue and there is no sensible answer to these questions
Access to grey literature is priceless in our work - but I could not afford and neither could my organisation, more than I suggested.
I do not understand the first question - this is quite unclear
I really don't feel able to answer either of these questions, because both scenarios are difficult to imagine. And also because I find it very difficult to put a value on my work. I can't imagine trying to do that work without access to grey literature, and probably wouldn't want to do it under those circumstances - because I couldn't do it to the standard I would like, so money doesn't really come into it. I also can't imagine trying to persuade my managers of the value of grey literature to my work, and trying to put that into dollar terms. I wouldn't be prepared to pay for it myself, but can't imagine public service managers - even those who recognise the value of grey literature themselves - being willing to pay for me to have access, especially if it meant access only for me and no-one else. Not feasible in the current fiscal environment!
There's obviously a disparity between the two figures above. Working for a charity, we wouldn't be able to pay too much money for access to grey literature, and we'd expect to share the subscription between the researchers in our department.
This is difficult to quantify as not all Grey Lit is equal, and paying for it changes its purpose. Grey Lit is mostly used by Govt or QANGO's to "inform" the public, they usually use Copyright statements in ignorance of their meaning to libraries. I write letters requesting permission (as per Copyright Act) and get told "it's in the website". I would pay in order to keep something I value very highly from an NGO (e.g. I personally pay Wikipedia annually).
I can't get it in my head that I could be prohibited from accessing GL, so I can't put a $ figure to it.
Difficult to answer because the staff time required to access via physical presence in library would be prohibitive to my role and loss of certain strategic resources would hamper role.
I cant answer those questions - too hypothetical - my organisation would pay, not me individually.
As a not-for-profit oranisation it is difficult to pay for info&research (hence no journal subscriptions) but the free availability of grey literature is critical to our policy/advocacy work
Not sure if I understand the questions regarding money. Most grey literature we access is free of charge, which maybe contributes to bad maintained websites?? Some organisations sell their reports, we will/would always pay when we really need/want the report.
I believe that all content should be made freely and publicly available, including grey literature. I believe that academic publishers have created a monopoly over scholarly content, and would hate to see for the same thing to happen to grey literature. All individuals, irrespective of their affiliations or socioeconomic background, should be able to access knowledge.
I am unable to answer the above questions as I do not monitor or have real visibility on these costs
$30,000 represents the loss of value to my work; as a commercial consultant I could not charge as much as I do currently because my work would not have the same depth. $5,000 is based on a calculation of what my employer could afford and would agree to.
q1 doesn't really work.. you are suggesting a personal tradeoff for an access issue that is relevant to my professional life. sure, pay me moola to not be able to do my job well.. to be honest I wouldn't want any money.. not a tradeoff i would make. and yes I know you are trying to 'value' it but there should be a better measure of establishing value than this. apologies for the rant.
The first number is high because I would be unable to do most of my job if I had no access to grey literature.The second number assumes that this is what my employer would have to pay for full access to everything I need, on the assumption that nothing is available for free. My employer currently pays nothing . I buy what I need if I can;t get it free.
Bizarre question - I wouldn't put any store in my answers as the situation has no real basis.
Only that it varies on whether I am being paid for employment. When I am on a low casual wage, I am prepared to pay a small amount of money if I can claim it as a tax concession. If I am employed full-time, I am happy to pay for high quality material if it contributes to my research/teaching or to my quality of life.
I am not sure I understand the context, as I would not pay for anything myself. I t would be the responsibility of my organisation to provide me with the resources required to undertake my job. It is difficult in small member supported NGOs as you may have to pay in advance for something you only use occassionally and it feels like you are subsidising big users. Dont mid subsidisng students, but not buig orgs
I don't understand the first question: it is very subjective-if someone gave me 100K yes I would relinquish my rights to accessing grey matter but that's only because I need the money.
As my employer is acharity , they are restricted in funding
I could not conduct my research without grey literature. My answer reflects lost earnings if I was forced to resign as a researcher
The context of the amounts here is my professional convenience matched to my orgs not-for-profit status
$20,000 is probably what it would cost me to access information in other ways. I doubt I could convince my organisation to pay for access to grey literature.
It would depend on how the content was organised, whether it was search, what relative value the content proposed. At present I use my blog reading and RSS alerts as a way of interrogating a topic on an informal level. If I decide to incorporate ideas into my research I try and find peer-reviewed works to support them rather than quoting the grey source.
My organisation would spend a lot of money if it had to pay for all grey literature and would place limits on its access for financial reasons. This is already the case with commerically available literature eg journal articles that we don't subscribe to.
I'm not sure what the first question is asking but being able to access grey lit is central to my work so trying to estimate a $ value exchange for that (if I have read the question correctly) is difficult unless that $ exchange matched (paid for) the single useer access licence.
Grey literature is important, even in summary to all researchers so that we can ascertain if we move to the next step and pay for access or spend further time on how we can access the information elsewhere.
I cannot imagine accepting any amount in return for giving up access to Grey Literature and research for a year because I could not do my job. (The money would have to cover my salary and compensate for the loss of pleasure.)
I do not have an answer for these questions as I do not believe access to this information should have a monetary value. Information should be shared freely, especially when it is paid for with public money. There is also no point in producing the information if it is not able to be shared.
As a not for profit organization our ability to purchase grey literature is severely restricted
I don't see why I, as an employee, should pay anything for a tool to perform my job.
I also have a university affiliation and use that method to access materials free
It was difficult to answer these questions in a productive fashion
Lack of access increases the amount of time to undertake research and identify emergent trends, I 'guesstimate' that it doubles the time involved
If I had to physically access grey literature I would need to visit capital cities since I live in regional Australia. The payoff amount would defray air travel costs.
I think Grey literature is invaluable so almost impossible to put a price on it
I don't know how to put a value on the first question. I wouldn't trade my access for cash - I don't get it!
I simply cannot answer the first question, it doesn't make sense to me. I think there is a problem for unpaid volunteers to answer such questions because the work we do is of itself inestimable. When trying to quantify the value of voluntary labour in something like a funding submission for a project I usually have to rely upon using the current minimum wage because that is the only standard that is commonly understood but certain tasks are not recognised as having a value at all. BTW - WHY IS YOUR COMPETITION PRIZE AVAILABLE TO ONLY AUSTRALIAN & NZ CITIZENS??? WHAT STANDARD OF VALUES ARE YOU USING????
As a charitable organisation which produces grey literature we do not charge for access to the material, nor would be be able to afford subscription for access. In addition, access to grey literature should not be impeded by monetary costs as, in the majority it contains information that is vital for not only researchers but also members of the community. For example, I would object to paying for a report that is required for an informed response to a government inquiry.
No answer to the first question because I can't place a value on access to such material either personally or professionally. For second question, I'd pay more but it would depend on whether I can claim it as a tax deduction, whether I would pay it personally or my employer...
I believe that Grey Literature should be available for the public to access. Much of it is produced using tax dollars.
Do not use single user licences in corporate government environment. Information is for the organisation, not personal use. We prefer to pay premium price per item rather than subscription. Moving to pay per view/article. but must be able to store digitally and share within organisation.
I simply cannot do my job without grey literature but I do not think my organisation would pay much for it.
Unable to provide a realistic answer to these $$ questions
only that it is very difficult to calculate, as the need for material fluctuates and depends on the particular project. having said that, I produce a monthly bulletin for staff and there are often items I would like to include but can't because the article is not available online or is available for only a limited time. my estimates are based on purchasing only those that appear to be key to the topic and a cost of an average of $30-50 per article.
It is very difficult to calculate especially with tight budgets and actually seeing the type of material which would be avaliable
I don't earn much money so prefer free sources - or ask a friend who can get it for free and pass it on.
i dont really get contingent valuation and hate hypothetical questions, so dont feel that my answers are at all useful or informed
I don't use grey literature personally, but for my organisation I think $3,000 should cover the cost of database and journal access to compensate for the loss of access to grey literature. However, you can't put a price on the loss of quality material that potentially disappears.
It is so important to be able to access grey literature freely that I refuse to consider having to pay for access!!!
they're kinda dumb questions, I have to say. As a proposition, it's outlandish, and therefore difficult to price.
I don't understand question 1. Question 2 is what I think is a fair price for an institutional library to pay for a single user license for a database.
I think access to grey literature is very important so it would be a great loss to me personally. I think it's hard for organisations to budget to access grey literature and depends on the number of people in an organisation.
I simply could not do my job without access to grey literature, nor could my organisation function
I have trouble with this. The grey literature I use is free and it is in the interest of the writers/publishers to make it free in order to utilise the information to improve policy outcomes. It is also often public information, government reports etc, and must be free in order to be transparent and accessible to all. If I had to pay for the information I might not use it as it may be a bureaucratic nightmare to pay for individual items internally.
Our organisation has no independent funds of its own.
Last question is not entirely relevant; my employer does not allocate me a budget, so I have to pay myself.
I do not have a personal budget for this
Access to Grey literature should be open access to indivduals and institutions.
I'm not really going to answer the first question because I can't put a value on the use of grey literature in my work (and its kind of a silly q) but the second question: if it was a single point of entry that was comprehensive and streamlined, easy to use with a simple interface I would encourage and organisational licence based on org size and would start at $300 per year for a small org.
We operate within a climate of fixed resources - if grey literature isn't free, we won't pay to access it.
The university library spends a lot of money on online databases - I don't know how much but it is well into the thousands.I benefit from this. It is not a case of single-user access so the quantification as single-user is confusing for me
1st question, don't know how to equate access with money. 2nd question maybe a subscription to The Grey Journal? Items via document delivery where costs are absorbed by the Library cost approx $20 each.
I'd be reluctant to pay as an individual. I would expect my organisation to pay for it.
most is accessed free online or via own organisation's excellent library
I say $50,000 because it would have to be worth not being able to find literature from such an expansive area - even if some of it isn't good quality - it's the literature of good quality that is so worth it, and having to find research/information that is covered (and recent) on the topics I was being asked to find from other sources. I can find research from traditional sources, but people want things now, they want it easily accessible, and they're getting more specific. Accessing that grey literature might expose something absolutely perfect for their research that I might have to find through several sources to cover the aspects required in their research.
this is hypothetical figure without any research behind it
I am sorry but these questions have no relevance to me - research I do is for other people within the organisation and I have no idea how much they value it
I dont have any idea how much I would accept or pay for grey literature.
All our organsiations contribute via the imputed payments made for internet access and the storage of information. There is a shared responsibility and kind of public arrangement to which the only parties not involved or participating in the same way are high security agencies (DSTO, ASIO, etc) and private corporations.
$500 is what i would pay. As a contractor my company would not pay for me to access grey literature for my personal use, but they would probably pay for a license for the library - and probably a much larger amount - like journal subscriptions
Don't really understand the question - are you talking about my own grey literature or others? Much of the grey literature I am after is held by organisations or government departments that refuse to release so paying for access is not really feasible.
Very hard to judge because we do project work, the issue of grey literature varies according to the project. For some it is irrelevant, for others it is central. So, a lot of variance, and hard to summarise with one figure
I have no issue sharing any information that I have. I work in the community services sector and if all stakeholders work together we can get the best outcome for the client. Having said that, in a competitive tendering environment, I doubt that many of my colleagues/peers in a similar situation would do the same - as we compete for the same funding!
Can't really answer this question, sorry
The first question suggests that I have a right to the information available in the grey literature, which is not the case. It's a question in part of academic reciprocity. I contribute to the grey literature and in turn, access the contributions of my colleagues. Perhaps difficulty finding some of this content is the price you pay for it not being locked behind a publishers paywall.
I cant imagine being able to do my job if grey literature were not available. I might as well not have one if that were the case so the $100k would replace my years wages.
Our work couldn't continue if grey literature wasn't accessible, but I can see we'd do workarounds like spend more time directly approaching target organisations. Could be a slower research process though :) In our university setting, I believe an institution-wide licence (not single-user) would be more workable.
Relevance of the first Q, it appears trivial and irrelevant
I believe information should continue to be free and have put figurs in under protest!
Current financial limitations affect this response which is based on average membership fees for e.g. union, professional membership etc.
For the first question my rational is that if I'm giving up grey literature I lose a source of my work and I would need to be paid double to find the information to do my work.
There is a difference because I believe my employer gets significant value from my access.
We don't really rely on grey literature. WE have never made an assessment of the monetary value of grey literature
I would not pay personally to access grey literature.
I don't really know how much it would cost to be honest. It could be more or less.
While grey literature can help in providing information for work and research it is not the only or most important source of information for most topics. The biggest issue is knowing whether or not it has been peer reviewed. Putting a dollar amount on accessing it is difficult to work out as it depends on what information is available elsewhere on a particular topic.
I personally cannot afford the cost of buying grey literature or other resources. My organisation is also cutting back on providing library resources and storage facilities in the face of severe budget cuts. The main impact of my losing access to grey literature is in the quality of my work and in the reliability of my findings. You cannot reasonably model natural conditions, or measure the impact of human use and climate change, unless you have some actual evidence with which you can compare your results.
Not sure if my organisation would pay anything related to my topic area.
There are usually other ways to access - if I can locate the authors for example, I tend to ask for either access or a synopsis.
Grey literature is the primary source of information about specific areas, esp. species presence/absence. This is an essential component in my work. It is often considered to be not worthy of reviewed publication.
First question doesn't make much sense, job would be impossible to do well without grey literature access. Considered cost of replacing missing information in response
Grey literature is vital for understanding work already completed in my field within state and federal government. Without it I feel that I would not be able to compplete my job fully.In saying that though a large annual subscription fee would not be feasible.
The questions are absurd. If information were not free then I would demand a huge compensation but that does not mean I would be willing to pay a price to access information that should be free.
silly questions, the answer to these depends on the task I am working on as the importance of research is highly variable
no idea of what this material is actually worth, but I need it.
very difficult to answer the first question
Overall quality of our practice across the board would be reduced
Due to funding constraints by work place would be unwilling to pay true cost of value of information. I will just be told to use my firm evidence base (my arse)!!
I couldn't do my job if I had to give up access to grey literature. I work for an NGO with limited resources and it would be very difficult if we had to pay to access grey literature. Depending on the cost, having to pay for grey literature might have the impact of reducing staff resources or in limiting the scope of the work we do - both of which would be a negative outcome for our organisation, our members and other stakeholders.
I think that I will be highly doubtful about any conclusions I read in future based on these data. It is not entirely clear to me what you mean.
I would not be able to give up access to grey literature if I were to continue doing my job. My employer would not pay for a single user licence for access to grey literature.
Unpublished literature has the potential to change the guidelines and recommendations that I write.
Grey literature is an integral part of our work that informs both out economic analysis and assessment of the societal impact of health policy decision making. As such the most useful information for us relates to grey literature produced nationally, which is generally available for free so estimating willingness to pay is difficult.
what's an awful motivation for your questionnaire! Grey literature is almost everytime result of publicly funded work. And you'd like to take money for those publications?! This is perceived as being very, very repugnant.
Hard to answer! I can't imagine accepting any amount of money to give up grey lit access as its too important. As someone who provides access to info for other researchers I could ask my employer for a high amount e.g. £3000 for access to grey lit if I could then re-distribute certain documents of relevance to researchers in my institution. If its for personal use only I don't think my employer would pay more than £20 per person?
In my field there has been access to all the necessary grey literature for the last 50 years.
I don't think there should be a cost to this as the producers of information usually want to distribute it widely. I'm unclear who would be paid
I am unable to answer this question. It is unthinkable that grey literature in the form of UK government information would not be freely available to its citizens.
I hope that this isn't to test the waters to see if people will pay to access grey materials for which we have been accessing freely for many years.
I don't really understand the questions so have stuck in the first number that came into my head.
Grey literature is too significant to our work so I can't put a value on giving it up (i.e. invaluable)
hi - the first question is impossible to answer. I couldn't do my job properly without access to the grey literature, so can't put a minimum price on it.
I work for a library and have no need to spend personal funds.
The first question I don't understand, If I give up my access to grey lit then I would find it hard to do my job and for question 2 it would be a case by case bun fight every time I needed additional resources.
As a government entity, research costs are budgeted per Department or for the whole organisation - the individual does not strictly influence the costing.
Not sure if I have understood these questions.
My organisation has more to lose than me as an individual if access to grey literature was not available
I don't think the organisation would actually spend this amount of money considering the efficiency dividends.
very hard to put a dollar value on information. really struggled with this as im a low paid worker so free access is SO important to me. with regard to employer pay, unsure if they would or would do so to a higher value.
I haven't given a figure but would expect my organisation to pay normal document delivery costs as they do for conference papers/ journal articles we don't hold.
If 'essential' grey information was no longer free, I wouldn't try to buy it as an individual but through an organisational agreement to spread the cost over as many users as possible.
No access to grey lit means highly risky dumbing down and loss of presence in the policy market
Much of the information that is useful in NRM has been developed as part of a funded grant. The learnings/outcomes from projects are often not widely published or may be only available as a final project report which often get forgotten over time. The risk here is that we lose the information or we continue to fund additional projects that look at the same issues.
I pay high fees for internet access at home. I'm not sure what I could afford on top of this.
I find it impossible to answer these hypotheticals. Much of the grey literature is produced by the government.
Both are impossible for me to answer. Finding it always seems like "hooray, this little part of the world seems to be working the way it should" (the fantasy of all information being freely available). No amount of money can free me of the fantasy; and yet wanting it for free means I would not be willing to pay for it, particularly as its usefulness is indeterminate until it is read.
Very hard to answer these, as a not-for-profit we have a fixed and limited budget for information and cannot really change it.
I wouldn't give up access to Free grey lit. Tight budgets would be why i wouldn't pay for it.
I find these questions difficult to understand and don't understand their purpose. I as an individual would not be able to pay for access to the grey literature I need. Paying for grey literature also defeats the purpose of having it, at least in the sector where I work, the not-for-profit sector, where grey literature is an essential tool for lobbying and information distribution.
My work would simply not be possible in the absence of grey literature.
If this infomation is not available for free then I would prefer to invest my money in technical books
My previous answers re grey literature were based on material that is supplied directly to us in the form of submissions. We do not have to go looking for it, and these questions do not seem relevant, hence my nonresponse
I could not do my job without grey literature.
I had to think carefully about these questions to understand what you mean... too many other factors relate to my work outside of my use of grey literature that impact on my ability to do my work efficiently.
The value per person I would ask my employer to pay considers the number of employees in my organisation and the organisation's overall budget position - ie ability to pay. Even if a resource is very valuable in terms of helping people access information to do their work it is unlikely to be justified if the organisation is not in a position to pay a lot for the access for all of its people who need that access. We already have this trouble accessing journal papers... be horrendous if suddenly you also had to pay to download government or NGO reports as well!
Policy is only one aspect of the work done in this organisation. While we can always argue the need for access to relevant literature, budgets can only stretch so far to accommodate disparate needs across a whole organisation.
I am a superannuated retiree working pro bono on developing a research-based think tank; my job would be impossible if my honorary university appointment did not include free access to grey literature and to the university library.
Not very meaningful questions - say $5 is the price per item, it is the admin/time cost to pay that is killing not the copy price
These are very difficult questions to estimate.
sorry i have no idea how much my organisation spends on this so feel unable to give a meaningful resonse
I cannot overemphasise that access, particularly on-line access to grey literature is extremely important in research and ensuring that government policy and service delivery are well targeted and to the extent needed, localised.
I can't answer the first question on this page as I think some grey literature is extremely important for the "public good" - not sure how that gets priced
If I couldn't access grey literature then I couldn't do my job, hence I would need to get paid for the year.
Look, frankly I want grey literature for free - it would take a lot of money for me to give up all access to grey literature, as I can't imagine doing my job without it.
My work would suffer and I'd have to choose other topics to work on, so I'd say around half my salary.
I recognise there is a gap but if I had to pay I would have to be more strategic about sources etc than I am at the moement
I would not ask my organisation to pay for my individual preference. I might provide comment on the organisational impact of not having access
Grey literature while it often comes at a cost, is not as valuable as the greater mass of research that is well documented. It is good for edgy material and to some extent this fact devalues it.
I dont understand the top question. The second question. I am studying adn therefore I pay for access to peer reviewed journals through the university. The conversation ahs become a good forum for latest research and also the Policy online website is beneficial for my work as an EHO
Grey literature is an indispensible part of research and highly important for gathering information
Top one impossible to answer. Money wouldnt help.
The amount is the equivalent of my scholarship to undertake a PhD. Without access to grey literature (especially from government and think tanks) my PhD would not be worth doing.
generally grey literature (not all) is available freely. I would be reluctant to lose access to grey literature and would be reluctant to pay for it
Only place to comment: Ammount of money I sepnd on accessing greay literature int he last 12 months is only a guess - this is very hard to know as I don't know the cost of internet access ect - only based this on my wage per hour. Would not be willing to give up access to Grey Literature - we need it too much. Maximumn I would ask my organisation to pay for my individual access to gry literatue - is so low because i know my organidsation would not purchase access to Grey Literature just for me - there would need to be a greater pool of peole using it. They would though be likely to pay for a inter-library loan from another library within reason which I expect wouldn't be much more than £20 per item unless I was requiring a copyright cleared copy that I could do anything with.
Unclear re minimum amount question - I could not do my work if I did not have access to this type of resource.
Tongue in cheek if someone gave me £10k to not bother looking for grey literature, I would have to justify the income and argue that due to costs/difficulty in finding it I'm unable to access grey literature. In reality though I wouldn't be able to do my job without grey literature.
I could not run my small business without access to grey literature, but i do not earn large sums, keeping my overheads under control is therefore important to me, but so is access to quality and reliable information. I pay $2000/annum for subscription to national tenders in my fields of interest-a cost i am able to share with 5 other small sized businesses and that works for us all.
The design of this instrument is leading, and hence a little uncomfortable with responses, as very limited. I believe that for lifelong education to work, then access to all should be part of the national estate, for a learning community. Present monopolies on knowledge are supported by the public purse, so suggestions to charge users, might be a way forward to open this up, if charges were reasonable. National Educational Research Library for instance!
As I am a research librarian I do not actually require the information, only search for it for the Library's users. If we had to pay we would want a corporate licence arrangement, prob around $500 max??
I hope APO remains free! Great survey - please share the results with the Library community.
I do not have enough knowledge of the costs of existing licenses for other material paid by my institution so cannot answer the above.
I was already thinking creatively of other ways of getting the info - e.g. verbally from colleagues. Perhaps the 30,000 would also enable me to go free lance e.g. write my book - in which case I would require min $60,000.
Sorry, I can't answer the questions. Without access to these types of sources I would be unable to do my work.
This is very difficult to answer. I don't get to ask my organisation to pay for Grey Literature or anything.
These are interesting questions - I may have answered differently if I had more time to devote to this survey.A single user license for one central location? How would that work over many istes/institutions, globally?
This contingent valuation "technique" is hypothetical rubbish!
to not be able to access grey literature for free would make it impossible for me to do my job, rendering me useless and unemployed. So you would have to roughly cover my salary and inconvenience of finding a new job.
I find the first question unthinkable. A lot of my work revolves around policy advocacy for NGOs that have extremely limited & ever reducing budgets. Having to pay to access information to either undertake policy advocacy or suggest new research that is required in such cases would further marginalise the voices & input of the already marginalised. As a retiree' I can't claim any $ I spend on pro bono work as a tax deduction so I must carry such costs myself despte my limited income.
My estimation is based on a proportion of my wage, which i would argue is a valuation of my worth to the organistion. I tried to estimate the value grey material had on my ability to add value to the school, and assess the proportionate cost.
it all depends on the ultimate utility of any given information
Am officially a pensioner, but still doing research, cannot afford to pay much.
I get where these are coming from but can't give a sensible estimate of either partly because it's not a personal loss if I can't access it - it's a work loss. We would more likely work out other ways to access information than have to pay.
I believe this grey literature has value far beyone what I have said I, or my organisation, would be willing to pay for it. This is due to budgetary constraints.
I think freely accessible information is essential to a democracy to foster learning and effective practice. I do not think placing dollar values on grey lit is either possible or relevant.
The way that government bureaucracies run in a time of declining budgets is that if Grey literature cost money it would not be accessed. If grey literature became crazy expensive like peer referenced journals it would not be used. The trouble/ cost in accessing peer referenced journals is a good example to avoid.
I can't do my job without access to grey literature. Therefore I have selected an amount which essentially continues to fund me and the facility where I work, for a year where very little work could be done.
At the moment, I don't have to pay to use the information online to help with writing the procedures. I have used textbooks which included links and this was covered in the cost of the book. Individually I would probably spend $100 to $250 for a 12 month subscription. Organisation wise, I think $1000 subscription per license then sub-license $500.
Grey literature is vitasl to my work and I would be unable to do my job without access to this type of material. I strongly support Open Access to information and do not think users should pay for research material when used for education and research.
I think the questions are confusing - particularly the first. Attributing money to grey literature can cost money and certainly costs time - so tricky to answer.
My job would be unendurable without grey literature, and my results orders of magnitude less useful or reliable. I have to go off and find out about contingent valuation now.
I wouldn't be willing to give up my access to Grey literature. I think it would be unlikely in the current fiscal environment that my employer would be willing to pay for grey literature access, partiuclarly given the movement to open access for peer-reviwed journal publications
I am not prepared to give up access. My organisation would probably be willing to pay more than the 100 dollars I indicated.
Working papers are essential for me to keep abreast of what is going on in the field, without this access I couldn't do my job.
I would be very limited in my ability to response to current and relevant issues without access to grey literature and so would effectively only be able to perform at a lower level job classification. Grey literature is used by nearly all my colleagues and so my employer would not be able to pay a large amount for every person to access it.
relevance? in terms of taking a pay cut to ensure the organisation can ensure accessibility to Grey Lit...that's a different question...
Can't do job without access to media coverage; willing to pay based on media monitoring service plus subscriptions to basic info services
Difficult to estimate the value because grey literarute on Indigenous affairs is not entirely accurate but need to know what others are accessing. How much an employer is willing to pay depends on the value they place on achieving outcomes for Indigenous people. Even a service agency is not guaranteed to have that as their priority, so I can see the expense being a reason for some to dispense with accessing this source of info.
I am not really sure what a reasonable answer is here, nor do I really know how much it would cost to use each document I required. Basically, I would want to be compensated what it costs to get the grey literature.
The first question is too hard to answer given I dont use the infarmation personally but for work.
I don't really understand the first question which was why I entered a zero dollar value
No amount of money would convince me to give up such access.
I am studying at Masters level so it has been difficult for me to sepaerate my work vs pstudy use of grey literature.
I don't have an individual willingness to accept/pay as such as I use grey literature for business purposes. So have answered on the basis of what my business would be willing to accept/pay?
I am used to having access through academic and other libraries. I am unused to organisations that can afford to pay for the information. More usually, I would adapt to the lesser knowledge (although I don't believe this is really viable long term).
It'd be very hard to do any work if I had no access to grey literature, so putting a value on it is like putting a value on a proportion of my positions wage.
kind of weird questins. I think as an organisation we would pay for access to grey literature, and I would be personally sorry to lose access to it, but a dollar amount??
Note - the $1000 relates to what I would ask my employer to pay
I almost never pay for access to data online. I find other ways of getting access to paid sources if I need it.
If it is for work related, I do not want to spend money. Even for something to do with studies, I wouldn't want to spend my money. The University should fund it.
I can't reasonably see a future scenario where ALL access to grey litereature would be unavailable, so I don't think it's reasonable to quote a number here. It's far more likely that we regularly lose 10-20% of content as links decay etc. For the second question, I wouldn't be willing to ask for more than $3000 - not because I think that is the max value, but because I suspect my employer (a university) would no longer want to employee me if they thought my on-costs would rise by more than $3k annually to enable me to do my job!
I wasn't sure how to answer them. The $500 figure for minimum amount I would be willing to accept for giving up my access to grey literature was based just on what I might personally spend on reserach materails otherwise. However, it is a very difficult question to answer. I would not be able to do my job without access to grey literature. In relation to the second question, again hard to answer. I work for a large goverment department. I imagine they would be willing to pay for lots of research access, however, the program I work for does not have a high profile and current budget procedures would not give me access to much funds to access research sites. In terms of the money I would be willing to spend myself for access to sites, it would really depend how useful and relevant they were. I put down the figure of $100 as a possible figure I might spend myself - however, I really would not know till I knew what was on offer. Also I guess issues such as tax deductability would be relevant here too.Maybe a purchase arrangement could be made which is well suited to tax deductions.
Most of my work is as a voluntary mentor/advisor. These questions do not feel relevant to me.
THE LITERATURE SHOULD BE CHARGED UNDER THE ORGANISATION
For the first question, if there is absolutely no access to grey literature, it would be almost impossible to do most of my work - on that basis, this amount is the proportion of my salary that I think would be directly linked to access to grey literature with no suitable alternatives. For the second question, I personally would be only willing to pay up to around a $1000 for grey literature out of my own pocket. I'd be willing to ask my employer to pay for a much higher amount, but they may not be willing to do so. If we had to pay for every piece of grey literature we accessed out of our own pocket, it would be probably be more worth to change careers to something not involving research at all.
Our organisation does not have much of a budget for paying for literature.
I cannot work without grey literature so it is difficult to put a price on what the organisation would pay.
very simplistic and rough estimate only, as I have no idea what cost is involved
I think this is the responsibility of organisations rather than individual
Grey Literature MUST remain freely available
when it is the only source - it is invaluable. When a primary source it can be not possible to do a decent job of a critical assessment.
Impossible to quantify. If grey literature was not freely available, then it wouldn't be possible to do my job. I don't pay for resources as an individual; my employer (a state agency) would not have the funding for such expenditure.
Answers wouydl really depend on the content that is available. I cannot put a value on something without understanding the content.
I could not do my job without grey literature so the minimum amount is my annual salary. The maximum amount is in line with other licence costs - actually a bit more because access to grey literature is just so crucial for me.
I couldn't put a value on my use of grey literature, it is the source of human capital and professional connection. If I didn't have access to grey literature I couldn't do my job.
As a planner I rely on good publicly available templates, up to date evidence, frameworks, policy papers, etc and in turn I would not charge for access to my work. I entered $5000 based on some material I imagine having lower value ($2-5) and internal sharing being possible.
Neither case is feasible. Such material is central to what we do.
I am concerned that APO may be considering moving to a user pay model, rather than open access
I don't really understand the first question
I have not idea how to answer the above two questions, sorry.
It depends on the quailty - i think grey lit is too broad a catergory as it can mean differnt things
The above is hypothetical. I also think if there is money involved it shouldn't be on an individual basis, you'd save money to develop a collective library if need be, on particular topics.
I can't imagine my answers are meaningful, the scenario is so weird; also it is hard for me separate me as an individual with me as an individual employee of an organization with the constraints that brings. Also: I might have got things awry with this survey: I have been treating items (e.g. reports) published online (without necessarily a printed/offline equivalent published version) as 'gray literature'. Many organizations have stopped printing publications ('offline') and now just upload to/publish on the Web. It is online content that I use, never reading books on social policy/economics.
I mainly use Grey material for my work, so it is highly unlikely I would spend alot on money on it as an individual. Potentially I would only pay for media subscriptions.
Value of grey literature is low - research and peer reviewed of much greater use.
I find the first question really hard to answer. It would depend on the circumstances. If its about me personally not looking up grey literature in my own time then not very much, say %500/year. If its about using grey literature in my job then it would change my job significantly, probably making it hard so maybe a quarter of my wage $20000.
I've answered $0 to both these questions because they don't make sense to me.
Difficult to answer as we offer grants and in return have the right to the IP or a license to access the material generated. This is grey literature.
I don't get it. Most grey literature is information produced so that it can be used. If I had to pay for it, I may not want it. The questions are too hypothetical for me.
As a policy and research officer, there is no budget or money associated with the material you access. If material is not free, you don't include it.
first answer- my salary package... I don't think that I could do my job without access to grey literature
It is crucial to my work so would make it not possible to do, but then how much spare money do I have? how much money is there for research outside of grants in the social sciences/education? very little
Very rubbery estimates to some fairly hypothetical questions
i dont really understand the first- do you mean giving up from my wage? I dont see that i could do my job effectively at all without access to grey literature. As for how much id pay- probably the equivalent of a membership to a professional organsiation/ peak body in my field.
I'm not really sure about either of these two questions because the implications of both are more complex in value than I had time to reconcile.
As a forager of grey literature I cannot conceive of payments in any other than an incidental context. My answers were simply indications of confusion about the purpose of the questions.
I don't think I can put a price on either, the information is much to valuable and critical - yet if I had to pay for it - I'd send my organisation broke.
I hope that this eventuality would not arise.
The information is for my own use and interest as a volunteer in NGO (COTA) and the health system - Social Determinants of Health, Medicate Local Assn, DHHS health promotion and politics.
Not being able to access grey literature would compromise the quality of my work as it would prevent me from understanding our stakeholders. I can't say how much money I would give up - that would be a question for my department! As to how much we would pay to access grey literature - I don't know how much access to academic databases is but I think a grey literature database could charge more as the information is useful to a much wider audience (especially media articles). As to how much we would pay to access grey literature - I don't know how much access to academic databases is but I think a grey literature database could charge more as the information is useful to a much wider audience (espescially media articles).
I don't feel i can accurately estimate these
Being retired and a volunteer, I am not really in a position to pay much for access. But because I am a bit short of money to live on, I'm afraid a relatively small amount of money would persuade me to cease my volunteer work (which is mostly writing for Wikipedia and other web sites). That's not the value I would put on access to the grey literature but it's the price I'd give it up for (I could afford a holiday).
Ultimately the grey literature is not really important - it will only be used if it is freely available
The first question is just too difficult to properly comprehend.
I found these questions highly difficult to respond to as it may be that there would be a massive adjustment across the board and the way research is done would change n my field.
in the current organisational environment it is highly likely that access to research and grey literature would not be supported - this is an organisation that is not willing to support access to good demographic data ... and we are a community service organisation
The value of information that I cannot access is hard to evaluate, given that I don't have to to assess. The dollar amount prepared to pay is also hard to estimate as desirability can conflict with real budget constraints. The value of transparency, compared with opportunity losses from obsfucation, can be hard to estimate: usefulness and uses of information can vary widely. Lack of information can provoke efforts to estimate or guess what is missing; efforts that may have been more profitably spent using the information. However, political considerations can overshadow economic or academic benefits. Political concerns in public and private warp otherwise rational evaluations. Concerns that opponents/competitors might leverage advantage from revelation of 'true' intentions or derail sensitive negotiations. Confidentiality agreements can give more access, but defeat much of the purpose if the access cannot be reported on/about.
Hard to estimate in $ terms, but it would be virtually impossible to do my job without grey literature, yet paying for it as an individual or organisation is very difficult
Clients do not remunerate in time or costs of literature reviews
Not valuable question. I couldn't work without access to grey material.
Not sure how to answer the previous two questions.
I cannot meaningfully answer the questions, sorry. My employer is a university and would presumably be willing to pay a large amount of money for access. I personally could not afford to do so.
As a community organisation we cannot afford to spend vast amounts of money to access grey literature. We rely on the information being freely available to either our organisation or a stakeholder organisation.
Payment would be more justifiable if the access was to multiple source of grey literature
Couldn't do my job properly without access to grey literature hence the fisrt figure is a reflection of a part of years wages
The cost to an individual vs an institution would adversely affect independent research scholars
I'm not confident about these estimates above - this is really impossible to quantify at a psoralen level. Not comfortable with these questions' validity ...
Most of th einformation I access are available through the organisation I work for and the professional association I belong to and to which Ipay an anniual fee.
the 100M represents the value I place upon my time/life and the importance of the research. The 10K is probably what my employer does already pay for access.
Work within government under tight fiscal management - not easy to purchase research
First question - Does not really make sense, even as an extreme hypothetical Second question - I would be willing to pay nothing but the employeer willingly pays provided there is a good case to do so
cannot put figure on what I would accept for first question as grey literature is crucial for my topic. I could not do it without grey literature.
I think the last question is a little impractical. Working for a large organisation I would expect the cost of access to be spread across the entire employee base.
I dont understand the first question. If i didnt have access to research I couldn't do my job
If I could not access grey literature, I couldn't do my job, and therefore I would need my wage replacing. Thus I have put $70,000 for a year.
I could not do my job without it, but it is hard to put a figure on the value, as my orgn is NFP
Without grey literature could not do a lot of my work.
Based on annual costs associated with grey literature
THIS Is A DIFFICULT ONE AS MY AGENCY SUPPLY ALL THE MATERIAL I NEED FOR MY WORK, HOWEVER I WOULD BE PREPARED TO MAKE SOME CONTRIBUTION IF IT WAS REQUIRED
Access to as many sources of information is critical to the discharge of my duties, I cannot countenace a situation where I could not have access to grey literature. More importantly money could not compensate me should the situation arise.
As an experienced questionnaire designer,I doubt that you will get meaningful repsonses to these two questions due to the complexity of the wording and the concepts.
If I were paying - $100 If my employer were paying - $500 This difference is of course because I am a Masters student, and as a result, unemployed. Perhaps the answer would be different if I had an income.
It is far too easy to source and pirate info that is unreasonably priced or unreasonably restricted. I don't for a second believe in creating an elitist system of educational privilege.
my research would not be possible without access to grey literature. It is inconceivable to me that it wouldn't be freely available.
We operate on a very low budget and employ one person 20 hrs per week. If the literature available was relevant, there was a large variety of sources available and it was easy to access, it would be worth spending money on as it would reduce time spend searching for information elsewhere.
I work for an NGO that does not have large budgets for souring materials so would be looking for sharing or reduction in costs for payment.
I don't feel confident putting monetary values on these things.
As I work for a not for profit organisation, access to free grey literature is important in terms of analysing trends and sectoral analysis and to support tendering processes. My role requires access to up to date information (pre publication) but funding for access to literature would likely impact on my wage due to limited funding sources.
I hate these types of questions. Economists love them. They are rubbish. I need grey literature for my work. without it I can't work. I like working. I don't want to not work for a year
Maximum figure is based on reports for multiple organisations, not per organisation.
A monetary amount should not be put on acquiring knowledge, particularly grey literature when it may well be freely available, should searching for it be more efficient.
Re the second question, we would want more than one licence and also provide access to the public (I work in a public library)
legislatures should have 'free' access to information
Grey literature is not vital for my role.
I do not have access to peer reviewed journal articles and spend $49 per annum to get access through the Melbourne University Alumni Association.
this material should continue to be free to the individual or if a requirement for work then paid by the employer
I choose not to answer as I am accessing literature for my job, and I have never considered its value. My organistion provides me access to the information I require.
I haven't answered these because it doesn't make sense to ask public servants how much they would accept to give up access to information needed to do job. I couldn't personally accept money anyway and would not be paying for it personally if had to pay for access.
I only access grey literature on behalf of my employer. More than enough published books at home to read for myself.
Hard to answer I do have internal library access I will still do my work without the materials
indivdually based on $50pw and organisation $100 pm
Hopefully access to information isnt going to be charged for!
100 for a single user lixence ... anymore than that & I'd be expecting longer access... I understand that yeah, I place a high value on the data ... thats as an input to other processes that would fall over without the data. But I refuse to pay a high value for access because it adds up across so many single user licences that it becomes cost prohibitive.
I have never thought about this question
As an individual, I'd pay 150 - but as the value is ultimately to my employer, I'd ask them to pay 300
My employer should facilitate access to the reosurces i need to do the work
Almost impossible to estimate without having any idea of base/access costing
I really have no idea - but answers are required.
odd to consider what I would be paid to give up information. Information should be FREE to increase everyones knowledge and power to influence positive change in the world. Putting a price on accessing it (which is what we currently have with journals) means those with means are the ones with the knowledge.....This is perplexing.
Grey literature may be important but a lot of it is already funded one way or another and has value to the publishing organisation
I am not able to countenance the first - and I suspect that's not unusual with such framing.
Difficult questions to consider, because of the hypothetical nature of the questions. More and more grey literature is available at little or no cost to a consumer, but not necessarily discoverable.
It is impossible to put a money figure, working at a government organisation.
I'm still a big believer in hard copies and often seek out purchases of hard copies. It protects me against loss of soft copies, and I prefer to read in hard copy. So presume your questions means "all" access to grey research, including hard copy storage and availability. I would still have my library so could cope for a year. Beyond that, I'd have to think harder.
These questions are difficult to answer in the absence of a plausible scenario, which gives a sense of the scope of loss of access.
These questions are impossible to answer. The amount I would be willing to pay personally is quite different to the amount I might ask my employer to pay.
If I could not access grey literature half my capacity to do my job would be lost, so i would expect to get half my wage in return for lost access. It would be incredibly difficult to justify to an employer the cost of Grey Literature access. But I would imagine that not having the depth and breadth of information I identify and report on through the various sources would quickly be noticed and some expenditure would be approved.
Depends on what grey literature it is and whether it is truly literature that is not accessible otherwise.
I don't understand them. Especially the first question.