Australia's National Scholarly Communications Forum (NSCF) and Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) will work together to widen access to scholarly communication in three ways:
"the encouragement of institutional/subject repositories, including the adoption of university-wide policies to collect and archive institutional research output, for example in connection with RAE exercises;"
"the adoption of further open access mechanisms, such as open access journals and not-for-profit electronic publishing. Best practice to reflect established mechanisms, such as peer review but adopting flexible criteria within the
digital environment for evaluation in relation to promotion and tenure; and"
"collaboration with relevant international bodies, such as the Wellcome Trust, the Max Planck Institute, OECD, UK Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and the Open Society Institute (OSI), on global open access initiatives."
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.
