Research funding bodies should take a leaf from astronomy¡¯s book and blacklist journals with prohibitive access policies, says Australian National University?vice-chancellor Brian Schmidt.

Professor Schmidt told an online forum that funders should impose ¡°very clear¡± open access requirements, with researchers barred from publishing in any journal that charged for views ¨C even if the journal was the ¡°bee¡¯s knees¡±.

¡°I say, don¡¯t publish in that journal ¨C go somewhere else,¡± he told the??conference. ¡°I have very strong views on this. Sometimes you¡¯ve just got to do what¡¯s right, even if it hurts.¡±

Professor Schmidt said that his field of astronomy was an ¡°outlier¡± in the open knowledge debate, having made research freely available for decades. Astronomers had been posting their papers in a preprint archive since 1992.

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Almost 20 years ago, a large publisher had told researchers that they must wait until it had printed their papers before posting them in the archive. ¡°The astronomy community basically said, ¡®Then we¡¯re not going to publish with you¡¯,¡± he said. ¡°They backed down. They let us continue to use the archive.¡±

Professor Schmidt, who won the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics, said institutions should not allow the pandemic-induced economic crisis to derail open access aspirations. He said that even cashed-up funders such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation had good reason to be ¡°bolshie¡± about access, when they were trying cure malaria or increase rice field productivity.

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¡°They¡¯re not getting the value for money they want,¡± he said. ¡°If we don¡¯t share [research] we are literally slowing down the whole process.¡±

The foundation¡¯s head of knowledge and research services, Ashley Farley, said that it had spent more than $20 million (?15 million) in article processing charges since 2015. ¡°I¡¯m sure many people could come up with a better way to use $20 million,¡± she told the forum.

Ms Farley, who leads the?Gates Open Research?publishing platform, said that the foundation was shifting its policy to align with Europe¡¯s Plan S movement. Articles submitted from next year will be published ¡°on open access terms¡±, it has?, with papers and underlying data made available immediately and the foundation paying ¡°necessary¡± fees.

Lucy Montgomery, co-leader of Curtin University¡¯s Open Knowledge Initiative, criticised Australia¡¯s major funding bodies for failing to impose ¡°robust¡± open access mandates. ¡°If we look at national performance in other places it¡¯s possible to see...the effects of open access policy and infrastructure investments,¡± she told the forum.

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Professor Schmidt said one of the objections to the open dissemination of research ¨C that it could fall into enemy hands ¨C was ¡°just nuts¡±. While there was good reason not to share research on plutonium bombs or the weaponisation of anthrax, very few topics fell into such a category.

¡°People don¡¯t understand how knowledge moves around,¡± he said. ¡°Gross movement of intellectual property doesn¡¯t happen in cyber espionage out of university ¨C it happens [when people] steal the final product from companies.

¡°There [are] huge amounts of basic [and] applied research where everyone benefits ¨C even when your strategic enemy has knowledge that you have created. It¡¯s better than a zero-sum game. If you can get the entire world to work on something that¡¯s absolutely imperative to you, that¡¯s a good thing.¡±

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com