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.
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.
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.
Researchers may benefit in a number of ways from sharing datasets, including:-
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?
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.
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 |
|
|---|---|
| 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 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 Scholar, Trove, OAIster 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:
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
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
How do I assign a Creative Commons licence?