11th April 2010, 09:26 PM
Can't speak of Wales or Scotland, but as yet, I've never yet found an English HER that charges for 'private', 'academic' or best of all 'bona-fide' research... Nice to know we're valued that highly.
That said, from personal experience, a lot of HERs- about 30-40% of the HERs I contacted were pretty poor at getting back to me (i.e. didn't at all,or only after a couple of reminders). This was a couple of years back, so things may have changed- it seems to depend on the individual HER officer, and as ever, getting a real person rather than a generic office email address helps enormously. That and if it's a specific report, the contractors are usually much more helpful.
That said, from personal experience, a lot of HERs- about 30-40% of the HERs I contacted were pretty poor at getting back to me (i.e. didn't at all,or only after a couple of reminders). This was a couple of years back, so things may have changed- it seems to depend on the individual HER officer, and as ever, getting a real person rather than a generic office email address helps enormously. That and if it's a specific report, the contractors are usually much more helpful.