Two Items from Peter Suber's Open Access News
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_11_12_fosblogarchive.html#116344467230316048
1. Draft report from Australian government recommends OA mandate
The Australian Government Productivity Commission has
released an important study, Public Support for Science
and Innovation: Draft Research Report (November 2,
2006). (Thanks to Colin Steele.)
http://www.pc.gov.au/study/science/draftreport/index.html
Excerpt:
Impediments to the functioning of the innovation system [:]....There
is scope for the ARC and the NHMRC to play a more active role than
they currently do in promoting access to the results of research
they fund. They could require as a condition of funding that research
papers, data and other information produced as a result of
their funding are made publicly available such as in an "open
access" repository.
The Australian Government has sought to enhance access to the results
of publicly funded research through the:
- development of an Accessibility Framework for Publicly Funded
Research; and
- allocation of funding under the Systemic Infrastructure Initiative
to build technical information infrastructure that supports the
creation, dissemination of and access to knowledge, and the use of
digital assets and their management (box 5.10)....
In a recent report to DEST, Houghton et al. (2006) estimated net
gains from improving access to publicly-funded research across the
board and in particular research sectors (table 5.2).
http://www.dest.gov.au/NR/rdonlyres/0ACB271F-EA7D-4FAF-B3F7-0381F441B175/13935/DEST_Research_Communications_Cost_Report_Sept2006.pdf
- The estimated benefits from an assumed 5 per cent increase in access
and efficiency and level of social rate of return were between $2
million (ARC competitively-funded research) and $628 million (gross
expenditure on R&D).
- Assuming a move from this level of improved access and efficiency
to a national system of institutional repositories in Australia over
twenty years, the estimated benefit/cost ratios were between 3.1
(NHMRC-funded research) to 214 (gross expenditure on R&D)....
Of interest, is whether funding agencies themselves could become
more actively involved in enhancing access to the results of the
research they fund....
In their recent report to DEST, Houghton et al. (2006)
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/120-guid.html
made a number of suggestions to improve access to and dissemination
of research including:
- developing a national system of institutional or enterprise-based
repositories to support new modes of enquiry and research; ...
- ensuring that the Research Quality Framework supports and encourages
the development of new, more open scholarly communication
mechanisms, rather than encouraging "a retreat" by researchers
to conventional publication forms and media, and a reliance by
evaluators upon traditional publication metrics (for example, by
ensuring dissemination and impact are an integral part of evaluation);
- encouraging funding agencies (for example, ARC and NHMRC) to mandate
that the results of their supported research be made available in
open access archives and repositories;
- encouraging universities and research institutions to support the
development of new, more open scholarly communication mechanisms,
through, for example, the development of "hard or soft open access"
mandates for their supported research; and
- providing support for a structured advocacy program to raise
awareness and inform all stakeholders about the potential benefits
of more open scholarly communication alternatives, and provide
leadership in such areas as copyright (for example, by encouraging
use of "creative commons" licensing) (pp. xii-xiii)....
Several impediments to innovation should be addressed: ...
- published papers and data from ARC and NHMRC-funded projects should
be freely and publicly available....
---
Comment [from Peter Suber]: It's important that this report was
written by a government commission and important that it recommends
an OA mandate.
From the file of preliminaries:
You are invited to examine this draft research study and to
provide written submissions to the Commission. Submissions should
reach the Commission by Thursday, 21 December 2006. In addition,
the Commission intends to hold a limited number of consultations
to obtain feedback on this draft.
The Commission intends to present its final report to the
Government in early March 2007.
The Productivity Commission gives no address (and worse, no email
address) specifically for comments, but it does give this contact
info for its Media and Publications division:
Locked Bag,
2 Collins Street
East Melbourne VIC 8003
Fax: (03) 9653 2303
Email: maps_at_pc.gov.au
[Peter Suber, Open Access News]
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_11_12_fosblogarchive.html#116344467230316048http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_11_12_fosblogarchive.html#116355782186969317
2. Another OA recommendation for Australia
The Australian government has published the report, Research Quality
Framework: Assessing the quality and impact of research in Australia:
The Recommended RQF, October 2006, which has been "endorsed by the
Development Advisory Group for the RQF". (Thanks to Colin Steele.)
http://www.dest.gov.au/NR/rdonlyres/7E5FDEBD-3663-4144-8FBE-AE5E6EE47D29/14572/TheRecommendedRQFwebsiterelease14November2007.pdf/nsfagenda.pdf
Excerpt:
5.3. The RQF Information Management System is to be developed
recognising that the Australian Government announced the RQF in
conjunction with the Accessibility Framework in May 2004 as part
of the Backing Australia's Ability - Building our Future through
Science and Innovation package.
The purpose of the Research Accessibility Framework is to ensure
that information about research and how to access it is available
to researchers and the wider community. This is particularly true
of publicly-funded research; as a general proposition, it should be
accessible to the public.
There's an article about the report in the November 15 issue of The
Australian, but it doesn't mention the OA recommendation.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20758602-12332,00.html
Comment [by Peter Suber]: This OA recommendation converges beautifully
with the OA recommendation from study by the Australian Government
Productivity Commission (blogged here yesterday). The odds that
Australia will adopt an OA mandate for publicly-funded research have
to go up as more official commissions deliver the same message.
[Peter Suber: Open Access News]
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_11_12_fosblogarchive.html#116355782186969317
Received on Fri Nov 17 2006 - 04:09:44 GMT