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Research: Open Access

What is Open Access?

Open Access means making peer reviewed scholarly papers freely available via the Internet, permitting any user to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full text of these articles (https://aoasg.org.au/what-is-open-access/).This is in contrast to the traditional practice of locating these behind researcher or institution-only access or publisher subscription barriers.

Open Access is also becoming standard research practice for other research outputs such as datasets. This changed practice is being driven both by changes to funder requirements and by publisher expectations that the datasets on which publications are based are available to other researchers. 

The perceived benefits of Open Access to data include transparency of data analysis and interpretation, increased impact of research and greater opportunities for collaboration. These provide better outcomes for individual researchers, research groups, and institutions.

Funder requirements

The Australian Research Council (ARC) and the National Health & Medical Research Council (NHMRC) have open access policies in place. These require that publications arising from an ARC or NHMRC supported research project must be deposited into an open access institutional repository within a twelve (12) month period from the date of publication. The ARC policy specifies all resultant publications including books, while the NHMRC policy relates to journal articles only.

Meeting your obligations

The Federation ResearchOnline team can help. We are experienced in interpreting publishers' copyright policies and will help determine which version of your work to make available to meet the conditions of your grant.

  • Send the details of your work to researchonline@federation.edu.au as soon as the paper is accepted for publication;
  • Let us know which grant funded the publication;
  • Attach the accepted manuscript version of your work.

Open Access and Impact

Evidence is emerging that Open Access publishing can increase citation rates. Many studies are reporting a correlation between Open Access to  published articles and citation impact, and similar studies are now beginning to be conducted on the sharing of supporting research datasets. 

The Open Citation Project provides a chronological bibliography listing recent studies that demonstrate the relationship between Open Access and increased citation impact. 

Making research data available for others to use

Researchers may benefit in a number of ways from sharing datasets,  including:-

  • An increase in the impact of your research. Others who make use of your data and cite it in their own research will help to increase your impact within your field.
  • New discoveries from existing data. Research data are a valuable resource. Not only is considerable time and money required to produce these data, but they can often have significant value beyond the original research, through reuse or by combining them with other datasets.
  • Reduced costs because you don't have to duplicate research done by others.
  • Identification of opportunities for new collaborations and partnerships.
  • Allowing for validation of previous research results.
  • Encouraging scientific inquiry and debate.

Storage of research data

There are a number of options for Federation University researchers for storage of research data. Further information is available in the Research Data Management subject guide

Re-using open research data

Who shares research data?

What are the advantages of open data?

How can I share sensitive data?

 

Help for locating your Author Accepted Manuscript/s

These informative, easy to use guides have been created to help authors find a copy of their accepted manuscripts.  They were developed in response to feedback that hunting for copies of manuscripts on hard-drives and inboxes was often confusing, frustrating, and ultimately unsuccessful. Instead, journal submission systems, which are typically used to manage the publication process for authors, provide a straightforward and authoritative source of AAMs.

 

 

Green and Gold Open Access

Researchers can make their work open access by one of two ways: by depositing an open access copy of their published work in a repository or by publishing in a journal that makes the work open access.

Gold Open Access
  • Publishing in a journal which provides the work on Open Access, usually for a fee (called an Article Publishing Charge, or APC), is described as Gold Access
Green Open Access
  • Publishing in a repository is described as Green Open Access

Some journal titles have some articles on a paid-subscription basis, while others may be freely available - this is called hybrid Open Access publishing.

Federation Research Online

Federation ResearchOnline is the University’s institutional open access digital repository. It promotes, stores and provides open access to the research and scholarly output of Federation University Australia's staff, students and affiliates. It makes your work more visible and easily accessible, with the potential to increase your article citation rate and research impact.

In addition, the repository can provide statistics on how often your work is accessed or downloaded

The repository is not a publisher, but an online archive for deposited items. You remain free to publish wherever you choose.

Services that index publications in the repository include Google and Google ScholarTroveOAIster and BASE. These supplement the traditional journal indexing databases that are available through the library.

Researchers are encouraged to provide electronic copies of their work to be added to Federation ResearchOnline. This is subject to obtaining relevant copyright permission. The Sherpa/RoMEO database provides information on journal publisher copyright and author permissions.

What kind of publications are included and how are they made available?​

Publications include:

  • Journal articles                  
  • Books                                    
  • Book chapters 
  • Images
  • Conference papers
  • Theses

A full-text publication or item is made available if appropriate copyright permissions are obtained. Alternatively, a link is made to the published version of an article.


For further information and to submit an article, email:  researchonline@federation.edu.au

Copyright and Open Access

Making material open access does not deprive copyright holders of any rights. Copyright laws still apply.

Copyright holders normally consent to the unrestricted reading, downloading, copying, sharing, storing, printing, searching, linking, and crawling of the full-text of the work.

Authors can choose to attach licenses to their work to protect themselves, for example, to block the distribution of changes or misattributed copies or commercial re-use.

Creative Commons licences

Creative Commons have developed a series of licences that cater for the differing access and re-use wishes of copyright owners.  It allows users to make use of your material in various ways, but only under certain conditions

A CC license covers any content that you are the copyright owner of including original written, photographic and artistic content that you have created and which you control the rights to.  If you have previously had the content published elsewhere, or entered into any type of assignment or licensing agreement, it is likely you do not control the relevant rights.

 

How do I assign a Creative Commons licence?

  1. Decide which licence you want to use
  2. Use the CC tools to create the icon, an acknowledgement and the appropriate short licence description.
  3. Insert the CC details into your work: Paste the icon and other automatically generated details into your work.