This presentation was a part of The University of Queensland Library's Open Access Week 2014 program. Professor High Possingham spoke of his efforts to make research discoverable and accessible so that it could inform environmental and conservation policy and the fundamental belief that research that is funded by the people should be accessible by the people. As a researcher, policy maker, author of journal articles and monographs, journal editor, reviewer, and software developer, Professor Possingham was able to share his insight into the various ways he has shared his research with colleagues, governments and the general public.

1. Open access, intellectual property
and conservation science
Hugh Possingham FAA
The University of Queensland
and Imperial College London
www.ceed.edu.au h.possingham@uq.edu.au

2. The people taught me everything I know
Landscape dynamics and conservation decisions

3. Overview
• Disclaimers
• What is our business?
• Why is open access especially important to us
(Fuller, Lee and Watson, 2014)?
• A story about a journal
• A story about a book
• A story about intellectual property
• I love Google scholar
• Solutions?

4. Disclaimers
• Who am I?
• What do I know about this topic?
• An interactive talk
• “yes” problem

5. What is our business?
• Conservation research
• Funding – pure and applied
• Objectives
– Discovery
– Impact – specific decisions, tools, policy
– Training and legacy
– Careers
• Our primary end users do not subscribe to journals,
indeed don’t use them much either; many in poor
countries

6. www.decision-point.com.au
Google: Possingham and “Decision Point”
Subscribe
today
It’s free!

7. Fuller, Lee and Watson
• 15 years, 20,000 papers in conservation science,
<10% freely downloadable, <5% open access; but
getting better
• $51 million for all to be open access
• 65% who never use identify primary literature as too
hard to access, but if found, often changes practice
• License agreements murky
• Worse than evolutionary biology
• Improvement is largely new open access journals

8. More stuff
• A story about a journal (Conservation Letters)
– http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/%28ISSN%291755-263X
• A story about a book
• A story about intellectual property, Marxan
• A story about data, birds
• I love Google scholar
– Govt grants - http://scholar.google.com.au/citations?user=9-
veEp8AAAAJ
• Comparison – open vs closed, altmetrics
– http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/list/?cat=quick_filter&search_keys
[0]=possingham&sort_by=searchKeycore_125&sort_order=1
• What if we just take over?
• Other solutions – e.g. just wait.
24/10/2014 CEED Mid Term Review 2014 8

9. Give everything you do away and it
will be OK
Intellectual property is theft
24/10/2014 CEED Mid Term Review 2014 9