Open Access for Research

What is Open Access (OA)?

Why Open Access (OA)?

• The NHMRC and the ARC have Open Access Policies which apply to all grants after specific dates.
• CQU encourages compliance with existing OA policies and rules imposed by funders.
• The Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research (2018) includes the expectation that researchers “Share and communicate research methodology, data and findings openly, responsibly and accurately”.

Researchers who publish in Gold Open Access journals usually have to pay an article processing fee for providing freely available immediate access to the final version of the article.

Authors usually retain copyright and the publisher may licence the work under a Creative Commons license.

Hybrid Open Access occurs when a journal typically requires a subscription but will provide Gold Open Access to an article if the author pays an article processing fee.

More information about publishing via the Gold route with major publishers can be here:
Elsevier , Emerald , Springer , Taylor & Francis and Wiley .

Green Open Access, is also called the 'author self-archiving' model. Researchers submit to a journal and then self-archive their author's accepted manuscript in an Institutional Repository like the aCQUIRe.

NOTE: At CQU this process is done for you automatically once you have submitted your research output to Research Elements.
This means that CQU academics do not need to pay additional fees to make articles Green Open Access.

Most journals allow the Author's Accepted Manuscript (AAM's) of an article to be made OA in an institutional repository, often after an embargo period. This 'embargo' period may range from six months to two years.. The Open Access for Research Outputs Policy outlines requirements for CQUniversity researchers around embargo periods.

Book publishers tend to have more restrictive policies and often do not allow Green OA deposit.

Check SHERPA/ROMEO to see publisher embargo restrictions on when a self-archived output in a repository may be made open access.

No Cost

There are no fees or charges associated with making your research Green OA through CQU's Repository.

Greater exposure

By providing free access to your research, you make your work more accessible and allow it to have greater exposure and impact.

Increased Citations

Research released as Green OA benefits the most from the Open Access Citation Advantage . Piwowar et al., (2018) note Green OA articles are cited 33% more than average.

More discoverable

Publications in CQU's Institutional Repository (aCQUIRe) are discoverable via Google, Trove, and other search engines.

Trouble-free

Research Division and Library staff ensure compliance with copyright, embargo periods, and funder mandates.

Black Open Access refers to illegal OA copies of research publications which have been harvested or deposited in breach of publisher copyright agreements. Black OA is a recently coined term, and one that is synonymous with the platform Sci-Hub.

Copies of works posted to Scholarly Collaboration Networks (SCN) websites such as academia.edu and ResearchGate which are in breach of publisher copyright transfer agreements can also be viewed as a form of 'Black' OA.