April 11th, 2025.
In late 2024 the Australian Government launched its Strategic Examination of Research and Development (R&D). This major, independent review, seeking to assess and reform Australia’s national R&D system, is the most wide-ranging review of its kind in nearly 20 years, and was announced as a key initiative in the 2024 federal budget. In February 2025 the review panel released a discussion paper, inviting public and sector feedback. The following response was submitted by Open Access Australasia on April 11th 2025.
1. What should an integrated, sustainable, dynamic and impactful Australian R&D system look like?
As is the case elsewhere, the overall challenge for the creation of an effective system for R&D for Australia is to identify the most effective ways to sustainably make research available and what infrastructure is needed to do so. An open research system increases societal impact, improves transparency and reproducibility, encourages innovation and collaboration, and improves equity and inclusion. Openness promotes greater and faster advances in knowledge, as was demonstrated during COVID-19 in the global collaboration on research for vaccines.
Australia’s research system should be diverse, agile, equitable and supportive of specific needs in the Australian environment to make Australian research globally available and to maximise its impact. A modern, open scholarly communication infrastructure is needed to support researchers, funders, policymakers and the Australian public for publishing, synthesizing and accessing research outputs of all kinds. Recognition of the full range of research outputs and the importance of all knowledge systems and supporting a diversity of avenues to make research available (bibliodiversity) needs to be part of that system.
Internationally we are seeing other countries commit to national research infrastructure, reflecting the growing commitment to open science and open research that has followed the 2021 UNESCO Recommendations, which require providing access to and preserving the entire breadth of research output including journal articles, books, theses, data, software, and creative media. France has been investing in open, national, government-supported platforms for disseminating and archiving research outputs since 2014, and today has comprehensive plans, like the Second National Plan for Open Science (2021–2024), focusing on open access, data sharing, and promoting open science as a standard practice, for example, through the national archival repository HAL. Just last year, Japan committed ¥10 billion (approximately AU$113 million) to standardize institutional repositories across universities in order to integrate them into a single national server, ensuring a unified record of research outputs. The Federal Open Science Repository of Canada (FOSRC) consolidates, preserves, and provides access to federally funded research output, including journal articles, book chapters, technical reports and other outputs, effectively achieving open access for federal science as outlined in their Roadmap for Open Science, cost-sharing among participating federal departments and agencies. A complimentary initiative, Scholaris, is a shared institutional repository service for Canadian academic institutions.
Collaborative infrastructure is also being undertaken across nations, such as Open Access Infrastructure for Research in Europe (OpenAIRE) which provides a robust infrastructure and services that connect researchers, institutions, funders, and repositories. OpenAIRE integrates research outputs such as publications, datasets, and software from repositories across Europe. It supports interoperability through standardized protocols like OAI-PMH (Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting) and metadata schemas such as DataCite.
Australia’s R&D system should therefore include similar open, nationally funded and coordinated infrastructure, prioritising both global interoperability and local knowledge production. Existing R&D infrastructure initiatives funded through NCRIS and implemented by ARDC can be supplemented by upgrading and supporting existing institutional repositories with a view to national integration. Such repositories already provide access to and preserve the entire breadth of research output, and their integration could increase research discoverability and impact, provide consistent and long term preservation and enable cost efficiencies.
A robust and diverse open science system would ensure visibility and interoperability of Australian research, including Indigenous research, in the global science ecosystem. However, it is essential to recognise the tension between opening research and the right of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to control access to and uses of their knowledges. The Maiam nayri Wingara Indigenous Data Sovereignty Principles must be central to any system designed for Australia, along with the CARE principles, to guarantee Indigenous Data Sovereignty and Governance– ‘as open as possible, as closed as necessary’ – a ‘CAREful FAIRness’. This could include providing resources to knowledge holders to further develop expertise, tools and protocols relevant to their work, and more access to funding for local publishing outlets that make First Nations knowledge available according to these principles.
2. What government, university and business policy settings inhibit R&D and innovation? Why?
The lack of national policies to promote and implement an integrated open research environment, including effective incentives and monitoring and compliance mechanisms inhibits research and innovation. Government departments and funding agencies in the United Kingdom, European Union and Latin America have already adopted open access and open science policies and mechanisms required for their implementation are being developed. In Australia so far, the lack of a coherent government national policy on open research has created a situation where policies are piecemeal and inconsistent across research active institutions and research funders. What policies exist often lack monitoring mechanisms and present a confusing and complex landscape for researchers to navigate.
A coordinated policy for Australia would fully implement UNESCO Open Science recommendation in Australia including:
- Open access to research
- Rights retention so that authors/institutions keep their copyright
- Interoperable, funded infrastructure for hosting Australia’s research outputs, data, and journals
- A renewed approach to research assessment and incentives.
- A national approach to managing publicly funded research publications with close consultation with ARC-NHMRC-CSIRO and other funders, drawing on their experience in open access policy and monitoring.
3. What do we need to do to build a national culture of innovation excellence, and engage the public focus on success in R&D and innovation as a key national priority?
There is international recognition that current research assessment needs to be reformed, and organisations such as Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) and the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) are innovating a variety of practical approaches to promote such change.
A research culture concerned with institutional global rankings, journal impact factors and individual researcher metrics is detrimental to innovation and excellence. Prioritising such rankings in research assessment and evaluation not only inhibits innovation but serves to further entrench commercial interests in the dissemination of research. The diverse range of research outputs does not easily fit into current research assessment practices in a way that recognises their diversity and value, and that support open research practices.
Implementing an incentive structure that rewards open science and open research practices, recognising and rewarding researchers who make their research open, would encourage a national culture of innovation excellence.
Openness, moreover, would encourage public trust and engagement, particularly supporting and promoting initiatives like citizen science as part of the national research endeavour.
4. What types of funding sources, models and/or infrastructure are currently missing or should be expanded for Australian R&D?
Recent policy changes in the US illustrate the risks of relying too heavily on other nations to host Australian research outputs, or even research of value to our researchers. Improved interoperability and the establishment of securely hosted copies will protect and support Australian research. We therefore recommend:
An open publishing system that repurposes the hundreds of millions of dollars currently used to pay for access to research through university subscriptions to fund a national program of innovation in open publishing and in infrastructure for open science and open research.
Further investment in existing research infrastructure such as repositories; investment in open journal platforms, pre & post print servers.
Australian-led and owned journals, publishers, and data platforms meeting Australasian and international research priorities reducing reliance on overseas infrastructure.
Sustainable approaches to hosting emerging forms of research in Australia including code, equipment, and software designed to promote open science practices
Copyright reform to ensure researchers and institutions retain copyright ownership in publicly funded research instead of it being assigned to publishers, thereby decreasing the need to rely on expensive agreements with these commercial entities in order to secure access.
As open science and open research have become more prominent in the research landscape overall, it has become clear that there is a need for training, both in the underpinning concepts and the application of these approaches.
8. How can First Nations knowledge and leadership be elevated throughout Australia’s R&D system?
- It is essential that First Nations communities are actively involved from the outset, ensuring Indigenous voices and perspectives are embedded at every stage of the research and development process—including the co-design of the system itself. This means engaging early, co-developing research frameworks, and establishing clear agreements that protect traditional knowledge and guarantee equitable outcomes for communities.
- Research must be done with communities, not about them. Wherever possible, research should be Indigenous-led, and all members of research teams must demonstrate cultural capability. Building strong, respectful relationships with communities must be central to the process—not an afterthought.
- For Indigenous communities, reciprocity and relationality are core principles. R&D projects must incorporate mechanisms that support long-term relationship-building and ensure that communities benefit from research—economically, culturally, and through access to knowledge and outcomes.
- The R&D system must also recognise the value of non-traditional research outputs that often emerge from community-led projects. Currently, these outcomes are undervalued by existing impact assessment frameworks. Elevating First Nations knowledge and leadership requires that these frameworks evolve to give equal weight to Indigenous methodologies, knowledges, and ways of sharing.
- Investment is also critical. There must be dedicated funding for Indigenous-led research, alongside strategies to recruit, support and retain Indigenous academics across the sector.
- Finally, respect for First Nations data sovereignty is non-negotiable. Mechanisms must be in place to ensure Indigenous peoples maintain control over their data, including a recognition that data is best held and managed in-country.