Report: Australia’s Chief Scientist Takes On the Journal Publishers Gatekeeping Knowledge

From The Guardian:

Australia’s chief scientist, Dr Cathy Foley, has placed open access firmly on the agenda before her three-year tenure ends in December.

Her world-first open access model, recently finalised for the federal government, would provide a centralised digital library for all Australians to access research papers free of charge, as long as they had a MyGov account or were in education. It is currently under departmental consideration.

“We’ve set up a crazy system where publishers own and control knowledge and we’ve let them do that,” Foley says. “Researchers give content for free, sign over copyright, and publishers make a lot of money.

“You can get rubbish, nonsense and misinformation online for free but you have to pay for the good stuff. We need to make sure we’re getting the right information out there.”

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In Australia, just two national funding agencies – the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and the Australian Research Council (ARC) – require publications from funded research be made freely available, with loopholes for legal and contractual arrangements. Only half of government-listed universities have an open access policy or statement.

Foley’s model would go further, democratising the system by making Australia the first country in the world to have a single relationship with all publishers.

She says the cost would be low, pooling together Australia’s estimated half a billion spent annually on subscriptions, similar to how medicine is subsidised under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS).

But it relies on universities, publishers, stakeholders and the federal government to agree.

Elsevier is on board. A spokesperson says they’ve been “working constructively” with Foley and “stands ready to support her vision”.

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