Research funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) must be made open access 12 months after publication, according to revised policy guidelines published on 22 February.
The change has been made “to bring NHMRC into line with other international health and medical research funding agencies, such as NIH and the UK Medical Research Council”, the announcement said.
It will come into effect on 1 July and involve about 3,000 publications per year.
The revised guidelines state that in order to “maximise the benefits from research […] NHMRC requires that any publications arising from an NHMRC supported research project must be deposited into an open access institutional repository within a twelve month period from the date of publication”.
Warwick Anderson, NHMRC’s chief executive officer, has rejected Australian media reports that the policy change reflects a position in relation to the boycott of Dutch publisher Elsevier by thousands of academics wordwide, including in Australia.
Such reports are “misleading”, he said in a statement on the NHMRC website.
“This is an NHMRC policy that has been agreed by its Research Committee and Council and is not related to the Elsevier boycott or the international issues,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Australian Research Council (ARC) will not insist on open access publishing for council-financed research, according to a report in The Australian last week. But ARC’s chief executive, Margaret Sheil, was reported as saying that grantees would have to “explain” their decision not to opt for open access.