The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) has announced changes to its policy on the dissemination of research findings, requiring  that 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. 

 

Currently, the NHMRC “encourages researchers to consider the benefits of depositing their data and any publications arising from a research project in an appropriate subject and/or institutional repository wherever such a repository is available to the researcher(s). If a researcher is not intending to deposit the data from a project in a repository within a six month period, s/he should include the reasons in the project’s Final Report. Any research outputs that have been or will be deposited in appropriate repositories should be identified in the Final Report.

 

The new policy, developed by the Research Committee and Council of the NHMRC, will come into effect on 1 July 2012.

 

The NHMRC states that the policy aims to “ensure the widest possible dissemination of the research supported by NHMRC funding, in the most effective manner and at the earliest opportunity”

 

The NHMRC says that the new policy brings it into line with other international health and medical research funding agencies such as the US-National Institutes of Health, the Wellcome Trust and the UK Medical Research Council, and  will involve approximately 3,000 publications per annum.

 

More information is at www.nhmrc.gov.au.