I thought I'd flag up some online discussion over the British Association of Social Workers' continued withdrawal of its British Journal of Social Work from the literature available to social workers via the SCIE Athens electronic access scheme.

The first thing to say is this isn't a new move. I'm told it dates back to the very public spat between SCIE, BASW and The College over social work representation last year, a situation that doesn't need revisiting.

Amicable talks have apparently being ongoing between those parties in a bid to resolve the situation for some time. That's good news but the block on British Journal of Social Work access via the SCIE scheme continues and social workers say the "political games" over access are impeding their efforts to keep up to speed with research. 

Writing on the Notsobigsociety blog, social worker ermintrude wrote:

"I used to make considerable use of the British Journal of Social Work but seeing as my access to research literature is limited (possibly like many local authority social workers) to the SCIE (Social Care Institute of Excellence) Athens scheme and they no longer are able to subscribe to that journal, I have turned to other journals to find and source information that is useful to me."

"It makes me think less of a journal that would play political games with allowing access or not but it is a sharp and important lesson about the need for practitioners to have good access to information."

The post led to some discussion on Twitter (I've pulled out tweets below so you can read the conversation), with several posters critical of the decision to limit access to the journal. Eventually BASW responded to say that the link between the journals and the SCIE scheme would be restored with "the creation of the UK College of Social Work."

So that's the latest on this delicate situation. We could see a "UK College" established but in the meantime ermintrude and other local authority social workers in her position won't have access to the journal. Watch this space for more developments.

Image: Paul Lowry (Flickr)

Read the complete post at http://www.communitycare.co.uk/blogs/social-work-blog/2012/08/row-as-political-games-prevent.html