The draft guidelines --the result of a public consultation which ended in June 2008-- require deposit in institutional repositories and OA whenever possible. Excerpt:
...[The Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA)] recognises that the Australian Government has provided support for the establishment of digital repositories through the Australian Scheme for Higher Education Repositories (ASHER) program....
Where the institution or the researcher is the copyright owner, or where the copyright owner has given express permission for the research output to be stored in an ‘open access’ repository, the research output should be stored in an ‘open access’ repository or in an ‘open access’ part of an institution’s ERA repository....
The ARC will manage and control access to research outputs and will only allow ARC staff, REC [Research Evaluation Committee] members and peer reviewers and other ARC authorised personnel access to research outputs that are stored in an institution’s repository for the purposes of the ERA initiative....
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.
