Australian Research Council's New Chief Executive to Re-Examining Stance on Open-Access Publication. (July 25, 2012)

Physicist Professor Aidan Byrne this week took over as Chief Executive of the Australian Research Council (ARC) and immediately announced: "Open access is one [issue] I have particular interest in. I have been watching national and international open-access discussions for some time and I am open to considering changes to our policy on the dissemination of research findings."

Until now under the leadership of Professor Margaret Sheil the ARC has refrained from committing itself in regard to supporting open access for publications based on research funded by it while Australia's National Health and Medical Research Council has been committed since July 1 this year.

And as Luke Le Grand points out in The Australian today: "The CSIRO is establishing an open-access repository of an estimated 200,000 research papers. Last week, both the European Commission and the UK Research Councils announced plans to mandate open access for research they fund. -- The 27 member states of the EU represent the world's largest academic publishing bloc, producing more than 622,000 articles in 2010 and spending an average €87 billion (A$102.3bn) a year on research and development."