Ending profiteering from publicly-funded research - Tackling the academic publishing oligopoly

But is this enough to prevent academic publishers from claiming an undue share of the funding? Disruption of the academic publishing industry is needed so the public can immediately access the results of the research they fund, and to stop publishers from unfairly claiming an undue share of public funding through unreasonable publishing fees. [...] The ARC has recently undergone an independent review to assess its role and purpose.10 Neither the final report nor the resulting Bill attempt to address any of the issues inherent within the academic publishing model.11 In addition to enhancing their competitiveness for receiving grants, many academics seek the status brought by publishing in ‘top’ journals. [...] In 2022-2023, the ARC awarded $845 million in grants16 and the NHMRC provided $898.1 million, in addition to $626.5 million from the Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF).17 Besides competitive grants, the Australian Government supports university research through research block grants like the Research Support Program (RSP), which is designed to cover the indirect costs of research that competitive. [...] Ending profiteering from publicly-funded research: Tackling the academic publishing oligopoly 9 Fixing the academic publishing model The NHMRC and ARC have attempted to address the knowledge-sharing crisis imposed by the dominant academic publishing houses by implementing policies which mandate that articles must be available freely through open access either upon publication (in the case of the N. [...] The NHMRC explicitly states that the use of journal impact factor is inappropriate when assessing applications.44 Instead, assessors must only consider “up to ten of the applicant’s top publications” and “the overall impact, quality and contribution to the field of the published journal articles … not just the standing of the journal in which those articles are published”.