\nChief Scientist Cathy Foley is leading an\u00a0open access strategy for Australia<\/a>. Foley estimates the Australian government invests A$12 billion a year of public money in research and innovation only for most of the publications that eventuate to be locked behind a paywall, inaccessible to industry and the taxpayer. At the same time, Australian universities and others pay publishers an estimated\u00a0$460 million to $1 billion a year<\/a>\u00a0to see this published work.<\/p>\n

Inspired by the European open-access initiative\u00a0Plan S<\/a>, Foley\u2019s goal is to make all publicly funded Australian research publications free for the public to read. This is to be done through a sector-wide agreement between universities and publishers.<\/p>\n

The multinational publishers of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) research \u2013 Elsevier, Springer Nature Group, Wiley and Clarivate \u2013 are talking with the Chief Scientist. But no new sector funding is available from the government. The idea is it will pool the funds that universities currently pay to publishers to finance new sector-wide\u00a0transformative agreements<\/a>. These are also known as \u201cread and publish<\/a>\u201d agreements.
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