Open Access

In the traditional scholarly publishing model, publishers charge the reader for access, either through a journal subscription or by pay-per-view.

Open Access is...

• online and digital                                                                                           
• without cost to access
• peer reviewed research
• compliant with copyright legislation
• free of access barriers created by financial, legal or technical issues    

Open Access is not...                                   

• self-publishing                                                                                                            
• backyard publishing                                                                                         
• free or no cost publishing

A significant driver behind the Open Access philosophy is public access to publicly funded research. Open Access can provide significant benefits to the community, to you and your research.

1. Open access may be a requirement of your funding agreement

The Australian Research Council (ARC) and the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) policies both require research outputs arising from ARC/NHMRC funded projects be made openly available within 12 months from the date of publication. The research outputs are required to be deposited into an open access institutional repository or in other acceptable locations (publisher's website, subject repositories etc). The policy also requires that publication metadata be deposited within an open access repository within 3 months from the date of publication. For more information, check out the tab to the left titled 'Comply with funders' mandates'.

2. Open access could increase the impact of your research
Increasing the visibility and exposure of your research creates potential for a higher number of citations. It also creates an opportunity to reach practitioners and policy makers, who may not otherwise have access to the published research.

3. Open access will remove barriers to accessing your research
Maximising the dissemination of your research by removing cost barriers provides access to anyone with an internet connection. This can assist researchers in developing countries and ensure the public can access your findings.

4. Open access allows research institutions to showcase their research outputs

Institutions can make their research output visible earlier in the process instead of waiting for publishers to decide when this can be shared or made publicly available.

Publishing models for open access (OA) can broadly be categorised into:

• Gold OA where the author publishes in an open access journal and the article is freely available from publisher’s website. 
• Green OA where the author publishes a paper in any journal and then makes a version of the paper available in an open access digital research repository. 

For further information on Green OA see Add to OA repository and for information on the Gold OA models see Publish in an OA journal.

The following table highlights the main advantages and disadvantages of the various publishing models.

Winners of Curtin Library’s 2016 Open Access Week competition discuss the benefits of open access publishing to early career researchers.

Associate Professor Helen Slater, Professor Erik Champion, Professor Andrew Rohl, and Dr Tama Leaver discuss why open access matters to them and their discipline.