Shelter report exposes housing situation in UK

In a previous blog post we highlighted a recent report studying the housing situation in St Andrews. We have now archived a new study commissioned by Shelter, and conducted by the University of St Andrews, which highlights the UK wide housing situation.

The report came out with 3 key findings:

1.  In the UK there is a high risk combination of low pay, high cost housing, and limited housing benefits.
2.  A drop in income is usually followed by a house move as there is little support offered by the housing safety net* to meet the cost of rent/mortgage payments while a new job is sought.
3.  More affordable housing is needed to reduce reliance on the housing safety net.

*The housing safety net is defined as the various housing benefits that are designed to alleviate the pressure of mortgage and rent payments.

Over 6 million households receive support from the housing safety net, of which 500,000 homes are in need of additional support. Added to this are the 100,000 homes that are in need of support but are not currently receiving any sort of help from the housing safety net. The report concludes that there are currently around 625,000 homes that are falling through the safety net and are desperately in need of additional support.

The full report can be viewed here.

4000 items milestone: Featured researcher - Dr Kim McKee

Recently we hit the milestone of 4000 items in the University's research repository: Research@StAndrews:FullText! That is over 4000 full text research papers and theses available to read free of charge anywhere in the world without the paywall barriers that usually accompany academic research.

It is also great to see that this milestone was reached in less than 12 months compared with the 13 months the previous 1000 milestone took to reach. This really shows the hard work over the past year from everyone involved in the research publication process, whether in research or support. So, we in the Open Access team would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has assisted in reaching this milestone.

To celebrate we decided to analyse the content in the repository, to identify authors with the highest number of OA papers, those with individual items that took us to the 4000 mark, and the authors that have the highest percentage of their publications in our repository - what we are calling the ‘OA Ratio”. Over the next few weeks we will be posting blogs about individual authors highlighted during our analysis of the repository.


The researcher with the highest OA Ratio, and the subject of this first blog post, is Dr Kim McKee.
 

Kim is a lecturer in the School of Geography and Geosciences, and is also Director of the Centre for Housing Research. Kim is also a keen user of social media, using twitter and a blog to advance her views on social and urban policies.
 

Kim stood out during our analysis as she has an astonishing ratio of 57% Open Access content! That is, 57% of Kim's authored content in the Research Information System (PURE) is Open Access and freely available for anyone in the world to read. The nature of Housing Research makes Open Access a natural choice; as the Centre for Housing Research website states: "It is pivotal to our ethos that our research has wider social benefits."

The statistics for Kim's research held in the repository reflects this desire for wider social impact. One particular article, Post-Foucauldian Governmentality, is the fourth most downloaded paper of all the Open Access publications in PURE in the past year, and the fifth most viewed. As the figures below show, publishing in the repository can have a significant additional impact.

We approached Kim McKee for her thoughts about Open Access and the recent milestone, and this is what she had to say:

"I’m delighted to hear I have the highest Open Access Ratio in PURE!  As a researcher engaged in policy-relevant research in the fields of housing and social policy, it is really important to me that my work reaches a wider audience beyond the academy.  Open Access is a really easy and accessible way for me to make my work freely available to colleagues in policy and practice who may not have institutional subscriptions to academic journals.  But it also benefits me as an author by increasing the visibility of my research in the public domain, and maximising the likelihood of it impacting and influencing policy agendas.  I think Open Access and Social Media (e.g. blogging, tweeting) are the future of academic publishing, and I would encourage all academics to think about how they can take this forward in their own work.  Advancing and sharing knowledge is at the heart of what we do as researchers, and Research@StAndrews can really support and enable this process whilst also protecting intellectual property and copyright."

It is very inspiring for us to see a researcher really embracing the fundamental principles of Open Access. It is especially nice to see as this quote really crystallises the feeling we have regarding the growing level of support for Open Access across the University as a whole.

Kim went on to say: "Having the library on hand to help, makes it much easier for authors to do open access properly."

From everyone in the Open Access team thank you Kim for your words of encouragement, and well done attaining the henceforth sure to be coveted and sought after Highest OA Ratio award!


Over the next few weeks we will be highlighting other researchers who have made significant contributions to the ever growing research repository, Research@StAndrews:FullText. Watch this space!