About APO

Wishing you all the best for the festive season and a happy New Year from the team at Australian Policy Online

Its been a big year for public policy and open access research and a fun and productive year for us too. So as well as wishing all our readers a great summer holiday and happy New Year we have put together some of the highlights, achievements and acknowledgements for APO in 2011 in our blog here: http://apo.org.au/blog/?p=146. We look forward to working with you all again when we return in late January.

Access to policy information remains a problem to be solved

The Institute for a Broadband-Enabled Society recently published a white paper exploring how citizens use the internet to access information about key political issues. The report Political issue analysis system: Policy deliberation in the age of information abundance includes case studies of a number of online resources including OpenAustralia, Getup, National Forum, WeGov, Below the line and our very own Australian Policy Online. Read more at the APO Blog http://apo.org.au/blog/?p=139

ABOUT APO

Australian Policy Online provides open access to much of the best Australian social, economic, cultural and political research available online.

Australian Policy Online monitors over 500 sources each week including academic research centres and institutes, government departments, think tanks, NGOs and other media and information networks, in order to select and catalogue high quality open access research on public interest issues in Australia. The site specialises in reports and articles (grey literature) but also includes peer-reviewed journal articles and ebooks from Australia and internationally. As well as research, APO offers commentary articles, news and announcements, video, audio and web resources, topic guides and briefings, books, events, calls, jobs and courses.

The APO website and weekly email newsletter are considered essential reading for anyone interested in public policy issues in Australia. The APO website and newsletter are free to use and without restriction with the intention of facilitating access to information resources important for public policy and decision making.

The site has over 14,000 research records linking to full text resources. Our visitor numbers continue to grow and currently the site receives over 85,000 visits each month and has close to 18,000 subscribers to our Weekly Briefing email newsletter.

• To subscribe to the email newsletter click here.
• To advertise an event, job, course, book or post a free notice or call click here.

Reports and other new material can be browsed within 10 broad subject areas - Creative & Digital, Economics, Education, Environment & Planning, Health, Indigenous, International, Justice, Politics and Social Policy - along with over 100 subtopic categories. For a full list of all topics and their subtopics see the A-Z page. Our team of guest writers and columnists weigh in on issues of the day within the pages of the Commentary section and on our sister site Inside Story.

PARTNERS

Australian Policy Online is a partnership of the Australian National Institute for Public Policy and the Swinburne Institute for Social Research

Australian Policy Online was established in 2002 as an initiative of the Institute for Social Research. APO is a not-for-profit project which relies on institutional support, grants and some revenue from advertising. The site's development has been supported with a number of Australian Research Council Linkage Infrastructure and Equipment Grants (LIEF) grants over the years which have been critical to its development as an information resource enabling access to research for all Australians. The site's two key partners are now the Australian National Institute for Public Policy and the Swinburne Institute for Social Research.

The Creative and Digital gateway is presented in partnership with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI) along with support from ACCAN - the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network.

CONTENT ON APO

Most content is published for free (apart from events, jobs, courses and book listings) and we work hard to keep on top of the latest material from a wide range of organisations. If we have missed something important please let us know. Or if you would like to have your research or resources considered for inclusion please email admin@apo.org.au.

As a a community information resource Australian Policy Online provides space for anyone to post information about calls for papers or submissions coming up and announcements about research in progress or new appointments etc.

APO also provides advertising space for events, jobs, courses and books for only $75 per ad - if you would like to know more about advertising on APO or to place an advertisement, click here.

As a non profit website, Australian Policy Online appreciates your support in advertising with us and keeping our network of readers informed.

APO STAFF

Australian Policy Online is edited by a small team based at Swinburne University in Hawthorn Melbourne - feel free to visit us if you are in town.

Amanda Lawrence, Managing editor (alawrence@swin.edu.au)
Penelope Aitken, Editor (paitken@swin.edu.au)
Meghan Cummins, Deputy editor (mcummins@swin.edu.au)
Andrew Zammit, Assistant editor

Web development provided by Media Insights

JOINT MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE

Julian Thomas, Director, Swinburne Institute for Social Research
Derek Whitehead, Director, Information Resources, Swinburne University
Adam Graycar, Director, Australian National Institute for Public Policy
Jessie Borthwick, Executive Director, Strategy, Australian National Institute for Public Policy
Mark Matthews, Executive Director, HC Coombs Policy Forum

We are keen to work in partnership with other organisations or individuals for mutually beneficial goals. Whether it is via content sharing, sponsorship of the site or particular topic areas or if it is via new projects or collaborations. Please email Amanda Lawrence at amanda@apo.org.au or call (03) 9214 8792. 

KEEPING UP TO DATE

Email subscriptions

To receive notice of new material on APO, as well as job openings, events, and other notices from Australia's public policy research community, join over 17,000 people in subscribing to the Weekly Briefing, our free weekly email newsletter. Choose to receive the Weekly Briefing or get updates as soon as major reports are published. Options are available to tailor the content so you only receive the topics of interest to you.

Follow us on Twitter

RSS feeds

Alternatively you can subscribe to RSS feeds to monitor all the latest content added to the site. Feeds are also available for each topic area of the website. Simply copy the url of the topic area and add  /feed to the end of the link - then paste it into your feed reader. EG. apo.org.au/economics/feed

What is RSS? RSS feeds allows you to subscribe and read the content in RSS newsreader software. Whenever the web page is updated your newsreader will automatically display the new item. There are many news readers available and many are free – even your Internet explorer browser includes a feedreader. Look for the feed icon in the address bar. Some news readers are programs you download and install on your computer and others are web-based services that you access with your web browser such Google Reader and Bloglines. For a full list of readers see the DMOZ Open Directory Project.

APO Blog apo.org.au/blog

Occasional thoughts and ideas on APO's development, web publishing, grey literature and policy