Open access movement – from advocacy to policy to practice?
26 July 2012, by Mari Elken
While the debate on open access is not new, the topic gained momentum earlier this year when Tim Gowers, a renowned Cambridge mathematician, wrote a blog entry about Elsevier and the practices of pricing and peer reviewing. Quickly picked up by a number of publications, including The Economist, Gowers' writing prompted a heated campaign and boycott against the publisher by academics world wide. More than 12,000 academics signed a petition to boycot all journals by Elsevier on the The Cost of Knowledge website and many prominent newspapers gave the topic a lot of coverage. However, as long as academia is dependent on reputation and publication indexes in high ranked journals, demand will continue.
Sustainable Research Excellence Initiative Concentrates Research Infrastructure Funding
25 July 2012, by Professor Emeritus Frank Larkins
The Sustainable Research Excellence (SRE) Initiative is designed to increase the funding provided to support the indirect costs incurred when undertaking Australian Competitive Grant (ACG) sponsored research and to achieve excellence on a sustainable basis for those universities that have a capacity to deliver internationally competitive outcomes. Three years of funding (2010-12) have now been provided under this initiative with some 72 percent of available funding being allocated to the group of eight (Go8) universities. For future years it is anticipated that under this scheme there will be further concentration of Australia’s research effort in universities consistent with government policy objectives.