9th April 2010, 02:50 PM
Information available for free would be great but this is a fairly Utopian dream - the information costs money to collect, store and make available.
This week so far I have downloaded two articles from fairly academic journals - cost c. ?18 each - and had an HER send me 3 scanned 'grey literature' reports on evaluations - cost c. ?140 as this represents the minimum 1 hour charge for HER staff time. For either option it has been a whole lot cheaper that getting in the car and driving 1 hour each way to a university library or 2 hours each way to the HER. The downloading was instant and the very competent HER staff turned my request around within a couple of hours of a phone call.
Beamo
This week so far I have downloaded two articles from fairly academic journals - cost c. ?18 each - and had an HER send me 3 scanned 'grey literature' reports on evaluations - cost c. ?140 as this represents the minimum 1 hour charge for HER staff time. For either option it has been a whole lot cheaper that getting in the car and driving 1 hour each way to a university library or 2 hours each way to the HER. The downloading was instant and the very competent HER staff turned my request around within a couple of hours of a phone call.
Beamo