Academic authors, scholarly publishing and open access in Australia

Abstract

This paper briefly describes the rapidly changing research evaluation and funding landscape in Australian universities, specifically in relation to open access and institutional repositories. Recent announcements indicate that funding and evaluation bodies are becoming increasingly concerned that publicly funded research be made publicly available. The paper then reports a survey of all levels of academic staff plus research students at one Australian university conducted in May 2006, prior to the introduction of an institutional repository. The survey, in line with previously reported surveys, found that while there was a high level of engagement with scholarly publishing, there was a low level of awareness of, or concern with, either open access (‘green’ or ‘gold’) or the roles repositories can play in increasing accessibility of research. Practically, this indicates that much work needs to be done within this university to increase knowledge of, and change behaviours with regard to, open access and repositories if the university and its academics are to make the most of new funding requirements and research evaluation processes.