[OKFN-AU] Australian Government told to make open access research mandatory

[Tom Worthington]

On Friday, Bernard Rentier, Rector, University of Liege, Belgium, told a 
meeting of senior academics and government officials how open access to 
research publications can become a routine part of government funded 
research.

Professor Rentier was speaking at the Australian National University in 
Canberra on "Open Access to Scholarly Publications: A European 
Perspective", as part of a visiting Belgium delegation. He pointed out 
that open access was opposed by most publishers as it conflicted with 
their business model, whereas it fitted the university's business model. 
Within universities the researchers who create publications do not pay 
for them, the library does.

Professor Rentier suggested the Liege Model could be adopted more 
widely. The university started creating a repository and a policy 
requiring authors to deposit their publications with it. He pointed out 
that it is difficult to get academics to comply with such a policy, but 
it was possible. One way is to incorporate this in the requirements for 
research grants: the researcher is required to agree to deposit their 
publication in the repository or they do not get a grant.

See: 
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/853-The-Liege-ORBi-model-Mandatory-policy-without-rights-retention-but-linked-to-assessment-procedures.html


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
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Adjunct Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science,
Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/