[LINK] Productivity Commission Suggests Open Access to Research Results

[Tom Worthington]

The Productivity Commission released the draft research report 
"Public Support for Science and Innovation",  2 November 2006 
<http://www.pc.gov.au/study/science/draftreport/index.html>. The 
report suggests that those receiving government research funding be 
required to make their results freely available:

"There is scope for the Australian Research Council (ARC) and the 
National Health and Medical Research Council (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."

Unfortunately, and ironically, many will not be able to navigate 
their way through the complex way the report has been published 
on-line. The Commission has obviously tried to make the information 
available, but has tried too hard providing too many documents to 
have to choose from.

The Productivity Commission is not alone in this problem. It is an 
area where Australian researchers receiving funding for open access 
and repository work could make a useful contribution to the nation. 
Otherwise we might end up with government and university repositories 
full of information which in theory is freely accessible but which no 
one can find their way around.

So far the Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories (APSR) 
<http://www.apsr.edu.au/> work has not shown any solutions to the 
problem. The APSR itself is producing large hard to read reports 
which will clog up the electronic repositories. Unusable repositories 
will not be sustainable.

Neither the Productivity Commission, nor APSR work, appears to have 
addressed the business models for Open Access. The emphasis seems to 
be on providing repositories which are electronic recycling bins for 
other people's publications. The assumption is that someone in the 
USA or Europe will publish Australian research reports and we should 
be grateful if they let us have a copy for our repository.

The result is that the companies in the USA and Europe will make 
money from publishing Australian research and will receive the kudos 
from its publication. It is assumed that no one wants to publish in 
an Australian based publication as it would be low status. However, 
as the ACS has shown with JRPIT and CRPIT, there is a role for 
Australian publishing in leading our region, promoting our research 
and providing Australian jobs.

Of course I could be biased as I am the Chair of Scholarly publishing 
for the ACS. ;-)

ps: Longer blogged version: 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2006/11/productivity-commission-suggests-open.html>.



Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                http://www.tomw.net.au/
Director, ACS Communications Tech Board   http://www.acs.org.au/ctb/
Visiting Fellow, ANU      Blog: http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/atom.xml