In The Conversation on the 26th September 2012, Alex O. Holcombe and Matthew Todd published an open letter to the Australian Research Council on why scientific data should be shared.

Hindawi Publishing Corporation founded in 1997, was the first subscription publisher to convert its entire portfolio of journals to Open Access. Now in 2012, publishing over 400 open access journals. This interview with Ahmed Hindawi provides an insight into the development of open access journals. The interview is available on Richard Poynder blog Open and Shut.

Researchers and students please take note of the following comment submitted to Beall's List of Predatory, Open-Access Publishers blog:

The NHMRC revised policy for the dissemination of research findings came into effect on 1 July 2012. The policy has been revised to ensure that the findings of publicly funded health and medical research are made publicly available as soon as possible. Therefore, the NHMRC requires 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.

Allen Press has produced a 2012 Study of Subscription Prices for Scholarly Society Journals based on historical prices over the past two years from 220 journals and survey findings from 20 society/association publishers. The study reveals how libraries are dealing with the present budget challenges and the consequences for scholarly publishers.

In what could be an about-face for the Australian Research Council, new chief executive Aidan Byrne is re-examining the organisation's stance on open-access publications.
Read the full article by Luke Le Grand in The Australian.

The European Commission's recent announcement on access to scientific data specifically mentions not only scientists and research institutions, but also members of the public as potential users of scientific data.

A recent opinion piece from the Scholarly Kitchen on the UK government deliberations on Open Access... See the article, Predictable Problems - The UK's Move to Open Access.

The Australian reported on July 11 2012, a plan for the CSIRO to make 200,000 research papers freely available, dating back to the 1920s.
Jon Curran, CSIRO's general manager of communications stated in the article, "we are removing the reasons why staff shouldn't put their work in our open-access repository."

In addition, to the publication repository, the CSIRO is also aiming to create a portal to contain raw research data.

Heather Morrison's blog post the June 30, 2012 Dramatic Growth of Open Access http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.ca/2012/07/inevitability-of-open-access-june-30.html provides an excellent summary of open access search engines, world archives and the recent growth of their content. Here is a snap shot of the figures: