Cambridge University Press and the Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) have reached a transformative agreement to support Open Access (OA) publishing in Cambridge Journals for 2022. It is one of the first major uncapped transformative agreements reached with CAUL by a publisher of significant size in Australia and New Zealand.
“The Australasian Open Access Strategy Group (AOASG) and the Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) welcome Dr Cathy Foley’s speech today, 17 March 2021, at the National Press Club noting her interest in an Open Access Strategy in Australia.
Dr Foley set out a compelling vision for the importance of collaboration and knowledge exchange in accelerating research, and this is a vision that both organisations fully support.
The willingness of Dr Foley to champion a national open access strategy will provide critical impetus to drive forward the agenda for open access to research, the foundations of which have been laid over the past 20 years. Developing a national strategy will ensure that Australia is well placed to make sure that Australian research can fully participate in the global research ecosystem.”
“This report, commissioned by the Council of Australian University Librarians, for delivery to the DVCsR Committee, provides an analysis of the challenges and opportunities arising from Plan S for Australian researchers and universities, including high-level recommendations on how Australian universities should proceed in order to meet compliance obligations from 2021. The report considers the scale of the Plan S compliance issue, finding that 5% of Australian university research publications are affected by Plan S compliance obligations, and typically 0-2% of total research funding is from Coalition S funders. However, addressing compliance issues for affected researchers, can provide more open access publication options for all Australian university researchers in line with indications of similar requirements by other funding bodies. This allows for the challenges presented by Plan S compliance to be transformed into opportunities to enhance Australian research visibility more broadly. While a full set of recommendations can be found at the end of the report, the following summarises the high priority, urgent actions required: ? University Executives must set out clear institutional open access policy positions that align with Plan S and align recognition and reward frameworks accordingly. ? University Executives must ensure there is a central research support capability to identify affected researchers and to offer highly tailored advice. ? Universities must adequately support institutional repositories to fulfil Plan S technical and service requirements. ? CAUL must pursue negotiations with publishers to minimise or eliminate transactional APCs for open access journals. ? CAUL must ensure publishing output data and new consortium models are developed to improve the value of transformative agreements….”
“The Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) and the Australasian Open Access Strategy Group (AOASG) welcome the Rights Retention Strategy announced by cOAlition S on 15 July 2020.
The strategy is a significant and bold step towards ensuring the achievement of 100% immediate open access for all research articles. It strengthens the repository-based route for open access and will ensure that by retaining their rights to their own work, authors are able to use and re-use their work as they choose. In essence, the strategy is designed to support cOAlition S funded researchers seeking to publish in their journal of choice, including any subscription journal. This strategy provides authors with a standard mechanism to retain the rights to their research by placing a CC-BY license on the author’s accepted version which allows them to make this version immediately available on final publication in an open access repository of their choice.
Repository-based open access has been the preferred route for open access by universities in Australia and New Zealand since 2000 and is supported by the two main Australian funders of research, the ARC and the NHMRC. Advocacy efforts by CAUL and the AOASG have supported this repository-based approach. …”
“Rights retention in scholarly works can include a spectrum of copyright arrangements, reuse rights, and machine readability4 . Copyright retention by authors or universities for scholarly works is becoming preferred by some funders and advocates. Ideally, these changes would take place on the national level. However, recommendations for legislative or national policy change are outside the scope of this report as they require extensive consultation with stakeholders and government. This briefing report has therefore focused on the potential to achieve reuse rights retention in institutional IP policies only….”
“CAUL and AOASG welcome moves by commercial publishers to open up their content at this critical time. The rapid development of tests, potential treatments and vaccines to clinical trials has been made possible by the frictionless and immediate sharing of new and early stage research and data by researchers and access to previously paywalled content being provided by publishers. The speed with which many publishers have enabled open access to COVID-19 related content is commendable, and some have also taken the significant step of relaxing access restrictions to content more generally. It also demonstrates that open access to research should be the new norm. The time has come to make free and open access to all research a reality. It is critical that once the pandemic is over, in order to accelerate the global transition to free and open access, publishers do not once again restrict access to COVID-19 content. This will be especially crucial in light of the economic challenges all sectors of society will be facing, including universities dealing with constrained scholarly content budgets. Therefore, we urge publishers to make a commitment to: …”
“In its 2018 inquiry into the Australian Government Funding Arrangements for non-NHMRC Research, the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Employment, Education and Training recommended “that the Australian Government develop a more strategic approach to Australia’s open scholarship environment”. CAUL and AOASG supported this recommendation[4].
It is now time to implement that approach through the establishment of a cross-sectoral body charged with developing and implementing, within three years, a national action plan for open scholarship – a plan that would include recommendations on changes to the policy and funding framework for Australian higher education. Open scholarship should also be included in the terms of reference for any post-election reviews or inquiries on Australian higher education and research.
Achieving fair and open access to Australian research outputs would be a realistic and significant accomplishment for a new or re-appointed Minister after the election, and a priority for government. CAUL and the AOASG are ready to offer their experience, expertise and knowledge to the goal of open scholarship….”
“Conducted in June 2013, the response rate for the 2013 survey was 95.65% (45 out of a possible 47 respondents). The respondents were 38 Australian CAUL members and 7 New Zealand respondents….The survey questions focused on several areas including general repository questions; repository staffing; repository software; repository statistics; repository copyright; mandates and policies; research workflows; repository perceptions; and data management. In the 2013 survey there were new questions regarding workflow practices, promotion and feedback, and services to depositors. Even with these changes, comparative data is available that allows CAUL to track and analyse the development and management of repositories….”