About Open Access

Swinburne endorses transparency and openness in research as part of Universities Australia’s commitment to making all Australian publicly funded research outputs Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable.

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1. What is Open access (OA)?
2. What are my rights when my research is OA?
3. Open Access at Swinburne
   Open Science
   Open publishing
   Funder open access policies

What is Open access (OA)?

Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, with an open licence, free of cost or other access barriers.

Open access is more than just free access.

Works made open access cannot be put behind a membership/login barrier.

Assigning an open licence (usually a Creative Commons License) allows outputs to be freely available as well as legally shared and reused.

The original definitions of open access were first proposed in Budapest in 2002, Berlin in 2003), and Bethesda in 2003.

- Definition and information sourced from Open Access Australasia

What are my rights as an author when my research is open access?

Once your research is written it will be protected by copyright. These rights will also apply to any drafts of your research. You will own the copyright in your research unless you transfer ownership of your Copyright to a publisher.

As the copyright owner, you will have exclusive rights to:

• Reproduce your research in any format,
• Publish your research,
• Communicate your research, this means to make it available online, or email or fax it to someone,
• Perform your research in public,
• Adapt your research,
• Apply your own preferences for how your research may be used via a usage licence.

If anyone else wants to do any of these things, they will need your permission.

Open access at Swinburne

Open science

Swinburne University endorses transparency and openness in research as part of Universities Australia’s commitment to making all Australian publicly funded research outputs Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable.

Open science is the practice of applying principles of transparency and rigour throughout the research lifecycle. Its practices underpin the integrity and reproducibility of our research, its wider acceptance and use, and maximisation of its impact. It includes practices throughout the research lifecycle so it’s a good idea to plan your pathway early:

Swinburne researchers can learn more about Open science here (staff login required): Research intranet

Open publishing

Open publishing models broadly fit into two different routes.

Both routes described below are Swinburne-endorsed, resulting in outputs that are open access, fully web-discoverable with citation/usage metrics, and compliant with Copyright and funder policies.

Pathways to open access publishing

Repository-based open access

Publisher open access

Self-archiving versions of externally published works Authors deposit their final, peer-reviewed author accepted version of a published work into their institutional repository. Self-archiving is best applied if the author first chooses a non-OA published route (i.e. via a ‘reader pays’ or subscription model publication), then deposits their final accepted manuscript into the repository. No fee is payable via this model but some publishers assert an embargo over the manuscript. Repository publishing The repository is also a publishing platform. Publish non-traditional/unpublished and unique outputs with DOIs for citation and metrics tracking. Grey literature, commissioned research, reports, policy submissions, research data, software, figures, and other nontraditional outputs can be published uniquely to the repository for open access. Every university in Australia has an institutional repository. Here at Swinburne, the institutional repository is Swinburne figshare. Learn more about Swinburne figshare here.

Fee-based or ‘author pays’ model Also known as ‘Gold’ open access. Most of the top-tier academic publishers charge a fee (APC or Article Processing Fee/charge), payable by the author/sponsoring institution, to make the work open access. OpenAPC is an open dataset aggregating APC costs across the sector: https://openapc.net/ Some APC payments may be managed on the author’s behalf by funding programs such as the CAUL Read&Publish Agreements, to which Swinburne is a signatory. No-fee OA journals Also known as ‘Diamond’ open access. This model is often funded directly by learned societies, research institutions, philanthropic organisations or combinations of all three. Search the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) for trusted fee- and no-fee OA journals in your field here.

Funder open access policies

All government research funders (i.e. administering grants derived from public money/taxes), and some private research funders, require the outputs of their funding programs to be made openly available to the public, free of charge.

In Australia, any researchers receiving grant funds from the NHMRC and ARC must ensure their published outputs from these projects are made open access. Either of the routes described above may achieve compliance as long as access is immediate (i.e. free of embargoes) and the correct Creative Commons licence is applied (i.e. CC-BY).

Australian Research Council: Open Access Policy

National Health and Medical Research Council: Open Access Policy

Here are some specifics around funder OA policy compliance that Swinburne researchers need to be aware of:

Funder OA policies: Immediate access, Author Rights Retention, licencing

For outputs of projects funded by Australia’s NHMRC, or the European PlanS/cOAlitionS:

• Either the final accepted manuscript as deposited into an institutional repository, or the published version online at the publisher’s website (whichever is to become the OA version), must be immediately available for public access upon publication, no embargo is to be imposed over the version to be made OA.
• To assist with ensuring the above, authors must ensure that an Author Rights Retention clause is inserted into their publisher’s Copyright Agreement at Acceptance, so authors may deposit their final accepted manuscripts free of embargo if they do not choose to make the published version OA.
  See Rights Retention clause wording, as well as guidance, scenarios and proposed solutions at the NHMRC website and the Guidance document below:
_{- Download: NHMRC Open Access Policy: Open access and the retention of ownership rights (2022)}
• The version made Open Access must be licensed with a Creative Commons Attribution International ‘CC BY’ licence, no other variation of the Creative Commons suite may be used.