Australia to make health research open access
What the public funds, the public gets to use
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While America seriously considers the insane Research Works Act (banning the open publication of publicly-funded research), Australia is moving in the other direction. Its National Health and Medical Research Council has announced that all funded research will be made available to the public starting July.
Without detailing what license will be used for publication, the NHMRC’s CEO Professor Warwick Anderson has announced the move in this post at The Conversation.
While Australia’s public research is not under the same attack as is taking place in the USA, the question of open access to academic research is a growing debate. Australian researchers are lining up with their international peers in opposing the dominance of Elsevier in academic publishing.
The NHMRC is a major player in Australia’s scientific research, allocated nearly $AU800 million in the 2011-2012 budget and disbursing thousands of research grants annually. It also supports research fellowships of various kinds, and provides career development and scholarships to researchers.
In announcing the decision, Professor Anderson cited similar policies espoused by the UN’s National Institutes of Health, the UK’s Medical Research Council, and the Wellcome Trust. ®
COMMENTS
This sort of thing should be across the board
After all, govenments always fail when they try to commercialise the info themselves and usually it just ends up in a silo, rotting.
Well done to them.
This is refreshing news! I hope the license is well thought out, but this will do a lot of people a lot of good.
Seems Fair
I'm all for that, I personally wouldn't have an IMEDIATE use for such information, but im sure those of the medical profession would see this as a god send. What I'm hoping is that this becomes a running theme and other info is published. It was a rough start, but the government has been good as of late, I'm looking forward to the NBN. Yes I'm an Aussie from down unda!
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