Open Access and Creative Commons

Open access resources are publications that are freely available on the internet, permitting any users, without financial, legal, or technical barriers to:

• read
• download
• copy
• distribute
• print
• search
• link to the full texts
• crawl them for indexing
• 'pass' them as data to software
• use them for any other lawful purpose. Summarised from (Budapest Open Access Initiative)

For more information on open access:

• A very brief introduction to open access (PDF)
• Peter Suber's Open access overview provides a comprehensive overview of open access publishing.

• Are Open Access journals of good quality?
  Most open access journals are peer reviewed with the same or higher standards as traditional scholarly journals. There have been studies showing an increase in impact by publishing in open access journals because of larger dissemination and increased accessibility.


• Are Open Access and Public Access the same thing?
  Open Access allows for immediate access to research. Public Access, required by many research grants, only requires access to research after an embargo period.


• How do I know if articles are freely available?
  Articles will often have an icon indicating the article is freely available or Open Access. The icon will vary from platform to platform.

• CQUniversity Open Access Institutional Digital Repository, ACQUIRE
• CQUniversity Open Online Courses (OOCs)
• CQU journal Studies in Learning, Evaluation, Innovation and Development (SLEID)
• OOCs Community of Practice - Contact Dr Matthew Browne