Benefits to Australia of Selected CABI Products IAS — October ½ 3
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Benefi ts to Australia of selected CABI products David Pearce and Michael Monck Centre for International Economics October 2006 Th e Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) operates as part of Australia’s international development cooperation program, with a mission to achieve more-productive and sustainable agricultural systems, for the benefi t of developing countries and Australia. It commissions collaborative research between Australian and developing-country researchers in areas where Australia has special research competence. It also administers Australia’s contribution to the International Agricultural Research Centres. ACIAR seeks to ensure that the outputs of its funded research are adopted by farmers, policy makers, quarantine offi cers and other benefi ciaries. In order to monitor the eff ects of its projects, ACIAR commissions independent assessments of selected projects. Th is series reports the results of these independent studies. Communications regarding any aspects of this series should be directed to: Th e Research Program Manager Policy Linkages and Impact Assessment Program ACIAR GPO Box 1571 Canberra ACT 2601 Australia tel +612 62170500 email <[email protected]> © Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research GPO Box 1571, Canberra ACT 2601 Pearce, D. and Monck, M., Benefi ts to Australia of selected CABI products. Impact Assessment Series Report No. 42, October 2006. Th is report may be downloaded and printed from <www.aciar.gov.au>. ISSN 1832-1879 Editing and design by Clarus Design Printing by Elect Printing Foreword CAB International, known generally as CABI, is one from using the two CABI products is between $1.2m of the 15 International Agricultural Research Centres and $2.2m per year. Th is is a conservative estimate of (IARCs) that the Australian Centre for International the benefi ts because the savings are likely to have been Agricultural Research (ACIAR) provides funding for used to support additional research activities within the in its multilateral program. CABI is interesting as an research organisations. international research organisation in that many of its I thank the Centre for International Economics team activities are in the form of publishing, abstracting and and the cooperating members of CABI and Australian dissemination of scientifi c information. Th ese services research organisations for the innovative eff ort used to play an important role in all of the research activities undertake this study and for providing the information funded by ACIAR and in other research around needed to complete it. the world. Th is impact assessment study is part of a series of studies commissioned by ACIAR over the past 10 years that look at the impact on Australia of research under- taken by some of the important IARCs. Until now these IARC impact assessment studies have been published Peter Core in the research series of the institutions of the people Director, ACIAR undertaking the studies. ACIAR feels, however, that they are best published in its Impact Assessment Series so that a consistent record of them is kept and they are readily accessible. While CABI undertakes a range of activities, this study focused on just two components: CAB Abstracts and the CABI Crop Protection Compendium. Th e impact study diff ers from many that have been undertaken in that it measures the benefi ts from CABI activities in terms of the resulting savings in transaction costs for other research groups. Th e authors undertook a detailed survey of Australian users of these services to estimate the savings in research time that were generated as a result. Th e study suggests that the benefi t to Australia Benefits to Australia of selected CABI products IAS — October ½ 3 Contents Foreword . 3 Acknowledgments . 7 Summary . 8 1 Introduction . 10 Background . 10 Th is report . 10 Outline . 10 2 CABI and its products . 11 CAB abstracts . 11 CABI Compendia . 15 3 Th e economics of literature review and information dissemination . 17 4 User surveys . 20 Survey set-up and design . 20 CAB Abstracts: survey of library administrators . 21 CAB Abstracts: survey of end users . 22 End user survey: CABI Compendia . 24 5 Valuing the benefi ts . 29 Background . 29 Increase in time per researcher . 30 Valuation of the time . 31 Application to an appropriate population base . 33 6 Conclusions . 35 References . 36 Benefits to Australia of selected CABI products IAS — October ½ 5 Figures 1. Notional components of research activity . 17 2. Trade-off s: literature search versus other research activities . 18 3. CAB Abstracts sample frame and responses . 20 4. Frequency distribution of use of CAB Abstracts by survey respondents . 25 5. Frequency distribution of average CAB Abstracts session duration of survey respondents . 25 6. Frequency of access of CAB Abstracts versus session duration for survey respondents . 25 7. Frequency distribution of the numbers of useful articles found by survey respondents per session on CAB Abstracts . 25 8. Plot of CAB Abstracts session duration versus number of useful articles found by survey respondents . 25 9. Frequency distribution of survey respondents’ estimates of the relative increase in time that would be needed to undertake literature searches without CAB Abstracts . 25 10. Survey respondents’ estimates of the reduced proportion of information that would be obtained if CAB Abstracts were not available . ..