The Australian Academy of the Humanities

‘Improving Access to Australian Publicly Funded Research – Advancing Knowledge and the Knowledge Economy’

Canberra, Monday July 16, The Shine Dome, Australian Academy of Science

Supported by DEST and The Australian Academy of the Humanities/National Academies Forum

In 2004 the NSCF theme was ‘Changing Research Practices in the Digital Information and Communication Environment’. This Forum foreshadowed the policy settings for the establishment of the Research Quality Framework. The late Sir Gareth Roberts was the keynote speaker.

In 2005, the NSCF theme was ‘Open Access, Open Archives and Open Source’. This Forum was arguably a catalyst in the discussions with reference to the development of Open Access frameworks, as exemplified in the December 2006 ARC and NHMRC statements.

The Forum for 2006 was held over waiting the outcomes of the ARC/NHMRC deliberations, the public release of the DEST-commissioned report ‘Research Communication Costs in Australia, Emerging Opportunities and Benefits’, and other major Reports such as the Productivity Commission’s Research Report on Public Support for Science and Innovation; NCRIS ‘Platforms for Collaboration’ Progress Report and the PMSEIC Working Group on Data for Science.

For a summary of the event, please head to the 'Summary, Speaker Biographies and Powerpoints' page.

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2007 Forum - Improving Access to Australian Publicly Funded Research – Advancing Knowledge and the Knowledge Economy

Registration

This Forum, as with the 2004 and 2005 Forums, focuses on high-level policy discussions and limits attendance in order to facilitate that aim, and to allow for interactive discussion periods. There will be no registration fee, but those wishing to attend should register their interest as soon as possible with the Convenor of the NSCF Forum, Colin Steele, Emeritus Fellow, ANU by emailing: colin.steele (at) anu.edu.au or calling (02) 6125 8983.

The 2007 Forum seeks to review and consolidate access to Australian publicly funded research and thereby maximise the economic and social returns on public investment. The NSCF will bring together appropriate policy makers and researchers in Canberra to:

Review existing and potential government and university mechanisms for managing (accessing, coordinating and disseminating) publicly funded research in the digitally networked information environment.
Identify issues to enable improved access to publicly funded data and information through appropriate strategic frameworks.
Identify and analyse institutional, economic, policy and legal issues in relation to public access to and use of publicly funded information.
Examine and develop innovation strategies and structures to increase benefits from public sector research.

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Background

Historically, knowledge production and innovation have been governed by diverse institutional and policy settings. The digital networked information environment and the emergence of ‘new forms of knowledge economies’ now provide opportunities for increased public access to data and information, particularly through collaborative frameworks.

The conference on ‘Designing Cyberinfrastructure for Collaboration and Innovation’, held in Washington on January 29-30 2007, under the auspices of the Committee for Economic Development, the Council on Competitiveness, the National Science Foundation, Science Commons, and the University of Michigan, made the following background statement which is relevant to the theme of the 2007 NSCF Forum:

“Investments in cyberinfrastructure, like early investments in the Internet, will pay off not only in research and education but in the development of new products and services. Yet as knowledge-enabling infrastructure becomes more powerful and extensive, its users interact with traditional rules and practices for controlling and deriving value from knowledge. Patents, licensing, contracts, and other mechanisms and institutions have also become more potent, pervasive, diversified, and complex. Some fear that these controls may favor older, more familiar models of innovation such as solitary invention, R&D pipelines, and discrete product technologies – perhaps to the detriment of new cyberinfrastructure -empowered models that are more collaborative, cumulative, or distributed in nature.

However, “private ordering” mechanisms, such as patent pools, data commons, open standards, and a variety of private and public licensing models, have arisen as ad hoc infrastructure to support new forms of innovation and common interest in the development of new knowledge and new markets. How well do these emergent mechanisms and institutions work? How well do they succeed in mitigating tensions and conflicts among different practices and policies? To what extent can or should they be incorporated into the broader knowledge-driven vision and design of cyberinfrastructure?”

Similarly, Paul A. David and Paul F. Uhlir state in the ‘Workshop Plan’ for the 2005 International Workshop ‘Creating the Information Commons for e-Science’, 'there is a lack of strategic planning and concerted implementation of policies by the government and academic scientific communities. At the same time, the global trend toward the commoditization of public research outputs -- including both the underlying data and information resources -- is being reinforced by the creation of new legal rights and protectionist mechanisms that are largely extrinsic to the scientific enterprise, but increasingly adopted by participating researchers and their host institutions.'

Research Councils UK has recently published its strategy, 'Increasing the Economic Impact of the Research Councils', to maximise the value of the research that it funds. This report aims to ensure that UK can make best use of its world-class research base in addressing the challenges posed by globalisation. A key point in the strategy is the creation of a new national forum for knowledge transfer.

The 2007 NSCF will address these access issues, as identified in the contextual shorthand of ‘Global Information Commons’ and its relationship to Australian publicly funded research. The NSCF will draw out the common threads of a number of recent major policy reports which, in various ways, call for greater access to the results of publicly funded research and facilitate practical policy initiatives and implementation.

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Speakers

The 2007 NSCF keynote speaker is Paul F. Uhlir, Director, International Scientific and Technical (S&T) Information Programs at The National Academies in Washington, D.C, and Director U.S. National Committee for CODATA. Uhlir's current area of research is on S&T data management and policy, and on the relationship of intellectual property law in digital data and information to R&D policy. An excellent introduction to the Global Information Commons for Science initiative can be found at http://www.codata.org/wsis/GICSI-prospectus.html.
Professor John M. Unsworth, Dean and Professor Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois, UrbanaChampaign is the other international speaker. He is the principal author and editor of the recent major report ‘ Our Cultural Commonwealth’. The Report of the American Council of Learned Societies’ Commission on Cyberinfrastructure for Humanities and Social Sciences is at http://www.acls.org/cyberinfrastructure/acls.ci.report.pdf.
Professor Warwick Anderson, CEO National Health and Medical Research Council.
Dr Evan Arthur, Group Manager, Innovation and Research Systems, Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST);
Monika Binder, Director Productivity Commission;
Professor Brian Fitzgerald, Head Law School, Queensland University of Technology;
Professor John Houghton, Professorial Fellow, Centre for Strategic Economic Studies, Victoria University;
Dr Richard Jefferson, CEO Cambia;
Dr Mike Sargent, Chair eResearch Coordinating Committee and the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Committee.
Frederick Friend, UK JISC Scholarly Communication Consultant.

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