Open access publishing of research requires that:
Open access publishing with a publisher
Publishing with a publisher may be more complex due to the various models offered. See Open access publishing models for a summary of the three types.
Open access publishing without a publisher
Publishing open access under a Creative Commons license without a publisher is straightforward, no registration is required.
Creators select which of the Creative Commons (CC) licenses best meets your goals, and then mark your work using the license-choosing tool offered by CC Creative Commons for your selection.
Open Access publishing decision tree
Use our Open Access Publishing Choices guide to help you navigate this process.
I need an ISBN or DOI
For CQUniversity publications that require an ISBN or DOI contact TaSAC.
For further information about Open Access, including creative common licensing, visit our Creative Commons Library Guide.
There are different models for open access (OA) publishing, the AOASG (Australasian Open Access Strategy Group) definitions are listed below:
The author self-archives into a subject-based repository or an institutional repository at time of submission. Provides free open access at the time of submission.
The author's or authors' institution pays a fee or Article Processing/Publishing Charge (APC); to the publisher to make the work available free of charge on the publication site. The authors retain copyright.
A hybrid journal contains a mixture of open access and regularly published articles. An APC (Article Processing Charge) has been paid to include the open access article in a regular subscription journal. Authors need to take care to ensure the clarity of licensing and discoverability matches their needs.
When your work is accepted for publication, there is a "Copyright Transfer Agreement" form. If you sign this, you are granting the full copyright of your work to the publisher. It is sometimes possible to retain some of your rights as the author of the work, for example the right to publish your work in the university's repository.
SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) has created an author addendum to publication agreement which is free to use.
Find out more about retaining your author rights by watching the video below.
Publishing open access requires the same caution as publishing commercially. You need to verify the reputation of the publisher and their existing publications. Once you publish with them, their reputation is linked to yours.
Journal articles are the most common form of scholarly publications. You can find a number of tools to assess journals under the Journals tab of the Find yourself: Research metrics LibGuide.
Ask around
Look at the About and Contact pages on the publisher’s website
Look at the publisher’s information for authors
Look at existing publications
More information on questionable publishers and publications:
SPARC - Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition
SHERPA - an online resource that aggregates and analyses publisher open access policies. Provides summaries of self-archiving permissions and conditions of rights given to authors on a journal-by-journal basis.
SHERPA RoMEO: Publisher with paid options for Open Access - lists publishers with paid options for open access.
SHERPA RoMEO: Publisher copyright policies & self archiving - use this site to find a summary of permissions that are normally given as part of each publisher's copyright transfer agreement.
SHERPA JULIET: Research funders' open access policies - use this page to find a summary of policies given by various research funders as part of their grant awards.