Australia's Department of Education, Science, and Training (DEST) will invest an additional $19.4 million in the country's Systematic Intrastructure Initiative, which includes OA repositories. From the call for proposals:
Under Backing Australia’s Ability – An Innovation Action Plan for the Future 2001 (BAA), the Systemic Infrastructure Initiative (SII) will provide $246m over 5 years to upgrade research infrastructure at Australian universities. The SII is funding projects which will help promote Australian research output and build Australian research information infrastructure through the development of distributed digital repositories and common technical services that manage access and authorisation....On 22 August 2005, the Hon Dr Brendan Nelson MP, Minister for Education, Science and Training, announced funding for nine projects involving over 30 Australian universities. Many of the funded projects comply with more than one of the areas identified and support many of the themes and problems that are emerging through the consultations for NCRIS and e-Research Committees. The funded projects are known collectively as the Managed Environments for Research Repository Infrastructure (MERRI) Projects.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
