Professor Brian Fitzgerald of QUT Law School has been appointed to the new Government 2.0 Taskforce, announced Monday 22 June 2009. The Terms of Reference for the Taskforce are that the Taskforce will advise and assist the Australian Government to:

• make government information more accessible and usable — to establish a pro-disclosure culture around non-sensitive public sector information;
• make government more consultative, participatory and transparent — to maximise the extent to which government utilises the views, knowledge and resources of the general community;
• build a culture of online innovation within Government — to ensure that government is receptive to the possibilities created by new collaborative technologies and uses them to advance its ambition to continually improve the way it operates;
• promote collaboration across agencies with respect to online and information initiatives — to ensure that efficiencies, innovations, knowledge and enthusiasm are shared on a platform of open standards; and
• identify and/or trial initiatives that may achieve or demonstrate how to accomplish the above objectives.

For more information, see the Government 2.0 Taskforce blog.

Change Congress and Regulatory Transparency:

CHANGE v2: What changes Obama will need?

In this Public Lecture Professor Lawrence Lessig will talk about the Change Congress project that aims to persuade members of congress to rely for funding on citizen contributions rather than big donations from special interests. The organisation considers that funding by corporate special interests has caused members of congress to favour these interests, undermining the integrity of the legislative process and resulting in legislation that may harm the public interest.

The aims of Change Congress are consistent with Barack Obama’s goal to achieve a transparent political culture that restores public trust. Its success may be critical to Obama’s hopes for enlisting congressional support for ambitious reforms to solve domestic and political crisis.

The free public lecture will be hold on Friday 29 May 2009, at The Banco Court, Law Courts Complex, 304 George Street, Brisbane.

Photograph by Joi from Flickr, Licensed under CC (US) Attribution 2.0 Generic

This conference - Copyright Future: Copyright Freedom – will be held at Old Parliament House (OPH) in Canberra on Wednesday 27th May and Thursday 28th May 2009. The month of May in 2009 marks 40 years since the commencement of the Australian Copyright Act of 1968.

The conference will consider the history of copyright law with special focus on the excellent work of Benedict Atkinson on the True History of Australian Copyright Law (2007). It will also chart the path of copyright law since that time and give special focus to future possibilities. The conference will be opened by the Honourable Robert McClelland Attorney-General for the Commonwealth of Australia and our Keynote Speaker will be Professor Lawrence Lessig of Stanford University Law School.

Some of our researchers have been investigating the access regimes in Australia and internationally for access to and use of public sector information (PSI). For more information, visit auPSI.

Legal Strategies for Streamlining Collaboration in an e-Research World is a collection of papers that arose from discussions held at a Roundtable entitled: ‘Streamlining Collaboration in an e-Research World’ which was convened by the Legal Framework for e-Research Project and held on 12th and 13th of June of 2008 at the Queensland University of Technology.

The Roundtable attracted some of Australia’s and the world’s leading thinkers and practitioners in this area and sought to explore methods and to recommend strategies for improving the efficiency of the legal processes that are used in e-Research collaboration. These ideas are presented in this collection and it also contains copies of submissions made to the Review of the Australian Innovation System in 2008 which set the context for the Roundtable and these papers.

Legal Framework for e-Research: Realising the Potential contains papers from the Legal Framework for e-Research Project’s International Conference held on 11 and 12 July 2007 in Surfers Paradise, Queensland, Australia.

“The recognition that increasingly sophisticated ICT techniques would need to be matched by increasingly sophisticated ways of thinking about some of the
legal issues that might arise, particularly given the minefield posed just by conditions relating to the collection and availability of data across a wide
number of fields, therefore led to the initiative represented by the contents of this report. We need skilful thinking about the legal context for all of the
rapid and new, indeed scarcely definable activities that are mushrooming in this sphere. An early start on this was the July 2007 conference on the topic.

It is my pleasure to commend the papers in this volume for those interested in considering the many interesting challenges posed for researchers, legal
specialists and administrators in this area.”

Professor Tom Cochrane
Deputy Vice Chancellor of QUT
Chair of the Australian e-Research Infrastructure Council (AeRIC)
Brisbane, 30 June 2008

The OAK Law Project is developing a Sample Publishing Agreement to assist both authors and publishers to enable greater access to knowledge. A DRAFT VERSION only is available here and the project team would appreciate any comments, suggestions or guidance.

Please send those to Kylie Pappalardo at k.pappalardo@qut.edu.au.

The OAK Law project hosted an international conference on Wednesday 24 September-Thursday 25 September 2008, with Post-Conference Workshops on Friday 26 September at Stamford Plaza, Brisbane.

The conference was opened by Senator the Honourable Kim Carr, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research.

The Queensland University of Technology (QUT) along with many other institutions throughout the world has pioneered the establishment of management practices and the necessary infrastructure to promote access and innovation. This landmark conference brought together experts from Australia and around the world to speak on a range of topics such as:

• Evolving publishing models • Repository management• eResearch • Policy development • Data access and reuse • Legal and technical issues

In the last session of the conference, participants were asked to comment on a text to be known as the Brisbane Declaration, affirming in general terms support for open access to research as a general principle in Australia. As a result of this, a text was circulated following the conference which over 60 participants supported.

Slides made available by the speakers can be accessed by clicking on the speakers name below. All of these slides are released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivatives (Australia) 2.5 licence, unless otherwise stated. Likewise, clicking on “Recording of Session 112K” will bring up the presentations and commentary given in the session that we can release under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivatives (Australia) 2.5 licence, unless otherwise stated. “56K” is the lower resolution recording of the session. These recordings will be updated as further consents are received.

Day 1. Wednesday 24 September
Opening address

• Senator the Hon Kim Carr
Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research
Why Open Access is Important for Innovation
(A transcript of the Minister’s Opening Address is available from the Minister’s website and is released subject to the terms of that website. Permission to provide access to the video of the Minister’s Opening Address has been sought)

Session 1 : The Future of Knowledge Recording of Session 112K; 56K

• John Wilbanks (Science Commons, USA)
The Future of Knowledge, What Greater Access Means for Research

Commentators: Dr Terry Cutler (Cutler and Company) and
Prof Mary O’Kane (Mary O’Kane & Associates)

Session 2 : Open Access : The Next Five Years Recording of Session 112K; 56K

• Dr Alma Swan (Key Perspectives)
Overview of Open Access - Where is it Going?

Commentators: Prof Tom Cochrane (DVC TILS, QUT) and Derek Whitehead (Swinburne University)

Session 3 : Collaborative Innovation: Data Access and Re-Use Recording of Session 112K; 56K

• Dr Richard Jefferson (CAMBIA and the BiOS Initiative)
Open Patents and Open Data; a Key Issue in Open Access.

Commentators: Prof Anne Fitzgerald (OAK Law Project, QUT Law Faculty) and Frederika Welle Donker (Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands)

Session 4 : Computation Technology and the Power of Open Access Recording of Session 112K; 56K

• Dr Tony Hey (Microsoft)
Directions in computing in support of science and the role of Open Access.

• Dr Rhys Francis (Executive Director of AeRIC)
eResearch Infrastructure and Open Access

Commentators: Prof Paul Roe (QUT) and Prof Bernard Pailthorpe (UQ)

Session 5: Open Access and Research Quality Recording of Session 112K; 56K

• Prof Stevan Harnad (Southhampton / Quebec)
Why Open Access is important in the assessment of research quality.

• Prof Rodney Wissler, (Dean of Research and Research Training, QUT)
Research Assessment in Australia, the 2008 Landscape.

Commentators – Scott Kiel-Chisholm (OAK Law Project, QUT Law Faculty) and Prof Arthur Sale (University of Tasmania)

Session 6: A Legal Framework Supporting Open Access Recording of Session 112K; 56K

• Maarten Wilbers European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN)
CERN - World Wide Web, Open Source and now constructing SCOAP: the legal viewpoint.

• Prof Brian Fitzgerald (OAK Law Project, QUT Law Faculty)
This presentation will examine key copyright issues that are raised in the open access framework. It will draw on the work undertaken by the OAKLAW Project at QUT and the recently launched OAKLIST as well as consider international developments. (These slides, where indicated, are released under a Creative Commons Attribution (Australia) 2.5 licence otherwise they are all rights reserved)

Commentators: Jenine Borowik (Australian Bureau of Statistics) and Jeffrey Kingwell (Geoscience Australia)

Session 7 Sharing Data Infrastructure Recording of Session 112K; 56K

• Dr Alexander Cooke (ARC) (These slides are released with all rights reserved)
Research Infrastructure and the Open Access Agenda

• Dr Andrew Treloar (Australian National Data Service (ANDS) Establishment Project)
Progress Report on the ANDS

Commentator: Cathrine Harboe-Ree (Monash University)

Session 8 Transitioning to Open Access : The role of funders and the role of institutions Recording of Session 112K; 56K

• Prof Warwick Anderson AM (NHMRC)
Conditions Under Which Grants are Made

Concluding Comments - Prof Tom Cochrane (DVC TILS, QUT)

Day 3. Friday 26 September Optional Workshops
OA Making it Happen

• Cultural Change – Led by Paula Callan & Dr Alma Swan (These slides are released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Sharealike (Australia) 2.5 licence)

Managing the Legal Issues

• Practical steps for handling copyright, IP and other legal issues – Led by Prof Anne Fitzgerald Prof Anne Fitzgerald, Scott Kiel-Chisholm, Kylie Pappalardo and Anthony Austin (OAK Law Project, QUT Law Faculty) (Both Kylie’s and Anthony’s slides are released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Sharealike (Australia) 2.5 licence)

Research, Access and Innovation: Workshopping the Future of Scholarly Communication and Publishing

• Led by Colin Steele, Prof Roger Clarke and Prof John Houghton