Notes from the National Scholarly Communication Forum – May 3, 2013 | Australian Open Access Support Group

"On Friday 3 May, the 2013 National Scholarly Communication Forum (NSCF) was held at the Australian National University on the topic:  'Open Access Research Issues in the Humanities and Social Sciences'. The forum is an annual event supported by the Australian Academy of the Humanities and the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia ... Certainly the audience was diverse at the 2013 event, ranging across academics, librarians, university executives and people from several relevant government departments.  There was only one publisher representative. The discussions were robust and detailed.  The audience appeared to be overwhelmingly pro-open access (this may be a result of self-selection). There was certainly very little dissent on the issue of the importance of opening access to research and scholarship funded by the taxpayer. Generally ‘green’ open access – making a copy of work available in a digital repository – was preferred over the ‘gold’ method of paying to have work published in an open access journal ... The stated conference themes were: [1] to gain a better understanding of the current practices and challenges with regard to Open Access in the Humanities and the Social Sciences in Australia; [2] to provide an overview of existing Open Access activities in the Humanities and the Social Sciences globally and envisaged developments; [3] to review national and institutional funders’ policies and how these are implemented and supported; and [4] to reflect on suitable business models for sustainable Open Access infrastructures that take into account the specificities of the Humanities and the Social Sciences in relation to serials, monographs and data ..."