Lack of current central journal subscriptions directly impedes interdisciplinary research I've railed against a local large public university library's collection policies. Namely, they do not buy current electronic subscriptions to the most central journals in each of the large social science research fields. (two examples are: JASIST and ASR). Instead, they claim that the most frequent users of these journals will have access through their own or departmental subscriptions. Other users can access (sometimes crappily scanned) full text with a 1 year embargo through various aggregators such as Proquest and Ebsco.

I also sort of follow the view that there really is no interdisciplinary science -- each researcher is so narrowly focused... yadda, yadda, yadda.

Anyhoo- I complain that CS researchers don't read and cite our work, but perhaps they don't have access to it! I also complain sometimes (but a lot less frequently) about lacking ties between communications, psychology, education, and the LIS literature. But, hey, if you can't serendipitously find it, if you don't attend the same conferences, if you can't even read it if you want to without magically knowing about (and having access to) the hidden socy library on the 4th floor of the Escher-like building...  ¶ 1:17 PM| |cites (technorati) |