ARC Rejects Open Access Policy

The Australian Research Council's new "ARC Open Access Policy" requires that "... any publications arising from an ARC supported research project must be deposited into an open access institutional repository within a twelve (12) month period from the date of publication.". Unfortunately the policy still allows researchers to publish in closed journals which never allow public access. The researcher just has to make public where their results can be purchased, they do not have to provide the actual research results for free. The ARC policy is not an open access one and misleading for the ARC to name it as one. The ARC seems to wish to continue the system where the Australian public pays for research and then has to pay again to read the results of the research. In contrast the US NIH Public Access Policy requires scientists to submit final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts that arise from NIH funds to a public archive  upon acceptance for publication, with these papers accessible to the public no later than 12 months after publication.

Dr David Prosser, Director of SPARC Europe criticized the ARC for its lack of an open access policy in a talk at National Library of Australia in Canberra, 14 August 2009.