I am pleased to be releasing my advice on open access to research literature, which has been a focus for me throughout my time as Australia’s Chief Scientist. My research shows that increasing access to the research literature, much of which is currently behind paywalls, will unlock enormous benefits for Australia. 

There’s significant international momentum towards open access regimes, and it’s great to see the interest and activity here in Australia.  

I’ve been thinking about options that would work in the Australian context. Drawing on discussions with many stakeholders, I have proposed a new approach to open access – a ‘public access model’.  

Under the public access model, open access agreements to research literature would be brokered with the publishers, big and small, through a single national negotiating body, and the agreements would extend access beyond the academic community to the wider Australian public. My model is simple, but ambitious. 

I’m the first to acknowledge this is disruptive and will require cooperation to be implemented. Any successful open access model needs the support and buy-in from everyone across the academic publishing system – including publishers, libraries, universities, states, publicly funded agencies, industry and researchers. 

The academic publishing system has significant strengths, but there are challenges.  

One of the biggest challenges is the current business model of publishers that places significant limits on the ability of the public to access research that is largely funded from the public purse. The broader public does not have access to journal articles without buying a subscription, or paying per article, and these costs can be prohibitive. 

This means schoolteachers, allied health professionals, public servants, businesses and others are working without access to the latest evidence from science and research. Even high school students doing their final-year research project have raised their concern to their inability to access research literature! 

Another challenge is that universities currently pay significant subscription fees to academic journals to give staff and students access to the journals through the university portals, but increasingly are paying an additional fee to publishers for their papers to be accessible to the public, free of charge, on the publishers’ websites. These additional fees can be between $2400 and $17,000 per paper.  

Publishers provide critical services, including the software back-end manuscript management for peer review, the front-end digital journals, the creation and management of metadata and post-publishing commentary. They are very profitable businesses, largely due to the in-kind contributions by the research sector. In the current academic publishing system, publishers receive the content for free as the authors must sign over copyright at no charge. The peer reviewers are unpaid. The academic editors are usually paid a small honorarium. By any measure, the benefit of academic publishing business model is unbalanced across its stakeholders. 

I want to see science and research findings available to all Australians. Access to trusted information is fundamental to social cohesion, especially at a time when misinformation is proliferating. It’s clear that something is wrong in the system when, amidst a tsunami of available information, much of the evidence-based information is inaccessible.  

Broad open access to science and research could help industry understand the latest developments in fields relevant to their sector and support new to market business innovation which is sorely lacking in this country. It could help teachers access good evidence to inform pedagogy and content, school students learn to navigate and understand academic research, and public servants have the most up to date evidence to inform policy advice. It may even improve aspects of the way research is written and presented if the audience is potentially much wider than colleagues in your discipline.   

As with any transformative change, the detail is important, and implementation considerations do need close attention from everyone involved.  

I have outlined four possible approaches in my advice, including the ‘public access model’.  

There’s still work to do to consider these models, and I am continuing to consult across government and the wider science and research system, to build the case for open access and explore implementation options. 

I encourage you to read the advice and help me identify the best pathway to achieve open access to research literature that will be of benefit to all Australians and provide the best impact for the public funds spent on the academic publication process.