Electronic journals: user realities — the truth about content usage among the STM community

Kate Worlock, a consultant for research and consultancy organization Electronic Publishing Services, reports on a study conducted for the Ingenta Institute on how UK users access, use, and pay for electronic articles from scientific journals. The findings reveal a research community increasingly conditioned to expecting content as soon as it is available for dissemination rather than waiting for the delivery of the physical journal itself.     

Lies,damn lies,and statistics revisited a comparison of three methods of representing change

Numerous authors have argued that change is fundamental to the education process, and that the measurement of change is an essential element in efforts to assess the quality and effectiveness of postsecondary education. Despite widespread support for the concept of studying student growth and development, many researchers have been critical of existing methods of representing change. Intended for assessment practitioners and educational researchers, this study examines three methods of measuring change: (1) gain scores, (2) residual scores, and (3) repeated measures. Analyses indicate that all three methods are seriously flawed, although repeated measures offer the greatest potential for adequately representing student growth and development.Paper Presented at the Thirty-First Annual Forum of the Association for Institutional Research, San Francisco, May 26–29 1991.Approximately 10 percent of the cost of this research was supported by a $2000 grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) via the AAHE Assessment Forum.Part of the title for this paper is borrowed from Michael Wheeler (1976),Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics: The Maniupulation of Public Opinion in America, New York, Dell.     

Why fund heritage? The role of research in the Heritage Lottery Fund

The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) distributes money from the National Lottery to heritage. Since 1995 the HLF has given some £3 billion to 15,000 projects. As a small organization with a relatively large remit, applied research has been critical to the work of the HLF, helping it set priorities, make decisions and evaluate its programmes. Key research issues include: defining the needs of the heritage, the best means of evaluating projects and programmes, and capturing the economic and social benefits of heritage. Young people can be a difficult audience for heritage funders to reach, and it is shown how evaluation informed a dedicated new programme. The example of its support of parks shows how a need identified through research became a priority for the HLF, and has since been taken up by government. Finally, the HLF has developed a distinctive approach based on a very open concept of what heritage is and means to people. Research into public attitudes to heritage has been central to this.

The Lottery will be reviewed in the lead up to the licence review in 2009 and inevitably questions will be asked about the future of funding. In another context, the Secretary of State has asked how it is possible to capture the value of culture. In common with organizations who deal with sports, art and culture, the HLF needs to capture the benefits of funding in a way that makes sense to both politicians and the public. Doing this depends upon robust research.