CMM’s incremental gains correspondent writes the senior medical research funding agency has strengthened open access requirements, just not in a way which will worry big commercial publishers.

The National Health and Medical Research Council  advises it, “now strongly encourages researchers to take reasonable steps to share research data and associated metadata arising from NHMRC supported research.” But otherwise there is nothing new to upset for-profit journal publishers and researchers who like to appear in high-status journals.

Requirements that publications must be open-access within 12 months of release, and related metadata in three months remain unchanged. If a publisher’s “version of record” can’t be used, because of copyright and licensing then peer reviewed and accepted for publication copy passes.

But if an article “is not able to be made openly accessible,” not to worry, “current NHMRC peer-review scoring and eligibility criteria do not take open access levels into account.”