Australia leads the way

Following the conference on Open Access and Research held in September in Australia, http://www.oar2008.qut.edu.au/, and hosted by Queensland University of Technology, the following statement was developed and has the endorsement of over sixty participants.

Brisbane Declaration

Preamble

The participants recognise Open Access as a strategic enabling activity, on which research and inquiry will rely at international, national, university, group and individual levels.

Strategies

Therefore the participants resolve the following as a summary of the basic strategies that Australia must adopt:

1 Every citizen should have free open access to publicly funded research, data and knowledge.

2 Every Australian university should have access to a digital repository to store its research outputs for this purpose.

3 As a minimum, this repository should contain all materials reported in the Higher Education Research Data Collection (HERDC).

4 The deposit of materials should take place as soon as possible, and in the case of published research articles should be of the author’s final draft at the time of acceptance so as to maximize open access to the material.

Brisbane, September, 2008

Arthur Sale, a participant and strong advocate of open access said, ‘The Conference wanted to support the two Australian Ministers with responsibility for Innovation, Science and Health in their moves to make open access mandatory for all Australian-funded research.' The Declaration represented an overwhelming consensus of the active members of the repository community in Australia and Arthur Sale believes that it offers a model for other countries. Once again, Australia is ahead of the game in working towards a national open access policy.