The Australian Research Council (ARC) and the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) today called on researchers to make the results of research funded by the Australian Government publicly available, whenever possible and appropriate.
The ARC and NHMRC Chief Executive Officers are keen to ensure that research findings are available to other researchers and to the community.
“The Australian Government makes a major annual investment in research to support its essential role in improving the well-being of our society,” NHMRC CEO Professor Warwick Anderson said.
“We are committed to ensuring the Australian community has access to the outcomes of government-funded research. And by making research findings widely available, we are also improving our ability to translate research findings into real benefits for the community.
“Accordingly, we encourage researchers, at the earliest opportunity, to deposit their data and any publications arising from government-funded research in an appropriate repository that has free public access.” ...
The Australian Government, through the ARC and NHMRC, invests more than $1 billion in research funding each year. They are the key advisers to the Government on research and administer several thousand research projects across all disciplines at any given time. Both organisations require regular reports from funding recipients on the status of their publicly-funded research.
PS: Both agencies request OA to the research they fund, and both require grantees who choose not to comply with the request to justify their non-compliance. For many observers, including me, this extra obligation effectively converts the request into a mandate.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/25/2007 09:02:00 PM.
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.
