Freedom of information (FOI) requests are increasingly used in sociology, criminology and other social science disciplines to examine government practices and processes. University ethical review boards (ERBs) in Canada have not typically subjected researchers' FOI requests to independent review, although this may be changing in the United Kingdom…

Introduction: The National Institutes of Health public access policy requires the principal investigators of any Institutes-funded research to submit their manuscript to PubMed Central, and the open access publisher Public Library of Science submits all articles to PubMed Central, irrespective of funder. Whether the investigators, who made the…

This study employed the survey design on a purposive sample of 100 English Second Language (ESL) teachers from Swaziland and South Africa's Eastern Cape Province, to investigate the extent to which they accessed, utilised and conducted research to better their practice. A survey questionnaire and follow-up structured interviews generated…

This paper explores methods that researchers, including students, use to gain access to research being conducted in their subject areas. I conducted a review of the literature on research methodology to find out how the access problem is defined and the points highlighted by scholars. The review was based on articles accessed through databases…

This quantitative study investigated the interrelationships among faculty researchers, publishers, librarians, and academic administrators when dealing with the open access of scholarly research. This study sought to identify the nature of any relationship between the perceived attitudes and actions of academic administrators and an…

This book offers useful, prescriptive advice on how to enter different field settings for interviewing and observation. The chapters of part 1, "Stages of Access," are: (1) "Finding Informants"; (2) "Human Subjects and Permission To Contact Informants"; (3) "Making Initial Contact"; (4) "Developing a Rapport"; and (5) "Exiting: Ending the…

In many fields and in education in particular, researchers, such as teachers, are inclined to believe that because they are enmeshed in the field or have good relationships with students, issues of politics, power and status will exert minimal influence and that access to the field will be smooth and unproblematic. In this paper, three doctoral…