In my talk for the Canberra Society of Editors I suggested the Australian Government make its publications open access using a Creative Commons license.
The Productivity Commission has reported on the Australian Government’s relationship with Standards Australia Limited (SA).
If the Australian Government is willing to consider making its documents freely available on-line, it seems reasonable that Standards Australia should do likewise. There seems no good reason why the resulting documents should not be freely available on-line to Australians, who funded the standards development and wrote the standards for free.
SA could retain control over the content of the standards and continue to licence them commercially. SA floated it publishing arm on the Australian Stock exchange as SAI Global Limited some time ago.
ps: I represent the Australian Computer Society on the Council of Standards Australia, but the view expressed above is not necessarily that of the ACS.
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ReplyDeleteHow can they impose compliance to standards and then charge you enormous amounts of money for access to the documentation? I'm astounded in finding this out while trying to find one!