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.

Share via Swinburne figshare

Swinburne researchers: claim or add your work via Swinburne Elements, then Deposit to share your files via Swinburne figshare.

After review, your work will also be available via Find an Expert and Google Scholar.

To learn more: About Swinburne figshare



  1. What is Open access (OA)?
  2. What are my rights as an author?
  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?

Once your research is written it will be protected by copyright. These rights will also apply to any drafts of your research. You will automatically own the copyright in your research unless you transfer ownership, and rights, to someone else, for example, to your publisher on acceptance.

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

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

Author Rights Retention/Author addendum

Research funders with Open Access policies are increasingly recommending that authors retain rights over their work when they enter into agreements with publishers (i.e. at submission, acceptance and when signing a Copyright/publishing agreement). The mechanism for this is the insertion of a statement into your manuscript and into communications with your publisher. The documents are legal instruments that can assist authors in retaining control over their work.

(1) For an author to retain the right to self-archive, they must let the publisher know, for example, in the cover letter, at the point of submission by using the following statement:

'This research was funded in whole or part by [select the most appropriate]:

The National Health and Medical Research Council [grant number(s)]

The Medical Research Future Fund [grant number(s)]

The Medical Research Future Fund [grant number(s)] and National Health and Medical Research Council [grant number(s)].

For the purposes of open access, the author has applied a CC BY licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission'.

Open access at Swinburne

Open science

Swinburne University endorses transparency and openness in research.

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.

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    Funder open access policies

    Many research funders now require outputs of these projects to be made Open Access.

    See our guide Funder Open Research Policies